Pee Is Good

Well, we had to use a catheter this morning on Macayla again, but this evening, she did it completely on her own. We were very thankful for that and she was even laughing. Of course, she may have been laughing at the sheer joy her parents expressed over urine more than laughing over the joy of urinating. But she has felt better today and has had a full feeding without throwing up and without seizures. 

One interesting thing we learned from our neurologist today is that a side effect of scopolamine patches (motion sickness patches we use to control drooling) is that they can sometimes cause bladder retention in kids like Macayla. So, we have to see if reducing the patch by cutting them in half might help with the bladder. But this poses a problem since Macayla is not handling the increased secretions she already has and is choking quite often. We may test out another type of seizure med as well. Diastat is meant to stop seizures, but it only works half the time with Macayla. We may try Versed to see if it will work. 

I got curious as to why we use the term "pee" for urine and it comes from the 18th century euphemism for a "p" word that rhymes with hiss. "Pee" is simply the phonetic spelling for the letter that stands for the, well, "p" word, you know that rhymes with hiss. So, there are two interesting things we learned today. O.k., just one, the side effects of scopolamine patches is just another random useless fact!

Well, all this learning today has worn us out and we are probably not going to watch the New Year come in. We will instead sleep then and wake up sometime between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m to be sure that Macayla is voiding. Oh, the joy of 18th century euphemisms!