Living or Dying with Cystic Fibrosis, The Parents Fight for Life, The State Enforces Death.
Our baby boy was born January 2005 and for just a few short moments everything was perfect. The first tragedy stuck after only a few happy hours. It was discovered our son had a bowel obstruction and would require surgery immediately. After hours a pacing the surgeon finally came to speak with us. The bowel wasn?t obstructed, only twisted and was a simply untwisted. At last we can breath again. We can start our life now with a bright shining baby boy. Our son looked incredibly well for a 2 day old after a major surgery. These happy moments lasted a little longer than the first time, almost an entire day before we were once again hit with tragic news. Our son had a serious infection in his bowels at the sight of the twist. Surgery would again have to be performed immediately. Here we are again, same waiting room, pacing the same circle. Once again the surgeon comes out to give the news, there was a slight perforation in his bowels, and a small section was cut out. As a precaution the entire length of his bowels was examined for any more perforations or deformities. Things will be scary for a while. Our son will have a colostomy bag while his insides heal from the infection. But he is showing signs of recovery. We can breath once again. Recovery is slow, painfully slow. After many sleepless nights the infection is cleared and we can now perform the sugary to reattach his bowels. The surgery is a success. Now we just have to wait literally for our son to poop showing the bottom portion of his bowels are functioning correctly.
We can breath again. Just one small step to go and our child will finally be home. Our life with our child will finally begin now only a few months late. Time passes and passes the bowels function but very poorly. We now begin the systematic process of test, after test, after test. One tragic day I get the call from the doctor in NICU, they have found a problem. He informs me our son has Cystic Fibrosis, I have no idea what it is but I know its bad. It will not be easy but we will make it. We educate ourselves and now that we know what the problem is we know how to live with it. We learn to emotionally handle the issue that our son will have a limited lifespan. Our son is given a pharmacy of medications and slowly comes a bit closer to coming home. Yes finally we can breath. Just a few more months pass, along with a few scary infections, but his day has finally come. After a total of 5 ½ months our son is actually coming home. Now due to the fact that he will not eat anything orally our son is required to have a G-tube, a tube that passes into his stomach through a small hole in the abdomen. We are given detailed instructions on his medications and his feedings. We are told to work with him on the feedings try to get him to orally feed. But this is it, yes now we can actually breathe.
Finally at home with his mother, brother and sisters our son really begins to shine. Never has anyone ever seen a happier child. If there were bright center of the earth from which all joy radiated from it would be our son. Wherever I am all I have to do is think of his laugh and all the problems of the world disappear. Living with cystic fibrosis is not an easy task. You have breathing treatments to keep his lungs clear from infections. Daily medicines for reflux, lots of vitamins and of course the essential enzymes to break down his food. Watching carefully everything that he eats, as his ultra high calorie diet is critical to his heath. It?s difficult at first but my wife and me get into the routine. Of course we now have turned into germ freaks. Keeping our sons lungs healthy is vital to his survival and even a cold can turn into a devastating infection. In our house if you even cough you are sent to wash your hands and you are immediately banished from the baby. Life is moving along, and yes we are making it and yes we are breathing. We begin the process of slowly weaning him off his tube feeds and take his food orally. Along with all our regular challenges of cystic fibrosis, we face this feeding challenge easily and come out on top. He takes all his required food from his bottle. Lots of patience and lots of love can do almost anything. Yes we are still breathing, and living a relatively normal life.
Then we have our first hospital stay for our son not gaining enough weight. Our son?s pulomonologist Dr David Thomas checks us into Our Lady of the Lake hospital to address the issue. In the hospital they seem to do everything just as we do at the house. Well other that the fact that we don?t let him cry and cry for hours waiting for food. Yes we are here for weight gain and we cannot get food for our child. It eventually gets so bad we go get his formula from the house and ask the staff for a case of water. The week passes and nothing changes so we are simple sent home with the orders of increasing his enzymes with each feeding. Here we are at home again and actually breathing once more.
