Firecracker Has a Bad Week

So, on Monday morning Firecracker wakes up with a bad stomachache. She’s miserable. She throws up a couple times. A bug, I think, better stay home. So I stay home with her a bit and she perks right up and wants to go to school. No pain, no vomiting, no fever. I take her to school. That evening I pick her up at daycare and hear that she’s been complaining about her stomach. We go home and the pain is back. We have a horrible evening, but eventually she calms down and sleeps. Gas, I think, or constipation.

On Tuesday morning she seems fine. She takes the bus. I pick her up from daycare and she immediately starts to whimper. I pick up Mylicon drops for gas. It seems to help. She sleeps pretty well. She seems okay the next morning until I put her on the bus. She’s a bit clingy. I send a note to the school to eliminate dairy. That afternoon I get a call from school to come pick her up because she cried about her tummy until she fell asleep. I call the pediatrician and go pick her up. She screams all the way to the doctor and cries so vigorously there that the doctor leaves a patient to see her. The doctor feels around on her tummy and does a urine culture. Nothing obvious seems to be wrong. She tells us to go to the ER—a nice, long drive to the nearest children’s hospital (we made the mistake once of taking her to the local hospital). Firecracker sleeps a few minutes and then screams the rest of the way. Two blood draws, an x-ray, and many hours later we are assured that she doesn’t have appendicitis, or a blockage, or constipation, or gas, or a thyroid problem.

She doesn’t have anything.

We go home. I throw up. Firecracker offers to rub my back and drifts off to sleep.

Thursday, more of the same: I pick her up at daycare and she starts crying. I put her in a bath, which helps. She wakes up a couple of times complaining but I manage to soothe her to sleep. This morning Dear Husband takes her to an unrelated doctor appointment. He tells me she’s lost weight. I drop her at school. She is crying and has contorted herself in her car seat by the time we get there. During the car ride the only thing that seemed to interrupt the cycle of pain was talking about a friend from her previous daycare and promising to try to contact her mother for a play date. So maybe it’s stress—new daycare, new classroom, missing friends, dad in pain and not home much, mom irritable. It seems to get worse in the afternoon and again in the evening, when she sees me. Best, I think, to keep to the routine and not make a big deal about it.

Or maybe it’s gallstones. Or celiac disease. Or maybe it’s what Dear Husband has only she can’t tell the difference between bladder and intestinal pain. This has been going on for five days. If it doesn’t improve over the weekend, we’ll have to see a gastroenterologist.