Sally Cooper The Pooper Scooper

Nice title eh?  Well that is a nickname that I was jokingly given in middle school.  And now it is a reality!

Ever seen one of these?  If you have then you already understand the title of this post.  This is a vial used for collecting stool samples...yeah...life has been that awesome the past few days!

Some of you remember the great seizure episode of March 07 with Olivia.  Well, I guess Mason decided it was his turn to scare me to death.  He had a seizure in the middle of the night on Saturday night.  We understood more about febrile seizures going into this one thus we didn't call 911 this time but I still felt the exact same heart pounding anxiety.  Let me assure you, the seizures that both of my kids have now tormented me with are due to high fevers and are "normal".  Normal being the word used by one doctor in the very moment that I watched Olivia seizing in the ER and turning purple before my eyes.  The actions of the staff told me otherwise...they all seemed as frantic as I was.  Ultimately though she was OK and we haven't seen any more episodes from her since the 2 that day.

So we found the culprit of the 104 fever that brought on Mason's seizure...ear infection!  He started a new antibiotic that he has never taken before and then the next morning he had a significant amount of blood in his diaper every time he pooped.  I took him to the Dr. who didn't seem overly concerned.  She less than assuringly (I don't think that's a word) assured me that it wasn't from his antibiotic and ordered some lab work.  They sent me home with 3 vials as pictures above.  Yep I was to scoop his poop and place it into the container.  Collecting the samples proved to be more difficult than I expected.  My awesome friend Kathleen had stopped by that morning and helped me get some stuff done.  She was entertaining the kids in the other room while I collected the sample.  She had to check on me a couple of times since she could hear the gagging.  She even offered to do it for me!  What an awesome friend.  Of course I didn't feel like I should make her scoop my kid's poop so I pulled it together and got 'er done.  So I took the samples in feeling a little strange about walking in with a bag full of poop.  It felt like everyone in the waiting area was closely examining the bag and giving me looks of disgust.  I don't think my perception was valid however.  Come to find out the Dr. office had ordered the wrong tests and I ended up coming home with yet ANOTHER vial and having to scoop more poop!  Anyhow after seizures, fevers, diarrhea, bloody diapers, and even puking Mason finally seems to be OK.  But we won't get his "test results" for another 3-5 days.  That just seems useless to me.

On a different note...nap time is changing a lot around here.  Olivia has decided to choose her own napping locations and times.  Luckily Mason seems to understand that she is not to be touched or disturbed.  He sat and looked at her like this for about 10 minutes after he got up from his nap.  It was pretty funny.