The enzyme adjustment works and it works great. Our home health nurses set a goal for him to gain one pound in one month. We hit that goal in two weeks. The worse may be over we are now breathing and thriving.
The Unfortunate Turn of Events
Now is when all the real tragedy begins, not with our son?s condition but with the entrance of Child Protection Services into our lives. Rebecca Taylor enters our home stating that we refuse to follow doctor?s orders and put our child on a continuous night feed. We had thought that having him take all his formula orally was progress. We had even discussed this with his doctors we told them how much he drinks orally and they seemed pleased. We asked why to put him on a night feed and were told, hey its great he gets all his food and you don?t have to wake up to feed him. Sorry but that?s ok I would much rather wake up that risk my son strangling himself with a feeding tube. We of course tell Rebecca Taylor all of this but are apparently made our to be liars. So we go to our son?s pediatrician just to get a note saying taking off the overnight feed was acceptable. I make a call to Rebecca Taylor and she does everything but actually call me a liar, not even believing I actually got a note stating this. Now that I think about it she never even came to get her copy of the note. She was to busy and said our child was ?more safer? than the other cases she had to attend to. I have to be honest our house was a bit cluttered. It was especially cluttered because my wife had an abscess tooth and had just undergone oral surgery to have the tooth removed. Nothing major of course, our floor needed sweeping, dishes were left out, and some clothes were piled in the corner waiting to be washed. We felt absolutely no threat by Rebecca Taylor or child protection services, we felt this was just a mistake and it was all cleared up now. Yes its ok to breath now.
Well as I stated earlier, our son was gaining weight at a wonderful rate when we went to our follow up appointment with Dr Thomas. The goal of gaining one pound of weight in a month was met after only two weeks. But our son is hospitalized again for poor weight gain and ?failure to thrive?. Of course all our attempts to point this out to Dr Thomas we only get some generic answer from him ?His weight as plataued?. We persisted for a while to argue with Dr. Thomas for a bit about all the weight gain. But Dr. Thomas insisted we were not listening to him. Even asked how much weight he should be gaining. The answer we got was he should be getting 20 grams a day of weight gain. Well we couldn?t argue with that, and put our trust in with the doctor. Thus began a week of torture for us and for our son. He was not just in the hospital, but also in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, and let me add not a very good one at that. Arm taped up with a splint and IV hookup to where he couldn?t even move it. Such a shame as he was really getting the hang of that arm, pulling peoples hair, drinking his bottle and such. What was the IV for? A flush, apparently if you have the IV hookup and don?t use it you need to flush it every now and then. Sorry but I do think my son has been cut and poked enough in this life that we would have preferred not to have a useless IV in his arm. Well after we get over our initial aggravation of all of this we decide to do some math and calculate out how many grams a day of weight our son has been gaining over the past two weeks. We do this and come up with about 22 grams a day. So we talk to Dr. Thomas with this information and he tells us now our son needs to gain 30 grams a day. Does my son need to gain more weight a day because my wife and I can do third grade math? There were many more indicants like this in the hospital with Dr. Thomas during the week. He would tell us one thing then give his nurses orders for something completely different. When confronted about it now he would rudely state ?I?m not discussing it?. But finally we get discharged and I think maybe we can actually breath again. All we have left is a short meeting with Dr. Thomas and we can go. But guess whom we see at the meeting, none other than Rebecca Taylor our friendly neighborhood Child Protection Services caseworker. Suddenly our entire hospital visit makes complete since now. We were apparently already convicted of child abuse or neglect. This explains why the entire hospital staff seemed so rude with us. This is why Dr. Thomas didn?t have to be honest and tell the truth to us about anything. But we do get through the meeting, and Dr. Thomas? diagnosis of our son is that he now has an eating disorder. So he has ordered us to change our entire feeding schedule. His great spike in weight the two weeks before didn?t happen. Well we thought that nasty part of our lives was over, no more Rebecca Taylor, and because of his rude and crude treatment no more Dr. Thomas. We can breath and we are now shopping for a new pulomonologist that we can trust.
