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So this morning rolled around and Ben still had not had any movement. I went over to Sara's place, and just before I arrived she had given him the second suppository. Within a half hour he started having sever cramps like he was trying to move his bowels but nothing was happening. Every few minutes he would get the cramps, and he was screaming throughout them. I mean, he was in a lot of pain last summer but he never screamed like he was this morning. Sara got on the phone with the doctor, and we were told to come to the hospital where the doctor would manually dis-impact Ben.
Getting checked in and sent to the right waiting area took about an hour, but once we were finally back to his pre-op room things started moving along quickly. The procedure itself took about 45 minutes, and when it was over the doctor came out to the waiting room to tell us what the problem turned out to be. Ben had "a ream of paper" stuck in his belly. No amount of laxative would ever have moved it along, doing the manual procedure was the only way to clear it. In any case, the doctor got it all cleaned out. He actually commented that in all his years of being a doctor, this was the first time that doing that particular procedure didn't stink to high heaven, because pretty much all that came out was paper.
It took about two hours for Ben to recover enough to be released, and he is now home resting. Although he is exhausted, he must be feeling better because on the way home he asked to stop at McDonald's and once he got home he again asked for fries. This is the first time since Saturday that he has asked for food. Of course he can't have any solids quite yet, but by the time he wakes up he should be ready to eat a little something.
One thing that Sara pointed out, this is the first time in all his thirteen years that his autism landed him in the hospital. Breaking his arm was just a normal kid thing, and last year's pancreatitis would have happened regardless of his autism. This eating paper thing, though, is the classic autistic behavior. Hopefully we can get him to associate all of the pain he has been in with eating paper, but I am not overly optimistic on that point. In any case, thirteen years is a pretty good record in the grand scheme of things.
Getting checked in and sent to the right waiting area took about an hour, but once we were finally back to his pre-op room things started moving along quickly. The procedure itself took about 45 minutes, and when it was over the doctor came out to the waiting room to tell us what the problem turned out to be. Ben had "a ream of paper" stuck in his belly. No amount of laxative would ever have moved it along, doing the manual procedure was the only way to clear it. In any case, the doctor got it all cleaned out. He actually commented that in all his years of being a doctor, this was the first time that doing that particular procedure didn't stink to high heaven, because pretty much all that came out was paper.
It took about two hours for Ben to recover enough to be released, and he is now home resting. Although he is exhausted, he must be feeling better because on the way home he asked to stop at McDonald's and once he got home he again asked for fries. This is the first time since Saturday that he has asked for food. Of course he can't have any solids quite yet, but by the time he wakes up he should be ready to eat a little something.
One thing that Sara pointed out, this is the first time in all his thirteen years that his autism landed him in the hospital. Breaking his arm was just a normal kid thing, and last year's pancreatitis would have happened regardless of his autism. This eating paper thing, though, is the classic autistic behavior. Hopefully we can get him to associate all of the pain he has been in with eating paper, but I am not overly optimistic on that point. In any case, thirteen years is a pretty good record in the grand scheme of things.