Last Wednesday morning my three year old granddaughter woke up screaming and writhing in pain. After several hours of trying to sooth the pain her parents took her to a local emergency room. An ultrasound revealed a type of telescoping bowel known as an intussusception. It took a transfer to a Children’s hospital and surgery finally on Friday to solve a problem that would appear fixed and then return. All the poor girl could do was point to her belly as the location of the pain. My daughter and her husband were bombarded with suspicious questions even though that hospital is my daughter’s employer and she works as a nurse at an outpatient surgical center doing ear, nose, and throat surgeries on children! Not all screaming in an infant is colic, this type of bowel blockage is fairly common is infants.
How times have changed. Same thing happened to us with our three year old daughter. Same diagnosis, same treatment. Never a question of abuse on our part. Of course, back then our family doc would show up at the hospital when he found out we were there and perhaps more importantly it was almost 30 years ago.