Hey everybody,
What a lovely weekend! LOL.
I do give my husband mirlax almost everyday, and he uses an enema daily as well to get it out. He just cant go without one -- no push strength I guess. I recently added fiber pills daily as well. usually, he will go every other day or so. but last week it just kept stretching out longer and longer--nothing was working. I was giving him double doses of Mirlax, and using several enemas at a time. he was spending so much time on the pot with nothing happening. it was awful! cramping, exhaustion, and nothing to show for it. I tried manually extracting and also gave him calcium citrate. Thursday nite (day 7) he was a mess so we went to the emergency room.
Oh, I wanted to get a home health visit from the doctor, but since my husband wont go to the doc regularly, the doc wont order home health care with out seeing him. (I think the hospital visit convinced him to go to the doc though).
It was irritating, all they did was say yep, cant manually extract--to high (I know that already!) so they give him calcium citrate and a enema (hello, I already did that!). surprise, it didn't work. so they decide to admit him. Husband is saying "lets go home", and I say " so we can come back tomorrow? grrr".
6 tries to get an IV in his arm--he is all bruised up. ( not their fault--his veins are so weak they kept collapsing). On Friday, they give him another soap enema and Lactolase laxative . he gets nausea from it and pukes and feels awful. they won't give him anything to eat so he is weak and miserable. I couldn't believe how awful he looked. it was scary. finally, about 2 hours after the laxative he said he had to poo. 3 times in a row, each one bigger and nastier than the next--Hallelujah ! Saturday we get to go home--and as soon as he is home he has another biggie. Oh happy day!
All in all, I don't ever want to take him back to the hospital. It was exhausting and difficult. I had to stay with him at all times since he could not call the nurses for help and I had to help him pee and feed him and clean him and take care of him. They gave us a script for the lactolase so I will use that as the "big gun" next time and husband has agreed to get a check up with the doc so I can also have a visiting nurse if it happens again.
Oh the fun never ends with ALS!