Unpopular Opinion: Why it is ok to talk about poo and make fart jokes at the dinner table

December 1 - 7 is a very important week to our household. I have shared a lot about my health in my initial posts, and I’m even recovering from my own major relapse / anxiety and hEDS driven body shut down. But my husband also has

had his own health battle for as long as we’ve been together. It has been 20 years since his diagnosis of Ulcerative Colitis. We’ve been through good times (thankfully, most of the time!) as well as double digit colonoscopies and some hospital stays. This year, our 11-year-old son was also diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis. He was healthy, still active in competitive swimming, and we thankfully caught his first flare early - all because we allow our kids to openly talk about their bodies and make fart and poop jokes at the dinner table at home… and, well… truth be told, maybe quietly in public if we just can’t hold in the joke any longer, ha. Hubby is a big fan of Dad Jokes after all.

My initial goal was to get this out during Crohn’s and Colitis Awareness week (December 1-7), but things happen. Our son's birthday is that week, one of our dogs has a birthday that week (yes, we celebrate their birthdays as well!), we had a multiple day swim meet, and you get the idea. But we are still in December, and so I will be sharing my son’s story (with his permission) and earlier in the month, published the first Gut, Heart, and Soul guest article written by my husband to share his experience with others.

If you have read my other blog posts or explored much of Gut, Heart, and Soul, you know that we’re an active family. We’ve toured 44 US States together so far, several provinces in Canada, and several states in Mexico. We’ve camped in the super volcano of Yellowstone National Park, in a random parking lot in Cape Breton Highlands, and spent a few days at Grutas Tolantongo in Mexico. With my health issues, I generally cook gluten free and dairy free for our family, and we avoid a lot of high fructose corn syrup (me totally, and by default the rest of the family unless we’re out and they grab a soda, or it is a holiday and we grab drinks for a family gathering.) Our kids swim competitively, being in the water anywhere from 3-7 days a week depending on the week. The week I am starting to work on this article is 5 swim days for our younger son and 6 for our older son. So, by all means, most of our friends say we live a relatively healthy and active lifestyle. That’s got to be enough to keep your kids healthy, right? We all know there are fluke things that happen, but we never expected our son’s very casual comment one night at the dinner table.

After a normal night of swim practice, we get home around 8 pm, our kids shower as we’re finishing making dinner, and then we eat. Everything is pretty normal until part way through dinner, our younger son comes back from the bathroom, and in the tiniest voice just casually says my poo is red. Naturally, my husband immediately freezes. (Side note, my husband’s sister is also going through treatment for stage 3 colon cancer at this time.) Hubby starts asking questions about what our son saw, very calmly, and I ask if any brightly colored snacks have been had in the past few days. (As I’m sure many of you have experienced, kids with blue poo sometimes follows a birthday party with lots of blue icing, ha.) Hubby asks if there is more poo, for son to not flush and let him look at it first. Not too much later, we have another poo and hubby says that there is too much toilet paper in the water to get definitive answers, but it is blood without a doubt. We ask for the next poo, for him to yell for us before he wipes so hubby can see everything.

The next morning, we have visual confirmation of a significant, but not alarming enough to go to the ER, situation. We call and get an appointment with his pediatrician’s office. We can’t see our regular doctor, but thankfully everyone we have seen has been amazing. This experience was the same - the doctor we saw was very thorough, asked a lot of important questions, including have you been playing with turtles lately? Who knew some turtles carry bacteria that can cause GI bleeds?!? Not us, until now. So our wonderful doctor initiates a referral to a GI specialist to get that process moving and orders blood work, with the expectation that if blood work comes back concerning, she will elevate his referral to urgent. Blood work comes back with high calprotectin levels - a protein that signals your white blood cells are fighting inflammation in the body. This means we are scheduled within the week at our local children’s hospital. We meet another wonderful doctor there who had her own questions, scheduled a colonoscopy with the option to make it urgent after another set of bloodwork - including going ahead with a TB test (tuberculosis) since we have the family history of Ulcerative Colitis and many of the treatments are biologics which require TB tests before you can begin the medicine. We are so appreciative that in every step of the way, the doctors were all thinking ahead of how we get the answers we need now but also prepare for the next steps to have as little impact on his body as possible.

The fun aquarium cover for the overhead light in the prep and recovery room.

His second set of bloodwork looked stable, and we are scheduled for a colonoscopy and endoscopy the following week. Prep work was, well, prep for a dual endoscopy and colonoscopy... but with a father who has UC also, the day was set up with movies, all the clear liquidy fun refreshments available, and a nice relaxation pod with pillows and blankets galore but not limiting access to the restroom. Our procedure day started early, with a kid favorite check in time of 7:30 a.m. at the local children's hospital. From what we can tell, our son had the second appointment of the morning, and we were put into a prep and recovery area that was decorated enough to be fun, but not overwhelming, for kids. We all had a good time during the waiting process, but our son decided he is NOT a fan of IVs. Jokes were made throughout the time to keep it as lighthearted as possible, including plans (completely the kid's idea) to yell "Help! I'm being kidnapped!" when the procedure team came to wheel him away for the two tests. After a short procedure time, our son is wheeled back to us in the fetal position, and his nursing team says they're just in love with him and that he is so cute all curled up. Waking up from the anesthesia was another "not his favorite" moment, because it isn't a time where one is in control of their own body and mind. He wanted to get up immediately but wasn't allowed. He wanted to go to the bathroom but couldn't when we got him supplies to go from the bed. So, we sat while we were waiting for the medicine to wear off and waited for the gastroenterologist to come with her findings. We were told many biopsies were taken, that the majority of the inflammation that day was noted in the lower intestines, and depending on the biopsy results, we could go either way - a diagnosis of Crohn's or Ulcerative Colitis. The doctor said she was leaning more toward Crohn's but would wait for the official diagnosis.

I'm going to pause our story here, because what followed... well, was a ridiculous situation. I will share that we ended up with a diagnosis of Ulcerative Colitis, but everything else will be shared in part 2 of this blog series. Look for it soon!