We heal for families.
Best Place to Deliver Your Baby & Best Maternity Care Palm Beach County – St. Mary’s Medical Center
Best ER for Kids & Best Pediatric Hospital Palm Beach County – Palm Beach Children’s Hospital
When injuries and illness progress beyond the family first-aid kit, isn’t it reassuring that St. Mary’s Medical Center and the Palm Beach Children’s Hospital are practically in your backyard? With the highest level of adult and pediatric trauma care, an elite Comprehensive Stroke Center, the largest Level III NICU in Palm Beach County and Palm Beach County’s largest children’s hospital, many families have come to depend on us for more than three generations.
34
We heal for you.
We heal for them.
To learn more about our life-saving technologies
Join our Kids Club for Kids’ Activities and Healthy Events
844-366-9814 • StMarysMC.com
877-836-2927 • PalmBeachChildrensHospital.com
southfloridaparenting.com | JANUARY 2018
Continued from Page 33
there is a high chance he is going to wet the bed.” The idea is to teach the body to deal with any circumstances. “We need to train the brain. We also need to address the bladder, strengthen the sphincter muscles, expand the bladder capacity.” The first two weeks of TheraPee can be challenging as parents turn away from coping methods and rely on Sagie’s system to begin training the child. The alarm pad may wake them up several times a night, he said, but after the first two weeks, it gets much easier. The combination of daily reporting, a star chart, exercises and feedback to address elements at the right time to the right patient helps the child succeed faster, Sagie said. “Every tiny element in this program is based on decades of clinical experience with more than 40,000 children.” Most children begin responding to the TheraPee system in two to six weeks. Complete dryness takes three to five months on average, he said. If parents don’t see progress, Sagie encourages them to contact him personally to evaluate the issue. But “in four months, we should expect to see at least 50 to 70 percent success,” he said. Sagie said TheraPee works because “we have managed to imitate what we are doing in our walk-in clinics, but in a computer program. So the therapist can ask a question, and he’ll just answer by clicking the mouse on the screen and get immediate feedback. “So it’s the closest you can get to interacting with a therapist in the clinic, and you’ll get the exact same elements, the exact same feedback, everything exactly the same as it’s done in the clinic,” he said. “It’s not as easy as preparing some kind of CD with a couple of videos and sending them to everyone, ‘Just do these exercises. It will work.’ It wouldn’t work.” With my daughter, the interactive videos and continuous encouragement made all the difference. Yes, those first few weeks were tough, but once she started recognizing the feeling of a full bladder at night, her progress was amazing. On week six, she had her first solid week of dryness, and at week nine, she started a run of dry nights that lasted more than a month. I went from waking every night at midnight to getting a full night of sleep, and by now, we’ve said goodbye to her “peepee pad” forever. We’re dry at last.