Another Munchausen by Proxy Mom (MI)
Maggie
Boy taken from mom improving - Prosecutors: Boy's surgeries unneeded
Friday, August 3, 2001
By Ken Palmer
Pontiac - A Flint boy who was taken from his mother last month after doctors
suspected she put him through unnecessary tests and surgeries is improving in
foster care, court officials said.
The boy "is doing wonderfully," Daniel Bagdade, his court-appointed guardian,
told a referee Thursday in Oakland County Probate Court. "He's opening up a lot
about what is happening to him."
Prosecutors say the boy, 13, might have endured more than 30 surgeries, many of
them unnecessary, because his mother insisted he was ill with bowel disorders
or other ailments.
Experts are trying to determine if the woman suffers from Munchausen Syndrome
by Proxy, a rare psychiatric condition in which a caregiver feigns or induces
illness in a child.
Karla Mallett, a family court referee who ordered the boy into temporary foster
care last month, continued a preliminary hearing until Sept. 12 so attorneys
can get more medical and educational records.
Bagdade said the boy looks better since going into foster care and knows he is
not sick.
"I'm an attorney, not a doctor, but he sure looks fine to me," Bagdade said
after the hearing.
Children's Protective Services workers were called after the woman took her son
to St. Joseph Mercy Hospital on May 30 and insisted he be admitted for bowel
disorders, according to a neglect petition filed in family court.
Doctors performed upper and lower endoscopy and found no evidence of bowel
problems, but the woman insisted her son get a feeding tube to keep him from
dying, the petition says.
The woman claimed her son had as many as 20 bloody stools a day and was passing
abnormally large amounts of urine, neither of which was verified, hospital
staff said.
The boy was moved into pediatric intensive care on June 2, but only because
doctors suspected his mother's behavior was affecting his well-being.
The woman failed to tell doctors that her son had been through colonoscopy and
endoscopy procedures at other hospitals, including Hurley Medical Center, where
no problems were found.
The boy also had been seen at Genesys Health Systems, the University of
Michigan and St. Joseph, along with facilities in Texas, where she had lived
until recently, the petition says.
A similar case occurred last year, when a LakeVille mother pleaded guilty to
attempted child abuse for subjecting her daughter to numerous unnecessary
medical tests, shots and doctor's visits.
In October, a Lapeer Circuit Court judge ordered Lisa Kremkow to pay nearly
$300,000 in restitution to two insurance companies during her 18-month
probation period.
Kremkow first took her daughter to an urgent care facility when the girl was 2
weeks old and continued to seek help for various ailments that could not be
verified.
School and health professionals began to grow suspicious of Kremkow when she
exaggerated her daughter's symptoms after a 1997 school bus accident.
The intent of most people with the condition is not to hurt the child, but to
get attention for themselves, said Dr. Cem Demirci, a pediatrician at Hurley
Medical Center.
"This is mostly done by mothers and usually it is health-care related people,"
he said.
"They're making the child sick to the point to get attention, but not passing
the limit to hurt the child."
In one case, doctors at Hurley caught a mother on videotape suffocating her
child with a pillow to produce symptoms of apnea, he said. She could be seen
watching medical monitors to determine when to stop.
It's often up to doctors to pick up on unusual symptoms and detect the abuse.
Doctors will often admit a child into the hospital to more closely watch their
condition.
"When you get suspicious, you need to remove the child for awhile and when you
remove the parent, the symptoms should go away," Demirci said.
In the Oakland County case, nurses said the mother became agitated with
hospital staff for failing to address her son's medical needs, according to the
petition. The woman said she was suing a hospital in Texas, calling a lawyer
and filing bankruptcy.
A doctor said the woman told him her son had Crohn's disease, and suggested he
was refusing to make a diagnosis because "of her political support of
Democrats," the petition said.
Dr. Annamarie Church, an expert on Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy and medical
director of child protection teams at St. Joseph Mercy and Henry Ford Hospital,
said she is "strongly suspicious" the boy was suffering from pediatric
condition falsification, a form of child abuse, and recommended he be separated
from his mother, the petition says.
The boy attended the hearing on Thursday, sitting with a Texas man the boy
considered to be his father, according to the boy's attorney.
An attorney for the mother objected that foster care workers had allowed the
man to visit the boy without a court order. The mother claims another man,
whose whereabouts are unknown, is the boy's father, her lawyer said.
Mallett said she'll allowed telephone visits between the man and the boy for
now. The mother also has visitation with her son.
Journal staff writer Jeremy W. Steele contributed to this report. Ken Palmer
covers the judicial system. He can be reached at (810) 766-6313.
Maggie
"You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind
word alone."--Al Capone.
Maggie
>wrote:
>
>>Children's Protective Services workers were called after the woman took
>her son
>>to St. Joseph Mercy Hospital on May 30 and insisted he be admitted for
>bowel
>>disorders, according to a neglect petition filed in family court.
>>
>>Doctors performed upper and lower endoscopy and found no evidence of bowel
>>problems, but the woman insisted her son get a feeding tube to keep him
>from
>>dying, the petition says.
>>
>>The woman claimed her son had as many as 20 bloody stools a day and was
>passing
>>abnormally large amounts of urine, neither of which was verified, hospital
>>staff said.
>
> Since when are hospitals so compliant to what a parent asks for?
>My son actually does have a digestive disorder and the hospital is
>quite hesitant to do anything more than an upper GI. They have yet to
>use an endoscope on him despite the family doctor suggesting it.
***But are *you* asking for that endoscope? I'd bet that if you were, and you
were explaining in detail why you think he needs it (say, he cries constantly,
has gas and can't hold anything on his stomach), they'd do one in a heartbeat.
Hospitals typically get in more trouble for not doing procedures than for doing
them and MbP moms know how to manipulate medical professionals to get what they
want.