Time passes and we go visit our son?s pediatrician about getting new pulomonologist on Monday. He is a great pediatrician and says its no problem, and some great doctors are in the area due the hurricane. So on Wednesday I hunt down a new pulomonologist and even make the appointment. Thursday was Dr. Thomas? appointment I decide not to even bother calling to cancel or inform him we are leaving his horrible services. So on Thursday his office calls about missing the appointment and I just blow them off saying I had an emergency at work. They get rude and ask about rescheduling, so I let them know then, don?t bother we are getting a new doctor. Friday is here and I get a frantic message from my wife ?They are here to take our son?.
THEY TOOK MY SICK SON WITH CYSTIC FIBROSIS!!!!!!
You cannot imagine the feelings we both felt that day. But taking a child with a condition such as Cystic Fibrosis really scared me beyond belief. It was stated on the instant order signed by a judge that he was take due to medicinal neglect. Our entire lives solely revolve around our son, his feeding schedule, and his medicine. How in the world could this be medicinal neglect? We missed a doctor?s appointment. Yes that?s right we missed the doctors appointment. Now I already know what your thinking, ?There must be something else?, "They wouldn't do that unless they had a reason to", "They only do that for the protection of the children", "The parents must not have been taking care of him", "The parents must be abusive or on drugs, or alcoholics, or something." Well if your thinking any of the above things, I can't say I blame you, I used to think the exact same thing. We have heard stories similar to ours and thought the parents MUST have done something wrong. Well now we know the truth, and hopefully you do to.
My wife attempted to tell Rebecca Taylor that we had another appointment with a new pulomonologist. But all Rebecca Taylor could do was ask the police officer to get my wife to hurry up and gather his things. So my son was gone Friday before I could get home. I called everyone under the sun I could think of. I called his pediatrician, he had just talked to Rebecca Taylor and told her ?You?re making a mistake, I saw this child Monday, and he isn?t neglected?. I myself called the Child Protection Office demanding to know why my son was abducted. I was then told that they would not talk to me if I were going to be hostile. So I took the opportunity to stress, and stress, the care my son needed. He is nine months old! He has Cystic Fibrosis! They assured me they had qualified people to take care of him. Well we would soon find there was also no truth to that also. So we began the most stressful, weekend we have ever experienced with our son. Our child has not gone a single day without seeing his mom or dad. We were not allowed to know anything about who our child was with, where he was, no visitation, no anything, and defiantly no cooperation. We spent all weekend researching everything we could. We find out Child Protection Service needs some type of immediate danger to take our son away in a way that they did. There was no immediate danger to our child. We also learn that a Child Protection Service caseworker must make reasonable efforts to keep the child with their family. We tried to figure out what were the ?reasonable efforts? Rebecca Taylor made. Seems all her efforts were made to take our child from us, regardless that our pediatrician stated your making a mistake, regardless that our home health nurse stated the child is not neglected but doing great.
We did not hear any news at all about our child until 5 PM on Monday. Sharee Baham who is the foster care placement officer finally gave us a little news. She of course said our child was doing well. When I asked her about what training the foster parents has with our child?s condition and with his medications she told me they went to the emergency room to learn everything on Saturday. She also informed us he weighed 14 lbs. This is actually 5 oz less then he did when they took him. The damage to our son had apparently already started. We did everything we could to get letters, and records from everyone that is involved with our son?s health. Our pediatrician wrote an amazing letter for us that probably saved our sons life. We got proof that all our appointments were made before any of this started. Also we retrieved our son?s medical records from his home health nurse. We were outraged with what we found in there. There were summaries from calls made with Rebecca Taylor. In there we found our home health nurse told Rebecca Taylor that we were getting another pulomonologist, and that we even already had another appointment. Rebecca Taylor was made aware before she took our son that we did indeed have another appointment. Where is the neglect? Where is the investigation? Why would she totally disregard facts that we were not neglecting our son?s medical needs? We still do not have the answers to these questions. When we got to court we were amazed at all the lies and complete fabrications that Rebecca Taylor made. A majority of her case was built around the issue of the continuous night feed. This issue was corrected only a day after first visit. And yes she was aware that we did have doctors written orders to discontinue the night feed. She had no proof of any neglect at all, only countless lies. This was because there was NO NEGLECT at all. I just would have hoped that there would be a need for some proof before our child was taken. After we spoke our peace the judge did order the child be returned to us.
