Transcription
Our child had been struggling with constipation for five years, and we had seen all the specialists. We had seen our pediatrician. We had seen a pediatric GI specialist, and they had certainly provided some help and some guidance. But their main thing to do was just give him daily Miralax, where things tended to get better, but there just didn't seem to be an end in sight.
When we talked to those specialists, obviously we wanted to get off Miralax and move into a more, you know, natural state, and they just couldn't give us any answer as to when that would happen. And they thought that it was just fine for a child to be on Miralax really in perpetuity, and that just didn't work for us.
So, I had watched one of Dr. Kilbane's webinars on constipation and how her approach was different, trying to get children off of these medicines that really aren't that great for their systems and using more natural processes and helping them get back to health, and that really spoke to me. And then we reached out to the team, learned a little bit more, and everything she shared, it was just amazing. I think one of the quotes that was in her webinar, and I think she shared with us directly, is that kids and people don't have a Miralax deficiency; it is not something that our body needs. And as soon as she said that, I was like, "Yes, that is what we've been hoping for for 5 years, and we haven't gotten there." So special.
And when you would rate your child's overall health and quality of life at the first time that you came to us and through that first visit, where would you see yourself? I would probably put our child maybe at a seven. I mean, overall, we didn't have additional health concerns. It was really just the constipation and how that affected daily life, and then the Miralax and figuring that out, and not being able to hold it, and not really learning toilet learning in the way that we wanted our child to. So I think that really affected not only our child's life, but it affected us because it was always something, I know, top of mind for me to say, "Okay, well, have we gone to the bathroom today? When will we go to the bathroom? We better take a change of clothes. What if something happens?" There was also a lot of, I think, fear on our child's part about going to the bathroom anywhere other than our house. So that was also difficult, just where we could be, you know, at school and things like that.
This started when our child was three, and by the time we came to see Dr. Kilbane, our child was eight. So we're already in school. We're already in an elementary school setting. It was really hard and difficult to kind of build our life around worrying about that all the time.
And what do you think the most valuable part of the treatment process was with Dr. Kilbane? Do you think it was like getting a, I don't want to say diagnosis necessarily, but like, do you think just peeling back those layers was helpful? Do you think the nutrition piece was helpful? The strategy as far as supplementation and nutrition, kind of touch on those for me. I think the overall approach more holistically. Like when we had been working with the GI doctors and our pediatrician, we had asked all the time, "Should we be changing nutrition? Should we be looking at other things?" And they were always like, "Nope, nope, none of those things matter. It's just, you know, stay on Miralax and you'll be fine." We even asked about supplements, "Should our child be taking fiber supplements or anything like that?" And they were like, "No, no, none of that. Don't worry about anything like that." So it was just very refreshing to hear the doctor who said, "Yes, we can get your child off of Miralax, but also here are all the other pieces to help overall wellness." Again, just making our child healthier, making our family healthier, giving an awareness to how those pieces all fit together and all the things that we can use and all the different tools, rather than before, I felt like we were given one tool and that was it. And there wasn't any discussion or understanding of how all the things work together. That was most refreshing to see that approach and to see it work. That was even better.
So now that your child is thriving, how would you rate their health and just overall quality of life along with your entire family? Because I know it impacted everybody. I would say, you know, up into that nine category. So I think, you know, a 10 is probably hard to get if everybody, I don't think anybody is perfect, but I would say, you know, definitely up at that, you know, nine. Let's say 9/10. Definitely thriving, able to, you know, enjoy all the normal type of activities that a child would want to enjoy, going to birthday parties and going to camps and going to school and not having to worry or be scared about, "When will we go to the bathroom? When is the bathroom? Have we gone to the bathroom?" I know the nutritional changes have really helped our family just kind of focus more on just being healthier, so our family is healthier. But I would also say there's a mental health and a stress component. I feel like that has really made a difference where I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off of me personally as a mom. But I also think of our child because it's not something we always have to think about and we always have to ask questions about. And, you know, I think this is something that made our child feel different, and now they don't have to worry about that. So it's just their life has become, for lack of a better word, more normal. So just with optimal health, and we can see that continuing. Our whole family, I think, is in a better place.