To think nappies should be given out on the NHS for bedwetting

[Nymeria01]

DS1 is 14 and still wets his bed. We have had a great deal of support from the NHS (alarms, clinic and medication) all of which I am great full for. However the fact is that none of them work and he still has to wear drynites otherwise his sleeping is messed up. I have talked about this on MN before and have had some great responses informing me that you can get nappies on prescription at his age. I raised this with the GP and he said its not possible.

He said that nappies weren't available for nocturnal enuresis as their are a range of treatments that can help stop it. To his credit he explained that the treatments I listed above (alarms ext) were considered a budget priority as oppose to nappies. I understand that however I feel that as so few children would nappies (and its only one per night) it could be worked in.

Oh fgs - so was 'piss off' if you don't agree with me

Honestly.

Zombie is late to the thread, but what Fiddler said. There are children and adults for whom nappies are absolutely essential. Yet they are limited to something like 4 per day which is paltry for someone who may be unable to communicate their need for a toilet and who are doubly incontinent. Being left in their own waste can be life threatening.

YABU.

www.nhs.uk/chq/Pages/can-i-get-incontinence-products-on-the-nhs.aspx?CategoryID=68&SubCategoryID=154

Hope this article helps.

Piss off was an instruction. If I wanted to be patronizing I would have said there's a dear pop along now it's way past your bed time

op how much are they costing you weekly?

Reported FM

Why feel the need to tell me that?

I reported you ages ago but did not feel the need to advertise the fact.

Sigh.

BOT (Back On Topic) please.

ilocechristmas between £3-5 per week depending on offers.

Sorry Zombie & OP.

Come on now folks, play nicely

Nymeria another vote for asking the enuresis clinic for local guidelines

if your child is asthmatic you're told to consult your doctor before you treat and they usually prescribe treatment if its the first time you have had worms or you have very young children who need treatment the doctor will most likely prescribe instead of just recommending a treatment when dh lost his job and we were waiting for benefits i struggled with hay fever and they prescribed my loratadine even though i usually buy it they said buy food you're entitled to it free anyway when i was younger i knew of a gentleman who got bread and beans on prescription because he refused to eat but was religious about taking "doctors orders" (yes that is true whether or not it was an actual prescription or the staff doing a favor he ate the food that he was "prescribed")

nappies for a 14 year old should be a given but i also believe tampons and sanitary towels be available on the NHS for those in need

i always wonder if i should be adding nappies and sanitary products to the food bank collections

OP I get night time pull ups on the NHS for my DC
What makes the difference in my area is diagnosis. They have to have a formal diagnosis of something
Its bollocks really and only a way to keep the numbers down, the challenge is the same with or without a diagnosis
Does your DC have a diagnosis of anything which could help?

Is there any other medication he can try? My little brother wasn't dry until year 7 at night. I remember mum giving him a tablet every evening and I know he changed meds in year 5 (he got a day off school and I was v jealous, hence remembering! ) so there must be more than one.

He has just been diagnosed as coeliac. The GP has told me that its unlikely that this and the bedwetting are not linked.

It's a difficult decision. I'd love an NHS that could afford this, and I'd pay more tax (to a point) to be part of it.

But not everything can be funded, and I think that when you have a child, you accept that there will be some unexpected costs involved.
I would definitely like to see nappies covered for a child on a family means tested basis. But if you can afford them, then I think it is right it falls to the parent.

That's an general opinion OP, I am sympathetic to you, and your son.

They should definitely be on prescription past the age when bedwetting is normal. A child or young person who is bedwetting every night could be running up a bill for pads, mattress protectors or pull ups of £10-30 per month, plus the cost of laundry for any leaks. That's a lot if you're budget is already stretched until it snaps.

After all this time I would have thought they would be able to give you some real information as to why this is happening to your son. Either he has a diagnosed medical condition or he has developed a habit that it should be possible to change.

If he has a diagnosed medical condition you should be toldvwhatvitbis, how it can be treated and what the prognosis is. As part of his treatment it would be reasonable to provide nappies while they are needed.

If they cannot diagnose a medical condition and consider it to be a habit, you should have advice on ways you can re-condition his behaviour-effectively train him to be dry at night. In this situation it can't be expected that you get nappies on prescription.

I am sorry you and your son have this to cope with OP, it is not pleasant and must upset him a great deal.

Try and work with the clinic and your GP . If he does not have a medical condition it is really worth plugging away with all the techniques at your disposal to get him dry. You don't want him to go into early adulthood with this condition if it can be prevented.

Have you tried leaving the nappies off, the unpleasantness of a wet bed will wake him up and change the messages to his brain. I think the new nappies are one of the reasons so many children find it hard to get dry at night. Dry nites are making a lot of money out of this distress.

Quite, NameChanger.

I take enough drugs to make me rattle in order to be able to stay active and mobile and prevent further loss of mobilty. They're not going to save my life, though.

I am sure that the op has tried everything under the sun to get her son dry. applefallinffromatree advice is absolutely clueless. It must feel wretched for any 14 year old to be in nappies.

The op son is almost an adult. Most 14 year olds a Gilick competent. They can make life changing decisions about medical care without their parents knowledge. In fact a 14 year old could go to see a consultant without parent in the room if he chose. A young adult chooses the approach to bed wetting,

I feel that teenager should get free nappies for bedwetting. At that age it is no longer a parenting issue. I doubt it would make any dent in the nhs budget.

I didn't mean to come across harsh earlier, part of my message was deleted.
I do wonder why the NHS would provide nappies but not certain life saving drugs though.

Because certain "life saving" drugs only actually prolong life, in some people, by a few months, for the price of a house. It's an emotive issue.

And doesn't help the OP's DS with his utterly devastating to him problem and the OP with budgeting for it.

Coeliacs disease doesn't make a child wet the bed. I understand reluctance to give out pads to those who are not disabled because it poses a risk of reliance and a child will not necessarily become conditioned to stop wetting the bed.

The help you've been given is enough, imo. It will take time and patience, of course, but conditioning is the best thing you can do unless your child suffers from something else complicating matters.

From what I know, bedwetting is to be ignored. Change the sheets and say nothing, treat a child as though it never happened and make sure if they say something that it is NOT a problem, not an issue, it's nothing to take care of.

Stock up on mattress protectors and sheets.

If you think this isn't enough, then you need to show that there's more to it than typical childhood aneruesis (sp?)