Now we go the Child Protection Services office to get our child. I was really expecting the foster parent to be maybe a kindly old lady, or just a normal looking couple. It was two middle-aged men that were the foster parents to our child, our catholic child. When got our son, he didn?t smile, he didn?t laugh, and he didn?t giggle. He was like a zombie. He was not himself, and he was very sick. He had apparently caught a really virus or possible something worse in their care. We immediately brought him to his pediatrician. There we discovered a few bruises on his back, and his G-Tube site was severely infected and covered in puss. All the things that we as his parents had sought to protect him from the 4 months he was with us was compromised in a single weekend. He has not had any illness since he has been home. His G-Tube site had always remained free from infection since he has been in our care. Keep in mind also that our home health nurse gave our son a clean bill of health just the day before he was taken. Now our child that just loved to laugh now only cries and whimpers. I have heard cries from him yesterday that I have not heard since his last major operation. He is severely congested, coughing, his breathing is labored, and throws up whatever he eats. We can only hope that this sickness will not have a lasting affect on his health or his already limited lifespan. I would like to say we could breath now, but we can?t. It?s still not over. Rebecca Taylor is still not convinced that we do take care of our son and Sharee Baham has just threatened my wife that if we do not cooperate they will take our son again. I don?t know if my son will be able to survive being ?saved? by Rebecca Taylor and the Child Protection Services again.
Our baby boy was born January 2005 and for just a few short moments everything was perfect. The first tragedy stuck after only a few happy hours. It was discovered our son had a bowel obstruction and would require surgery immediately. After hours a pacing the surgeon finally came to speak with us. The bowel wasn?t obstructed, only twisted and was a simply untwisted. At last we can breath again. We can start our life now with a bright shining baby boy. Our son looked incredibly well for a 2 day old after a major surgery. These happy moments lasted a little longer than the first time, almost an entire day before we were once again hit with tragic news. Our son had a serious infection in his bowels at the sight of the twist. Surgery would again have to be performed immediately. Here we are again, same waiting room, pacing the same circle. Once again the surgeon comes out to give the news, there was a slight perforation in his bowels, and a small section was cut out. As a precaution the entire length of his bowels was examined for any more perforations or deformities. Things will be scary for a while. Our son will have a colostomy bag while his insides heal from the infection. But he is showing signs of recovery. We can breath once again. Recovery is slow, painfully slow. After many sleepless nights the infection is cleared and we can now perform the sugary to reattach his bowels. The surgery is a success. Now we just have to wait literally for our son to poop showing the bottom portion of his bowels are functioning correctly.
We can breath again. Just one small step to go and our child will finally be home. Our life with our child will finally begin now only a few months late. Time passes and passes the bowels function but very poorly. We now begin the systematic process of test, after test, after test. One tragic day I get the call from the doctor in NICU, they have found a problem. He informs me our son has Cystic Fibrosis, I have no idea what it is but I know its bad. It will not be easy but we will make it. We educate ourselves and now that we know what the problem is we know how to live with it. We learn to emotionally handle the issue that our son will have a limited lifespan. Our son is given a pharmacy of medications and slowly comes a bit closer to coming home. Yes finally we can breath. Just a few more months pass, along with a few scary infections, but his day has finally come. After a total of 5 ½ months our son is actually coming home. Now due to the fact that he will not eat anything orally our son is required to have a G-tube, a tube that passes into his stomach through a small hole in the abdomen. We are given detailed instructions on his medications and his feedings. We are told to work with him on the feedings try to get him to orally feed. But this is it, yes now we can actually breathe.
