My daughter is going to kill me for sharing this…
However, in the spirit of helping others…
My name is Michele and I used to parent a child who wet her bed well after she was potty trained.
I silently cursed having to change soaked bed sheets in the middle of the night, and then again in the morning.
I was peeved that my school-aged child couldn’t control her bladder.
I worried that she would be forced to have surgery.
I wondered what I was doing wrong.
Then, after months of nagging suspicions and misdiagnosis after
misdiagnosis, we finally met a doctor with the patience of a saint and the smarts of a wise owl.
The correct diagnosis: My daughter’s problem with going No. 1 was direct result of her not being able to go No. 2.
After a lengthy examination and a simple X-ray, the doctor determined that constipation was to blame for my daughter’s bladder issues.
So, why did I wait until now to reveal this TMI, and potentially have my daughter hate me years down the road when she discovers the wonders of Google?
Last week, a new report went public sharing the life-changing information we received, and it is my fervent wish that the research gives hope to parents of not-so young bed-wetters.
The study, published in the journal Urology, found that many young children and adolescents, who sought treatment for bed-wetting, were in fact quite able to control their bladders. The real issue: all of them had large amounts of stool in their rectums. Fortunately, after laxative therapy treatment, 83 percent of the study participants were cured of their bed-wetting problems within three months.
“Parents try all sorts of things to treat bed-wetting — from alarms to restricting liquids,” Dr. Steve J. Hodges, assistant professor of urology at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, wrote in the study. “In many children, the reason they don’t work is that constipation is the problem.”
Hodges went on to note that the importance of diagnosing this condition cannot be overstated.
“Children might be subjected to unnecessary surgery and the side effects of medications,” Hodges said. “We challenge physicians considering medications or surgery as a treatment for bed-wetting to obtain an X-ray or ultrasound first.”
I for one hope that doctors take the study’s findings to heart, and if they don’t, then I really hope that parents will be their child’s most ardent advocate and actively pursue the X-ray route. In the end it could spare you and your child from years of unwanted and unnecessary torture.
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