After what felt like a successful weekend, Monday (10 days into it) was horrific. 8 accidents in as many hours. It wasn't like he wasn't going to the potty. He would have an accident just minutes after going! And he started getting pretty obstinate about going too. Even with that, Monday night, I was undeterred. I knew we had success over the weekend and figured we just needed to be more stubborn than Matthew. I have many more years practice at being stubborn!
Tuesday morning started well. And I figured the school day had gone at least pretty well because they hadn't called me to bring up additional clothes, like they had on Monday. I walked into his class to find out he had just 1 accident. Not bad! They also let me know that he had gone potty just 8 minutes earlier. Nevertheless, I wanted to follow our routine and take him to the potty one more time before we left. There I found yet another accident. As is practice, I put him on the potty anyway, where he proceeded to pee yet again. Ugh! In a span of 8 minutes, he went to the potty twice AND had an accident! After the next accident right after we got home, I cried 'uncle' and put a diaper on him. I just do not have the mental fortitude for this! So, he won this battle, but in the long run, I will win the war. We will take a break and try again later.
As I was recanting this story for a friend, she asked 'Are you sure there isn't a physiological issue? He doesn't seem to be emptying his bladder.' And then it hit me- he isn't usually emptying fully. And he has to work at it when he does. I was blaming his attention span (or lack thereof) and his defiance, and that may play a part, but there is likely a physiological explanation too.
During his first surgery, when he was 5 months old, a nurse inflated the Foley catheter balloon in his urethra instead of his bladder. It caused trauma and he voided blood after the Foley removal. Later that stay, he required recatheterization so that he could void and heal. The urologist scoped his urinary tract during his urology surgery 10 months later and found scar tissue build up in his urethra from the trauma of the misinsertion of the Foley. At every urology appointment since, our Dr asks about Matt's stream, which to this point I never had an answer because he was going in a diaper . Now we have 11 days of data points that aren't really encouraging and we anxiously await our next urology appointment (which was already scheduled for his yearly kidney check) coming up next month.
At 3 this morning, when all of this was still swirling around in my head, I was less frustrated with Matthew, but more ticked at the medical mistake that seems to be making something not easy even more complicated! I am even more ticked off now than I was when the trauma happened 3+ years ago. Like Matthew doesn't have enough challenges with the laundry list of anomalies that have arisen out of his chromosome disorder, he definitely didn't need additional anomalies created! Just UGH!
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