The Marks of Childhood or the Marks of Abuse?

New York Times ^ | May 12, 2009 | PERRI KLASS, M.D.

[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.

[agrace]

The only original story I have (my personal life) is far too depressing to sell no matter how I tell it. I’m striving to make it a success story. The light of hope remains as a beacon.

Reading that reminded me of the movie Pursuit of Happyness - have you seen it? If you have, you know it is incredibly depressing through the entire thing - so much so that my husband YELLED at me for making him watch it, feeling he had been utterly misled! - up until the very end, when his effort is completely validated, as was the time we spent viewing it all. I'm praying for your soon success story.

[NewRomeTacitus]

Thank you both very much. Oddly enough I spent four years at a brokerage firm as computer support. As time went by my employers and I knew we were at polar opposition - they being confidence artists with other people’s money and me being a boy scout. Good guy gets kicked out because he knows too much. Had I been villainous I would have gotten a nice package out of it. But no.

What Will Smith’s character was striving for was, in real life, a path I was very happy to get away from. It was so stressful it induced Bell’s Palsy, a mysterious paralyzing of half my face. Talk about scary!(STROKE! STROKE!) The VA doctor immediately diagnosed it correctly and treatment got my Quasimodo face back to normal in three months. The bells!

You know when your parents said if you keep making that face it might freeze that way? It’s TRUE. Lesson: avoid excessive stress wherever possible. I thank God it hasn’t recurred in eight years.

As for Will, I think he’s a bit overdue for an Academy Award considering all the great roles he’s pulled off. He saved really dog movies on personality alone. It’s a shame that he’s being cast in deeply depressing stuff of late while he obviously shines best as what he is: a celebration of the best in all of us. Perhaps he needs to learn we can’t all be Laurence Olivier.

[christianhomeschoolmommaof3]

I know I caught this article kinda of late for comment. But I gotta saym HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA. When I was newly married (19 years old), I was diagnosed with Graves Disease. I had no idea what that was and it sounded pretty serious to me. I started to cry in the doctors office. He asked me if everything was ok at home. LOL!