After all that drama of the first day of school, the teacher pulled me aside, and said, “Your son had to go to the bathroom quite a bit today, and it seemed unusual, so I thought I better let you know.”
“Thanks for telling me,” I said.
I noticed this last week at the lake. Then, I asked him, “Does it burn when you go?” His answer, No, left me thinking it was just a phase. So, now that the teacher noticed it too, I called a doctor, and had an appointment that very afternoon.
How ironic that I found myself sitting alone, staring into those brown eyes of the one boy I missed so much, in the waiting room of the doctor’s office, free of interruptions, while he talked, and talked and talked and talked about his grand day.
And we waited… over an hour. He peed 15 times while we waited. Just a dribble; but he peed. Sometimes, by the time he was done washing his hands, he had to pee again. The nurses laughed and laughed.
Finally, they called us back to see the doctor, who had already read the lab results of his urine, and was thankfully telling me that there was no infection, and no sign of diabetes.
The doctor and I have been intimately connected via my children for the last 12 years. She has stood by me through mysterious diagnosis after mysterious diagnosis; she calms my fears, and she knows me, just as well as she knows my kids. She was quick to notice my “puffy eyes.”
“He’s nervous,” she said. “About all the stress about starting school. This is very common… it’s called frequency urination syndrome.”
“Oh no. He’s not nervous about school. Besides, this started before school started.”
“Well, he knows… it’s the upcoming stress.”
“But he’s not nervous.”
Meanwhile, my son runs out of the room to pee again.
“Well, he senses that you’re nervous, and that’s making him react by peeing all the time.”
“No, you don’t understand. He knows I’m nervous, and he likes that. I’m nervous for him, so he doesn’t have to be nervous. You see, he has me right where he wants me.”
My son is back, so she puts him up on the table to examine his belly, by pressing around. He doesn’t giggle. It hurts. “Oh,” she says, “He’s constipated. He’s so constipated that his bowels are pressing against his bladder, and making him feel as if he has to go.”
So, like I said, he was not nervous. He’s just full of poop.
She explains that I’ll need to put the Benefiber in his water… for about a week or two.
And it’s working. This morning, we’re running out the front door with all the kids, heading off for our morning walk to school, and he said, “Mom! I have good news, and I have some bad news. The good news is I have to go poop. The bad news is, we’re going to be late for school.”
Just a little insight as to why I’m so broken hearted to send this guy off to school all day long. More first day of school stories are at PBN, who has teamed up with Hanes; makers of the underwear that keeps you wedgie-free all year long.
Filed under: Laugh, boy | 8 Comments →
