Unintended Consequences

Barack Obama writes off unintended consequences like he’d write off a donation to the Salvation Army. At a speech in May he spoke of unintended consequences.

Even your successes will be marked by imperfections and unintended consequences. I guarantee you, there will be times when friends or family urge you to pursue more sensible endeavors with more tangible rewards.

What Barack Obama fails to mention is that those pesky “unintended consequences” effect real people. This is the story of the unintended consequences of trial lawers in America. This is the story Barack Obama doesn’t want you to know.

When I was pregnant with my first child I spent a lot of time choosing a pediatrician. My husband, through his work, was aquainted with one. I interviewed her and then chose her (and apparently her practice) as our pediatrician. I’ll call her Dr. I.

Our first son (I’ll call him “Little D”) became ill as an infant so we spent a lot of time in Dr. I’s office and got to know her and her partners. Little D is fine now. When Little D was about two years old I found out I was pregnant with Little B. I figured, I had been through it before, I was old hat and didn’t even worry about it, except for the normal worries of a pregnant woman.

A few days before Little B was born my OB/Gyn was worried about his size. I’m not a very large woman, so naturally my doctor (I’ll calll him Dr C) sent me for another sonogram and we were told Little B was about 7 pounds. Unfortunately Dr. C went on vacation the day before Little B decided to be born.

The morning of Little B’s birth, I woke up at about 3:00 AM having contractions. Since Dr. C had left for vacation I was redirected to Dr. R. He told me to drink some water and call him back. I did as I was told.The contractions kept getting stronger and my husband told me we had to go, so we called Dr. R back and he said to meet him at the hospital.

By the time we arrived I could barely walk. I was checked in and told I couldn’t have an epidural  because I was too far along (an epidural would have slowed things down.) The next hour was a complete blur, I remember Dr. R shouting at me, but despite that, Little B made it into the world with a full head of black hair!

Our joy was cut short because Little B was having trouble breathing. He was taken to the NICU (Neo-natal ICU). He was 9 pounds, 3 ounces. The poor little guy looked like a sumo wrestler next to the tiny little babies near him. Thankfully, we were able to take him home after a couple days.

But Little B wasn’t quite right. His head was swollen and he shrieked all the time, as if he were in terrible pain. My husband and I did all we could to comfort him but, I have to admit, it was trying. When he was about six weeks old he woke up with a fever. I knew that when a 6 week-old infant has a fever he needs to see a doctor, babies’ immune systems are too immature to fight infection. Unfortunately, doing the right thing turned into an absolute nightmare.

I called our pediatrician’s office and Dr. D was on call. He said to be on the safe side Little B should come in to be examined. I hadn’t showered yet, so my husband took him and we made plans to meet for breakfast when they were finished. We figured it was no big deal. A little while later my husband called and said Dr. D told him to take Little B to the emergency room to be evaluated. I was sort of surprised, because Little B’s temperature was only about 100 degrees, but I understood that with such a small infant we had to make sure he was okay.

I met my husband at the hospital, the one our pediatricians told us to always take our children to because they have the best pediatric unit in the area. They ran blood tests and his red blood cell count was off, signaling injury. This is where things went from bad to unbearable.

They did X-rays of Little B and found he had a skull fracture. He was transferred from the hospital that has the best pediatric unit to the one that doesn’t even have a crib for an infant. Suddenly, my husband and I went from concerned parents to child abusers.

At first they were asking us a lot of questions like “Was there an accident?”, “Did your three year old do it?”, “Has anyone else watched your child?”. My husband wondered out loud if, while he was carrying Little B trying to comfort him, he could have accidentally bumped his head while walking through a doorway at home. I wondered out loud if I bumped his head on his car seat  when he woke up crying one day. Who knew we needed a lawyer?

My husband and I became the top supsects in our pediatricians’ campaign against us. They referred us to Social Services as child abusers. I felt like I was the main character in a Lifetime movie. I was like a living zombie.  Within days I lost the remainder of my “baby weight” and then some. I was wasting away.

The hospital Dr. D checked Little B into had no crib for Little B, so he was put in an adult sized bed. I kept wondering why they had him admitted to the hospital that wasn’t the best in the area in pediatrics. I found out it was because you can’t choose your doctors at that hospital. We were not able to fire our pediatricians while Little B was a patient.

The pediatricians we chose, that had known us for more than three years, staged an all-out  assault against  us. They insisted that Little B have an MRI of his brain, with anesthesia. We called a lawyer friend of ours who told us only to allow it if Little B weren’t anesthesized (as if we would have known that). Luckily, the noise of the MRI put Little B to sleep and they were able to get a good picture of his brain. The best they could come up with was that the skull fracture occurred within the first two weeks of his life, and it was beginning to heal. They also did full-body scans and found  no other signs of abuse.

Our pediatrician’s office seemed to make it their mission to prove that either my husband or I fractured our baby’s skull. They called in specialists, who didn’t have a whole lot to add until Dr. S came along. Dr. S was their specialist, they chose him! He came into the room and gave me a big hug. I don’t know where he is from, but he had a foreign accent. While hugging me he said “You didn’t hurt your baby! You’re  body did! You are so small and he was so big and born so fast.” He went on to say he had seen this many times where he came from and that I should have had a C-section. He was my angel!

The hospital still refused to release Little B (even though his fever was gone by the time he was admitted). The morning after Dr. S came to see us Mrs. Dr. R came to Little  B’s room. I had forgotten about her. She said they decided to disregard Dr. S’s opinion. As it turns out, she is married to the doctor who delivered Little B; Mr. Dr. R.

Mrs. Dr. R looked me in they eye, told me they were disregarding Dr. S (their specialist!) and that someone hurt my baby! All I could do was cry, the nightmare continued and Mrs. Dr. R, who is a partner in our pediatrician’s office and maried to Mr. Dr. R who deliverd Little B, is accusing me of child abuse! I finally started to figure out what they were up to, but why?

In the meantime child services sent an investigator to the hospital and our home. He prepared his report and told us everything was okay. If our children are never reported as child abuse victims again we will be okay. I asked him if he saw Dr. S’s report and he said “Who is Dr. S?” He was never given a copy of Dr. S’s report. He said that our pediatricians maintained their assertion that my husband and I are child abusers, but in his opinion it was unfounded.

Little B is fine, his head healed an he is an absolute delight. But I couldn’t help but wonder why our pediatricians targeted us the way they did. They knew us, rather than go to bat for us they went to bat against us! It didn’t make sense until about two weeks after Little B was released from the hospital. I read in the newspaper that Mr. Dr. R had settled a malpractice suit for 1.2 million dollars. It was for a head injury that happened at birth.

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