Our 16 Year Old’s Struggle With Encopresis Is Finally Over!!

by | Feb 13, 2017 | Encopresis, Special Needs

Evan is 16 years old and has dup15q syn­drome which includes devel­op­men­tal delays and autism.  He has been strug­gling with con­sti­pa­tion and enco­pore­sis his whole life.  This has con­sumed our lives — dai­ly records of when he went the bath­room, how long it has been since he went, etc…this was our life and we were exhaust­ed.  Evan was at the point that he was going once a week with an ene­ma and doing this with a 16 year old was not an easy task.  We had trav­eled to numer­ous GI spe­cial­ists.  Evan had botox in Decem­ber and we went away for the hol­i­day.  After the hol­i­day, he was a mess.  Com­plete­ly backed up and no bow­el move­ment in 3 weeks, even an ene­ma was not work­ing.  We went to the ER and he was admit­ted for a 3 day clean out.

My hus­band and I were get­ting very dis­cour­aged about the thought of deal­ing with this for­ev­er — a 16 year old in pull ups.  It lim­its who will work with him and where he can get a job — it impacts every aspect of his life and in turn ours.  We felt like we had tried every­thing and this was just going to be our life.  Then I saw some­one post­ed a link to a sem­i­nar by Dr. Daum.  So, I clicked on it and imme­di­ate­ly knew this was a sign, that there is still hope.

I sent an email to Dr. Daum and the nurse got right back to me and said Dr. Daum thinks he can help and wants to talk.  I start­ed to well up know­ing that there might still be hope.  Our con­ver­sa­tion with Dr. Daum was very can­did and our fam­i­ly was ful­ly on board to try this.  Keep in mind we have two oth­er typ­i­cal chil­dren so we knew this would take a vil­lage, but this was our top priority.

We start­ed the pro­gram and I won’t get into all of the details but after 2 days he was acci­dent free both day and night and hav­ing a bow­el move­ment dai­ly.  He has nev­er had a dai­ly bow­el move­ment in his entire life.  Evan was also in under­wear both day and night with no acci­dents.  This was hard for any­one to believe.  We kept him home from school for just over a week to focus on this pro­gram.  Evan was exceed­ing any expec­ta­tions we could ever imag­ine.  This was a dream come true.

The next hur­dle was school — we sent Evan back to school and he was stay­ing dry at school but not going at all but would go when he came home.  On the fourth day back I received a text mes­sage from his teacher — Evan had a bow­el move­ment in the toi­let on his own!  I also received an email from the assis­tant prin­ci­pal!  Evan has nev­er, in his entire life, had a bow­el move­ment in the toi­let at school.  This is at the two week mark of Dr. Daum’s program.

We are still in fre­quent con­tact with Dr. Daum on the phone and know there may be bumps in the road as we con­tin­ue.  To have some­one there to keep you in check — “you can do this, you are doing great, don’t cave in”, etc.…has been just what we need­ed and the most impor­tant and unique aspect of this pro­gram.  His approach from a big pic­ture aspect is some­thing no one else does and it works!  I want to let oth­er par­ents know — I have a 16 year old spe­cial needs child who is sig­nif­i­cant­ly impaired and if you told me when we start­ed with Dr. Daum that in two weeks he would be in under­wear, no acci­dents day or night and hav­ing dai­ly bow­el move­ments, I would nev­er believe that would be pos­si­ble.  But I am so thank­ful for Dr. Daum’s guid­ance as that is exact­ly where Evan is today!  Thank you Dr. Daum for chang­ing all of our lives!
Evan’s Par­ents
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