Posted on 05/14/2009 9:48:05 AM PDT by nickcarraway
I had just started out in practice when one day I examined a little boy, maybe 4 years old, and discovered around his neck the clear mark of a noose. I asked him what had happened; he said he didn’t know. I asked his mother; she said she didn’t know, but it was the fault of her ex-husband. I had to tell her I was filing a report with the Department of Social Services — the child had clearly suffered an inflicted injury.
My training had included many slide shows about the stigmata of cigarette burns, belt marks and other suspicious injuries, but it was the first time I had been the person alone on the front line, looking at a mark on a child, knowing something was wrong.
My colleague Dr. Lori Legano is a pediatrician who specializes in child abuse at the Frances L. Loeb Child Protection and Development Center at Bellevue Hospital. Part of her job is to testify in court and to speak to judges and juries about a range of marks and bruises and what they indicate.
She has to integrate a pediatrician’s understanding of child development and behavior with a growing body of forensic information about child abuse. Bumps and bruises, after all, can be expected in any young child who is learning to walk. But some injuries are inconsistent with developmental stage: “If you don’t cruise, you don’t bruise.”
So a child who isn’t mobile shouldn’t have those marks, let alone broken bones. And then there are intrinsically suspicious marks, or marks in the wrong places.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Nosy doctors creep me out, too.
The last one was a pediatrician. I decided to try a new doctor, so I brought two of my children to her for a checkup. She had another doctor assisting her. As soon as she heard “homeschooled”, her facial expression revealed her bias. She and the other doctor seemed very suspicious of me. Right away, she asked my sons if they were involved in sports or activities, and they were silent because I’d recently told them we were taking a break for a few months. They’d never taken a break before.
Well, this doctor laid into me about “socialization” in front of them. I explained how heavily involved they’d been with co-ops, classes, meetings, sports, youth clubs, etc., for years. I said we were constantly running all week every week. But, now my father had just passed away after a difficult time, and we needed a break.
But, she listened to nothing and kept hammering on “socialization” and writing furiously in their files. Finally, she started talking with my older son, and she seemed impressed with him. But, she didn’t pay much attention to health/medical issues. I had to point those things out to her. Her big concern was “socialization”.
So, I’m back to looking for a pediatrician.
One time I did hurt my son, by accident. I was trying to get him and his baby sister ready for the pool; it was hot and I was tired; he was running around with his shorts around his knees, not co-operating at all, and I took him by his arms and sat him down hard.
He couldn’t bear weight on his ankle so we ended up not going to the pool but the doctor’s. An x-ray showed a sprain only. The doctor never reported me or showed any hint whatsoever of thinking about it - I suppose because I was a concerned white middle-class suburban mother with no suspicious history and made no attempt to hush my son’s tale.
If I had tried to hush him I know just what he would have said: “Mommy said not to tell you but I want to tell you...”
Our first baby girl, only a couple months old and hardly very mobile (she turned over pretty late), unexpectedly rolled off our bed right in front of her horrified and frozen father and me. Young enough that we practically vomited thinking of what might have happened - she could have easily broken her neck or skull and died rather than just landing on her belly and wailing. Still makes me woozy just typing that out.
Mine too! My oldest's bites swell up like hives, only even bigger - more like silver dollars, poor kid.
I almost broke my hand punching my mean teenage son in the shoulder...I told the bone guy exactly what happened too...
It’s such a pain with it too. When they get too many at once, the entire limb will swell and they break out in hives!
My heart goes out to you.
My daughter was nothing but bumps and bruises when she was a toddler.
At one of her pediatrician visits, the nurse started looking at the marks and grilling us. When the doctor walked it, it was obvious the nurse had “warned” him out the bruises. He spent about ten minutes questioning us about her activities and the various bruises visble.
When he was finished with his questions, he looked over at her asked her to come over, she took about three running steps and hit the cabinet next to him leaving a small bleeding laceration above her eye. He almost freaked out, he jumped up and started turning circles looking for something to put on the wound. My wife calmly looked at the wound, cleaned it with some antiseptic from her purse and put a small bandaide on the wound.
He was all apologies about her getting hurt in his office. We reassured him that it wasn’t his fault, she had no slow speed, she ran into things in our house all the time. He ended up taking care of all three of our children as they came along and never questioned us about bumps or bruises again.
As a young child I was told I had to be harnessed to the bed and escaped at will. When memory serves I and my friends were doing stunt bike stuff sans helmets or pads at six and seven because we all loved Evel Knievel - mid 1960s before BMX. Then there was the pellet gun war games. And dares seeing ambulances on a regular basis.
All that came to a screeching halt for me when I borrowed a girl’s bike and she called out “I think the brake is bad!” Sure enough I came around a corner with a Cadillac bearing down, only little old lady blue hair visible above its wheel. “Break failure - speed through.” No, the old broad turned into my escape route and hit me around 35 mph, sending me flying some fifty feet and hitting the pavement on a curb.
