I have been trying to regulate Anthony's toilet functions with Miralax, and am finding that it works. I am not sure that I will ever find just the right schedule to use--once a day, once every two days, once every day but at half dose, or perhaps something else entirely--but it is certainly an improvement over other measures we have taken. Perhaps because I don't have it quite right yet, though, Anthony sometimes has gas that smells as though he has diarrhea. That is of course a concern; he is not someone who will necessarily make it to the bathroom if things come too quickly.

Today was such a day when he had the particularly foul smell. Thus, when I had him go to the bathroom after returning from school today, I decided to keep him on the toilet for a while even though he urinated quickly, which is usually a sign that he doesn't need to have a bowel movement. I was eventually rewarded--that seems a funny choice of words, but I will take that reward--when he did have a bowel movement after about twenty minutes.

When I checked him, however, I found the front of the toilet seat with indications that he had touched and wiped some fecal matter. I examined his fingers and confirmed this to be the case. I also noticed stains on his shirt (which is not unusual, as he often wipes food on his clothing), and their smell verified that he had touched that as well. I removed his clothes and took them to the washer after running a bath for him.

We thankfully rarely deal with this particular issue. I was extremely upset the first time it happened, when Anthony was perhaps three years old. At that time, we were of course still fairly new to autistic matters, and so had not imagined something of this nature occurring. We were unable to toilet-train him until he was five years old, so he was still wearing diapers at this time. We were eating dinner, and I noticed Anthony had something that looked like chocolate on his finger tips, and, for a split-second, I thought about licking them to see what it was. I am forever grateful that I paid attention to the worst-case scenario in my head and chose to smell them instead.