Ozzie waddled towards me with a look of mild concern on his face, looked up and said “Poo”. The cat smiles smugly and leaves the room. Julie is wrangling the other four grandkids in the kitchen, helping them cook dinner. Nothing for it. Find a new nappy, wet a face washer (it wishes it was a face washer), a bag to dispose of the evidence and get down to it.
The little joys of being a grandparent.
Like most people associated with little kids, I’m fairly unmoved by poo. Ozzie’s comes from a healthy body, so it’s sometimes messy, but mostly harmless, and water washable. Anyway, anyone who’s been through a transplant or any other major drama that involves ingesting strong drugs knows how thin the veneer is between continence and incontinence (of any variety).
Take this week. After six months of gradually deteriorating Calcium, Phosphate and Parathyroid levels, I re-started Sensipar®. I’ve been to this movie several times before, but such are the delights of the human body, that reactions can vary each time.
What’s different from previous times is that over the years my Parathyroid gland (which was mostly removed seven years ago) has grown back and completely screwed my Calcium/Phosphate balance, to the point where I’ve lost a lot of calcium from my bones.
Sensipar shuts down my parathyroid and my body starts to move calcium from my body back to my bones. To make sure I don’t suffer from calcium withdrawal, I have to take LOTS of calcium tablets. The resulting side effect is industrial strength constipation.
Most people on dialysis are familiar with the constipation spectrum. The sweet spot (so to speak) is at the centre, where a movement is like toothpaste – sadly, a place rarely visited by BigD-ers. Because we are dialysed fairly dry, most of us live in the zone between pebbles and rocks.
Many mornings after dialysis, when I’m as dry as a chip, things can be a little tough. Passing something the size of my BB-8 robot’s head is challenging but doable. But with the calcium – Sensipar combo, it takes just one sleep to hit the concrete end, where things get harder and bigger, more like BB-8’s body.
After several hours of desperation, pain and trauma, BB-8’s ghostlike, calcium-tinged brother appeared on the scene: relief and exhaustion in equal amounts. More importantly, I realised that I had to avoid a replay of this drama tomorrow at all costs. I. needed chemical assistance in the form of a laxative, and I needed it right now.
After asking around and a couple of false starts, I settled on Benefiber (US) (Aus) – around $9 at Chemist Warehouse). It’s made from wheat dextrin, is gentle on the stomach and it works. I take two teaspoons with breakfast (I mix it with my milk before I pour it on my cereal), and two with dinner (in a small drink of water). It also comes in small sachets (like sugar) so I can use it when I’m eating out without looking like some kind of coke addict.
I won’t need it forever: only until I stop taking heroic amounts of calcium.
But it will stay in the cupboard. There is any number of things we take that cause constipation, from just about everything made codeine and paracetamol, opiate-based drugs, including Oxycodone (also called OxyContin), many anaesthetics and weight-gain supplements like Fortisip and Resource. There are ways around using (or not using) all of these, but Benefiber is a great all-around liberator when we get caught at the wrong end of the spectrum.
Of course, Ozzie is a different matter. Constipated he is not. Maybe I should make sure the Benefiber is out of his reach.