The Mystery of the Funky Green Poop

So when my daughter, Cressy, was about two years old I took her in for her annual physical.  Whilst we were doing our thing at the pediatrician's office my daughter did her thing in her diaper.  She took a little toddler dumpenetta, alternatively known as a gruntie or a poopie doodle.  Of course, there is my all time favorite, she made a deposit in the porcelain bank.  (Of course a diaper is a metaphorical porcelain bank.)  As the pediatrician cannot be expected to examine a toddler with a dirty diaper I took a moment (maybe two) to change her.  And voila.  Her little dirty, sinful business was bright Kelly green.

BRIGHT KELLY GREEN.  It was so green that the Irish would say, "Damn, that's green."

Then the nurse came in and saw what had occurred and she said, "So is your daughter on medication that you didn't tell me about?"

And Cressy was not on any medication that I had dolefully neglected to mention.  So the nurse developed a pinched expression on her face.  (If I had been judging it by my daughter's face, I would have guessed that the nurse was about to pinch a smelly loaf of her own or as it's known in the south, about to sink some stinky sailors in the silly sea.  Hah.  I made that up.  It's not really southern, but it should be.)  In any case the nurse continued with the 'look' on her face that silently said, 'You're a poor mother.  Your daughter has bright green poopoo and you didn't tell us something we obviously need to know as medical practitioners of the first degree.  You suck and we are royalty.'  (It really was an involved expression, you know and I think she must have practiced in front of a mirror at home to perfect it.)

"That's not normal," the nurse finally pronounced as if I would fall to my knees on the floor and wail my utter dearth of goodmotherness.  ("Oh, woe is me!  I have done Cressy wrong!  Ohhh!")

Yes, I was aware that my daughter had been having green poopsies for some time.  Since she was eating typically, drinking, not expressing any pains, and everything else was going well, I didn't really think anything about it.  (It wasn't black and the poor little dear wasn't screaming because she was horribly constipated.)  And I should mention that as a mother of a small child one QUICKLY learns that exjectamenta comes in ALL colors, consistencies, and shapes.  ("Oh, my goodness, that type is new and ever so unusual.  I should take a photo and post it on Facebook!")

But as a typical mother, I tended to bristle when a nurse cops an attitude about my level of care concerning my child.  "So what is a normal poopage?" I asked belligerently.  "I'll have to get a color chart to compare daily pooplets.  My God, what was I thinking?  My daughter has bright green turds.  It could be the end of the world as we know it!"  (No, I didn't say that to the nurse, but I was definitely thinking it.)

"Okay," I mumbled.  "I'll talk to the doctor about it." 

So the doctor comes in, does her thing (and that didn't have anything to do with her personal little brown floaties) and I talk about the BRIGHT GREEN crusty critters.

"So what is she eating and drinking?" asks the doctor.

So I tell the doctor.  Then I add, "And she really likes Grape Koolaid."

"Ah," says the doctor.  "You should give her water.  She'll get a sweet tooth."

And what does that have to do with green butt clusters?  I do not know.  Apparently my lack of education in the medical field restrains me from completely understanding the intricacies of how a sweet tooth is directly linked to the output of green carbuncles.  Plus having suffered the tweaked-nerve-in-the-neck-stare from the nurse I was not in the mood to be understanding.

The doctor was well-groomed, about five foot five inches, and looked like she weighed about one hundred pounds soaking wet.  She had real diamond studs in her ears and a rock on her finger that could have sunk the Titanic.  I wanted to ask her if her daughter's nanny let her drink Grape Koolaid or the night nanny made the unfortunate dear drink only water (Perrier, I'm sure).  All things considered I handled my temper pretty well.  I WAS NOT feeding Cressy candy bars or snacks while shopping in Walmart, as I had seen women doing.  (One kid was two years old, weighed more than two of Cressy put together and was literally stuffed in the child seat of a shopping cart.  And he had the mega-sized Snicker's bar in his sweaty pudgy hand, which he was cheerfully shoving into his mouth while his mother shopped for whatever and chatted on her cell phone.)

Grape Koolaid!  The indignities, the utter wretchedness of the drink that I had drunk as a child myself.  Oh, I was a terrible mother.  How could I have been so remiss in my parental responsibilities?  Oh, however will the psychologist that she eventually goes to deal with this shameful and despicable event in her psyche?

Anyway, the doctor and I never got back to the green chewbacca chunks because the doctor had climbed onto her high horse of moral nutritional obligation and was imparting to me the varied and multiple errors of my being.  If I continued to let my child drink something 'sweet' she would never like anything else.  If I persisted with these vile deeds with my daughter she would turn into a serial killer who cannibalized sorority girls at midnight at abandoned summer camps.  (The doctor didn't really say that but it was definitely implied.)

I slunk out of the pediatrician's office knowing that I had done Cressy a dreadful wrong.  I had given her Grape Koolaid instead of water.  Oh, the ignobility of it all.

What did I do?  I tried giving Cressy water and she didn't want it.  Basically she gave me a toddler look that said, 'Why?  Why would you torture me with this tasteless clear stuff, Mother?  Why?'  So I gave her the Grape Koolaid.  Even worse was that I drank it, too.  It wasn't bad and it was sugar free, so it wasn't like I was giving her a hundred calories in a shot.  If it was good enough for my daughter, then by God I would drink it, too.  Cressy and I toasted each other with sippy cups.  The hell with the nurse.  The hell with the doctor.  If Cressy grew up to a psychopathic murderer with tendencies to eat fried testicles from cabana boys from Tijuana then who was I to criticize her if she was truly happy?  Yea, green colon cannonballs!

Then about a week later I noticed I had bright Kelly green poopsters.  And I had to stop to think about it.  Cressy had bright green toilet twinkles.  I had bright green mudfat balls.  Was it coincidence?  I think not.

It was the bleeping Grape Koolaid!

I looked it up on the Internet.  The dye used in the Koolaid is Blue #5, and red. It turns out that when metabolized in sufficient quantity, the blue dye combines with bile, and forms a brilliant green. The red, absorbing at a different level, is safely jettisoned.  And out comes BRIGHT KELLY GREEN poopsie lalas.  (There's another couple of reasons for green whoopsies.  One is excess eating of green vegetables but that clearly wasn't the case with us.  Haha.  We didn't need no stinking green vegetables.)

I would have told the pediatrician and her pinchy faced nurse about the Grape Koolaid Effect but I decided I wanted a doctor's office where their kaka didn't smell like daffodils.  Or at least if it did look like daffodils then they didn't blame me for it.

Anyway, I'm going to go drink some Grape Koolaid.  Yea, me.