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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsAfter 16 months, Justina Pelletier is finally home and SMILING!
This is the teen who got sent to a locked psychiatric ward in MA for 12 months because the ER doctors at Children's Hospital decided (after treating her complications of the flu) that her regular doctors at Tufts University were wrong; her symptoms of mitochondrial disorder were mostly in her head. Her parents didn't agree with the Harvard psychiatrists' new diagnosis. A few days later they tried to switch Justina back to the care of her doctors at Tufts -- and the Harvard/Boston Children's doctors responded by getting the state to take custody away from the parents, and limiting them to supervised visits of an hour a week.
Choosing to have their child treated by metabolic specialists at Tufts, who had successfully treated both her and her sister for years, instead of psychiatrists at Boston Children's was labeled as "medical child abuse."
Over the course of a year, without the medical treatment she needed her condition continued to deteriorate. A couple months ago the judge finally turned her treatment back over to the Tufts physicians, but it's taken this long for the system to fully let go of Justina.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/justina-pelletier-home-article-1.1834382
The 16-year-old West Hartford girl left Massachusetts's state custody Wednesday when she was released from the Connecticut medical facility the state admitted her to in May.
Massachusetts Juvenile Judge Joseph Johnston filed the order allowing Justina to go home Tuesday, concluding a saga that began in February 2013 when a Boston hospital accused the girl's parents of child neglect.
"I'm so happy. I'm so excited, oh, my gosh," Justina told the Boston Globe. "It's such big news."
Earlier this month the teen posted a heartbreaking video to Facebook begging Johnston to let her return home.
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-justina-pelletier-coming-home-0618-20140617,0,5384062.story
Pelletier said Justina has "no feeling at all below her hips" and is confined to a wheelchair.
Pelletier said he plans to pursue legal and legislative action against the Massachusetts officials who took custody of Justina.
"This is just the beginning," Pelletier said.
"There's going to be a Justina law," because hospitals are "taking kids, using DCF to be their little wing man," Pelletier said. "I'm going to be the guy that's going to change that."
Asked whether officials from the Connecticut Department of Children and Families had contacted him, Pelletier said the agency is "not in the picture, never wanted to be in the picture, will never be in the picture ... no more government agencies."
LisaL
(44,982 posts)pnwmom
(109,024 posts)she can't wait to be able to sleep in.
Sounds like any teenager. Glad she finally gets to be one again.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)without the appropriate treatment?
LisaL
(44,982 posts)She had trouble walking on occasion, but she could walk. She could even ice skate some six weeks prior being taken away.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)Paralyzed at 16 years old by the arrogance of the state. No feeling at all below the waist clearly isn't somatoform. Just disastrous.
I hope everyone involved in this in Massachusetts is suitably ashamed and horrified (and sued!)
pnwmom
(109,024 posts)However, the flu had made her very sick -- which can happen with a mitochondrial disorder. An illness like that can make her much sicker than it would a basically healthy child.
So she arrived at the ER in a wheelchair, and they treated her for her flu symptoms. But once they decided she had primarily a psychiatric illness, they barred her from seeing her metabolic specialist (or even their metabolic specialist) and withheld the dietary supplements that her Tufts doctors had prescribed. They waited for psychiatric treatment to make her better. And waited for more than a year, while her hair started to fall out and she got weaker and weaker.
No one knows how much damage 16 months without treatment has done to her, and whether the damage will be permanent or not.
LisaL
(44,982 posts)Despite the fact that she has obvious GI issues (regardless of what her actual diagnosis is).
pnwmom
(109,024 posts)that the girl's bowels needed to be flushed using the port.