My 4 year old has always had very regular bowel habits. Last Friday afternoon I went in to wipe his tush and found the toilet paper covered in a dark red blood. I about had a heart attack.

It looked like a regular long poop with a plop of blood added at the end. The toilet water looked as if red food coloring had been squeezed into it. It looked like the blood also coated the last little bit of stool in the toilet.

I ran to the phone called his doctor and after him calming me down, he had me look at my son & felt that it was an anal fissure. I was very skeptical about this because my son had NO PAIN. I know a little about these & they usually hurt.

On Saturday morning he had another BM. Same thing again, he just sat on the pot & went like normal...no straining & no pain but quite a bit of blood. Again I called the doctor, was told to take him to the ER. My husband didn't really want to do that because my son is acting normal. So we decide to take the wait & watch approach.

On Sunday morning another BM (I told you, he's very regular) this time it was MUCH LESS blood. The water was barely colored & only the last 2" had little dots or blood in it. Every now & then he compains about a tummy ache, like when he coughs. So I called the children's ER & they made me feel stupid for hesitating to come in. So we drop the older 2 boys off at a relatives & head to the ER.

Let me make a VERY LONG story short...a resident came in, looked at him, evaluated him said he didn't have hemmroids he looked health, maybe a blood test to make sure his counts were okay. The pediatritian on call came in NEVER EVEN TOUCHED MY SON & ruled in constipation!!! :blob_fire Then went on to say it could be a polyp that ruptured, a food alergy, Meckel's, or we may never know what caused it. He went on to make us feel like we were waisting his time. He ticked me off. I will be following up with my doctor on Wednesday. They did do blood work & say his counts were "normal" but to have my doctor call them to get the results.

Today no visible blood in his poop but it is kind of a light rust color.

If you have read this far, THANK YOU, I want to know if anyone out there has had experience with this? He's my baby & it freaks me out to think he may have somthing wrong.

Thanks for helping, Cindy

aww i am sorry, that must of been so scarry!

I dont have any experiance with this but i would keep pushing the doc's for answers.. find out exactly what caused it and dont let up till you do.. I know its not nice exposing your boy to tests but when there is blood, i think it woudl be important to know what casued it, especially in someone so young who cant properly convey all symptoms and such..

Dont let that dr at the hosptial make you feel like an idiot you have absolutly every right to be concerned, in fact, id worry if you wernt!

Please keep us posted on your dr appoint on wednesday, i pray it goes well and you get some answers! :)

That is awful. Passing blood is never good. I think a fissure you don't pass that much blood and how could they say constipation he is regular,my daughter has constipation issues she used to go maybe once every 4-5 days. I would speak with your dr again. It just doesn't seem right,The dr can usually see a fissure unless it is inside and it is usually bright red streaks not dark.
Hope this helps.

I really do think at the very least,his ped should refer him to a GI,a ped GI doc just for an eval.something had to be actively bleeding in there in order for it to actually show up,you know what i mean?it could have just been a one time episode but you really should make certain that there isn't something further up in the colon.this would most likely have to be much further down from the stomach area or the blood would have looked very very dark like coffee ground consistancy?you just need to find the source.if anything is or was actively bleeding,it also can open a source for infection in there too,you just want to be thorough,and sure.unless there is something like a wound that you can viually see from the outside,the next step would be to look at the inside.i know it doesn't sound real pleasent but with our kids,you just really need to know what is causing this or caused it to occur.

honestly,after what we went thru with our son(kind of suprise liver failure) and didn't even know he actually had anything wrong,you just have no way of really knowing what in the heck is going on in any ones body til you take a good look in there.i am in no way saying this is going on with your son,just using it as an example.i too was found to have all kinds of strange and ***arre things going on inside me that i never knew existed til i was 40years old(these were all congenital).this could be just a tiny polyp or something similar that can be removed.but you do need to know for sure,thats all i am trying to really say here.just having any blood show up anywhere its not supposed to actually be needs further evaluation.it really appears that hospital dropped the ball here with your son.i do wish you luck and hopefully this was just kind of a flukey type of thing.please keep us posted as to how things are going.marcia

So, it's happened again. 2 more times. The end of June my little guy had blood come out at the end of his bm. I called my doctor, he wanted to see my son. He looked inside his bum and said "maybe" the part right inside his rectum was narrower then most people and that it gets torn from the force of his bm. How does that sound to anyone? At that time he said he didn't think it was anything to worry about and that he'd just keep an eye on him if he were his son.

ANYONE...have you ever heard of this kind of thing???? On Monday when my little guy was on the toilet I heard him say "oh no, blood again, oh it's just pink pee" as soon as I go into look he says "No doctor mommy, I'm scared of the doctor!" that just about broke my heart.

I have to say, these last two episodes had much less blood then the one in February but it's blood! I called my doctor's office right away. I relayed that I wanted a referral to a Ped GI asap. Even if this is "nothing" I need to know 100% that I've done everything for my son. He is my baby. I'm so worried.

PLEASE REPLY IF YOU'VE EVER HAD THIS EXPERIENCE BEFORE. THANKS, Sam

Hi,

I wanted to share my personal experience. I have had anal fissures on and off for years. What you are describing sounds very similar to my experience with them. For me the more bleeding I have the less painful they are, not to be gross, but I think the blood actually acts as a lubricant sometimes. Once the fissures are present I have to be very careful what I eat, no high acid foods (anything with tomatoes, oranges, etc), or "rough" foods (like popcorn, corn). The healing takes much longer if I am not careful of foods. Early on, before I discovered which foods to cut out, it took a long time to heal (about a month and a half) and was much more painful.

I hope this helps some for you. I would still suggest you take him to the GI, to be sure about what is happening.

Mary

I just thought about something else. It is possible to have these symptoms as part of Celiac Disease or Gluten Sensitivity. GS is very under diagnosed and dismissed right out by some, so it may be hard to get the dr. to agree to testing. You might want to do a little digging and see if that might fit.

Mary, thank you for the reply. Are fissures internal? He's been looked at down there and doctor said no fissure. He says he's just narrower then most.? and that it's inside that it is coming from. I've been thinking maybe food allergy but he's pretty picky so he doesn't usually try new foods. After the last time I started keeping a poo diary but after a couple of weeks stopped since once again it had seemed like an isolated incident. Now I can't find my notebook :o I'm keeping a new one now.

Thanks again for sharing.

Yes, fissures can be internal. If his are fissures and they are like mine, they could easily be missed. Mine were at first. Instead of having a large tear, I had tons of very small tears, most of which were internal.

I would not discount fissures too quickly, especially since they have already stated he is narrow. This wouldn't be the case with him, but for me I was able to finally trace the cause to a combination of hormones and certain foods. It was almost like an allergy but only at certain times of the month (not my period, though.) So I am wondering if it could be a food allergy?