According to the girl who rescued me the old lady kept on traveling. That brave and awesome girl dragged my crushed carcass to her parent’s door and dictated orders, saving my life. Fading in and out I recall that.
“Hey Mike, what does this have to do with child abuse?”
I was abusing myself via adventure while in a foster family that mayhaps didn’t exert enough control. While I got better my mishap had a lot to do with the divorce of the foster family taking care of me, so I was shuffled onto a family where the father believed everything his born daughters said while he never hesitated to translate his disappointment of my not becoming him with never-ending switchings, beltings and such.
Dude wouldn’t let up until the hickory was just chips amongst my blood or he just got tired. Thank God I’m not a scarring type. At 14 I was big enough, retaliated with a kitchen chair and camped on Lookout Mountain. He reported me a runaway and they snagged me coming down for supplies.
Sorry for all that dross. It started as a reply and found there is no justification for child abusers and the hate for what was done to me still burns.
Being better than the abuser without lowering oneself to their level is the goal. Convincing that to one’s soul is a different story.
You would be surprised how common this is. In fact, just about 2 hours ago, I spoke with a frantic mother whose 6 month old son fell off the bed onto a carpeted floor.
If the injuries are consistent with the story and the developmental stage of the child, you USUALLY have nothing to worry about. The only time you have to worry about sunburn is if you get a doctor who is a sunscreen Nazi; otherwise, they’ll probably just tell you to put sunscreen on in the future.
You can at least partially blame this aggressiveness in identifying potential abuse on JCAHO, which accredits healthcare organizations. They are systematically raising the bar in many areas, and abuse is one of them. I have nothing against screening for abuse, but the problem is that it needs to be done by someone TRAINED to do so.
At least you had witnesses, my Mom dropped me in my Crib accidently when I was three (early 90’s) and broke my arm, and the only person to agree with it, was my dad, and I don’t even think he was in the room. Said that she was questioned insanely like she had done it on purpose (If I remember correctly, she said they almost called CPS). When she told me years later, she still seemed a little freaked out.
Also considering the year before this happened, I also took a Tomohawk to my head, which she’s barely told me about (I had to ask why there was a scar above my eye) and seemed recient on giving any more details... I wonder if she got called out worse because of that...
I wish I could introduce you to mine!
She’s nice about the fact that I homeschool, and is not pushy, nosy, or overbearing.
I have to drive 30 minutes to get to her office, but it’s worth it to keep the one pediatrician in San Antonio who’s not a control freak.
“We’re not raising socialists...”
Seriously, THIS is what most folks who complain about “socialization” are complaining about - your kids are not being indoctrinated properly.
Had my 2 year old’s hand firmly in one hand & my 3 year old’s hand firmly in my other hand while waiting in line at the bank one Saturday morning. (I was visibly pregnant w/ #3 at the time.
The 3 year old gets tired of standing & decides to sit down on the floor with out telling me. And since I was holding on to them pretty tightly (I was tired and didn’t want to have to chase them around the bank in my extended form), his elbow popped out of its socket. But he didn’t cry. So I didn’t think there was anything wrong till we picked my now ex up from work an hour later and the 3 year ld said his arm hurt & he couldn’t lift it up.
I cringed when the Dr matter-of-factly popped it back in & showed us how to do it if the elbow popped out again.
That was 25 years ago and I still feel just awful.
I’m sorry for the abuse and the pain it still causes.
That said - you’re quite the storyteller. After enjoying the ambling, modern Mark Twain-esque air of your post (for example “that brave and awesome girl dragged my crushed carcass to her parent’s door and dictated orders, saving my life” and “until the hickory was just chips amongst my blood”), I read your profile page and found a bit more of the same. You should write your memoirs while you have all this extra time, and in that same bemused, reflective, descriptive style.
I’d read it. :)
They hospitalized my six month old daughter because she was ‘undersized’ according to their charts. They fed her gravy and white bread for a week, realized that she was just a small kid, and discharged her...But not before instructing me to stuff her full of peanut butter which they should have known is a huge allergen.
So where do they get off treating my wife like a child, and me as a leper?
The law is one thing, but before they start tossing innuendo and accusations around, they need to know what they are doing. Which means more than reading an article in Psychology Today and thinking they are ready to do God's work.
Listen, every mom’s been there. One of my kids bumped her front teeth on a coffee table, and she got huge and theatrical black eyes and strange bruises around her mouth. It isn’t just docs who look at you dirty, it’s everyone in the grocery store. But if the docs aren’t careful, they’ll be criminally liable.
I went to Urgent Care in Feb. because of a severe cold. One of the questions the intake nurse or P.A. or whatever she was asked me was, “Is there anyone at home that you are afraid of?”
I laughed and said, “No, but there’s someone at home who annoys me quite often.”
And I AM grateful there’s no one here I’m afraid of.
Annoyances I can deal with.
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