Residential? Holistic care?

[Lktoday]

Hi, I’ve posted before so you may be aware that my son is coming up for 12, he’s had chronic constipation from a very young age. Currently on 9 movicol a day, 10ml dulcolax and 10ml senna with sporadic disimpactions. We’re ‘used’ to this game, daily accidents usually at least 3-4 a day, endless streams of dirty laundry that needs soaked & scrubbed before washing, me at my wits end and feeling very frustrated and he, in general, seems not really bothered- it’s part of his life. He doesnt want to try peristeen (the nurse has come round and shown it to him & he ‘tried’ for a while but I found he wasnt doing it properly because he didnt like it). He is under a paediatrician and a paediatric gastroenterologist, had had a colon biopsy to rule out Hirschsprung Disease and is also under a clinical psychologist and has been for some time.

As mentioned, I’m at my wits end and I actually feel what might help is some sort of holistic therapy away from our usual home setting, perhaps with children who have similar problems. Where time can be spent tackling his diet, looking at helpful exercises, given an opportunity to talk about it with like minded people and discuss strategies, that sort of thing. In an environment like that, it might be easier to lock down a beneficial routine and for him to perhaps be more willing to tackle the issue? Does anyone know of such a thing? I’ve looked online and cant find anything obvious.

[Robinia]

I think it’s an amazing idea, hopefully someone will arrange one. It’s an age where they need to know there are others tackling the same issue

[Louloubelle23]

Hi there, my daughter spent 3 weeks (came home weekends) at a place called Burseldon House in Southampton. It’s part of the hospital and run by my daughters Paediatrician. They take about 12 children at a time from memory, but the kids have all sorts of problems, not just bowel issues. They don’t discuss what each other have as it’s private so can’t really discuss with each other.

It’s not quite what you describe as they didn’t do exercises or anything like that. If fact with my daughter they didn’t do anything different from what we do at home but it did help firm up her routine and she also got to see a child psychologist which helped to identify how anxious she was. Amazingly she didn’t have any accidents the whole time she was there but has relapsed since.

That said, every child is different and they apparently have a high success rate so it might be worth looking into. My daughter loved it there, it’s a real family/homely atmosphere and the nurses are lovely.

I think they do take people from further a field as there was someone there from Jersey, but I know they waited a long time to get in where as we only waited a month.

Might be worth looking into.

Good luck 🙂