Another poop post. You can feel free to skip if you like...

So... the horrible diarrhea has not abated. At all. We did a round of activated charcoal - nothing. The poor kid's poop is VILE smelling, explosive, mulitcolored liquid with assorted undigested food in it.

I called the lab today to find out how much longer for the stool test results. They got the test kit Dec 18, and it takes 7-10 business days to run the testing (they have to grow fungus... and such), so we're only on day 5. At least another week, i'd guess.

I called the doc's office to talk to the med. assistant about it, but she was with a patient.

So i called my master herbalist friend, Joan, who has helped us before to pick her brain. In talking with Joan, her take on diarrhea is that chronic stinky liquid diarrhea is actually a sign of severe constipation - something is plugging him up so that only liquid is getting through. Something has SO coated his intestines that food isn't being digested. Something is in his gut and needs to come out. Period. So her take on it is we need to shift gears and focus instead of plugging him up - which is clearly not working - on emptying him out. We talked about a couple of options, and the gentlest is going to be good old fashioned prunes.

So while we wait for the stool test to come back to show if there're any weird pathogens going on, we'll be feeding Dominic prunes and giving him prune juice. Kiddo's " juice" is now a cocktail of prune juice, aloe juice, glutathione, zinc, cod liver oil, and a splash of real grape or apple juice. *yum*

For the record, we got 3 flavors of prunes today from safeway - plain, "orange essence", and "cherry essence". Interestingly enough none have nitrates. I got one orange and one cherry into him. He cried when i tried to give him the plain ones. I got about 4oz worth of prune juice into him, but he refused a second "cocktail" at dinner.

So, no diarrhea for me tonight. Which is odd. Normally there're 3-4 bouts of it in the evening (we think he holds it). And at least 2 in the morning. So we'll see what tomorrow brings.

in hindsight, it does seem more likely that he'd be constipated - this is the kid who as a nursing baby pooped one day a week. And when potty training, held it and really only went once a week... and who up until he had the flu had multiple times per week that he clearly had issues going.

we'll see. prunes won't hurt him, tho. And if we need to up the ante a bit, Joan's got a couple of lower bowel herbal formulas we could look into