Finally at home with his mother, brother and sisters our son really begins to shine. Never has anyone ever seen a happier child. If there were bright center of the earth from which all joy radiated from it would be our son. Wherever I am all I have to do is think of his laugh and all the problems of the world disappear. Living with cystic fibrosis is not an easy task. You have breathing treatments to keep his lungs clear from infections. Daily medicines for reflux, lots of vitamins and of course the essential enzymes to break down his food. Watching carefully everything that he eats, as his ultra high calorie diet is critical to his heath. It?s difficult at first but my wife and me get into the routine. Of course we now have turned into germ freaks. Keeping our sons lungs healthy is vital to his survival and even a cold can turn into a devastating infection. In our house if you even cough you are sent to wash your hands and you are immediately banished from the baby. Life is moving along, and yes we are making it and yes we are breathing. We begin the process of slowly weaning him off his tube feeds and take his food orally. Along with all our regular challenges of cystic fibrosis, we face this feeding challenge easily and come out on top. He takes all his required food from his bottle. Lots of patience and lots of love can do almost anything. Yes we are still breathing, and living a relatively normal life.
Then we have our first hospital stay for our son not gaining enough weight. Our son?s pulomonologist Dr David Thomas checks us into Our Lady of the Lake hospital to address the issue. In the hospital they seem to do everything just as we do at the house. Well other that the fact that we don?t let him cry and cry for hours waiting for food. Yes we are here for weight gain and we cannot get food for our child. It eventually gets so bad we go get his formula from the house and ask the staff for a case of water. The week passes and nothing changes so we are simple sent home with the orders of increasing his enzymes with each feeding. Here we are at home again and actually breathing once more.
The enzyme adjustment works and it works great. Our home health nurses set a goal for him to gain one pound in one month. We hit that goal in two weeks. The worse may be over we are now breathing and thriving.
The Unfortunate Turn of Events
Now is when all the real tragedy begins, not with our son?s condition but with the entrance of Child Protection Services into our lives. Rebecca Taylor enters our home stating that we refuse to follow doctor?s orders and put our child on a continuous night feed. We had thought that having him take all his formula orally was progress. We had even discussed this with his doctors we told them how much he drinks orally and they seemed pleased. We asked why to put him on a night feed and were told, hey its great he gets all his food and you don?t have to wake up to feed him. Sorry but that?s ok I would much rather wake up that risk my son strangling himself with a feeding tube. We of course tell Rebecca Taylor all of this but are apparently made our to be liars. So we go to our son?s pediatrician just to get a note saying taking off the overnight feed was acceptable. I make a call to Rebecca Taylor and she does everything but actually call me a liar, not even believing I actually got a note stating this. Now that I think about it she never even came to get her copy of the note. She was to busy and said our child was ?more safer? than the other cases she had to attend to. I have to be honest our house was a bit cluttered. It was especially cluttered because my wife had an abscess tooth and had just undergone oral surgery to have the tooth removed. Nothing major of course, our floor needed sweeping, dishes were left out, and some clothes were piled in the corner waiting to be washed. We felt absolutely no threat by Rebecca Taylor or child protection services, we felt this was just a mistake and it was all cleared up now. Yes its ok to breath now.
Well as I stated earlier, our son was gaining weight at a wonderful rate when we went to our follow up appointment with Dr Thomas. The goal of gaining one pound of weight in a month was met after only two weeks. But our son is hospitalized again for poor weight gain and ?failure to thrive?. Of course all our attempts to point this out to Dr Thomas we only get some generic answer from him ?His weight as plataued?. We persisted for a while to argue with Dr. Thomas for a bit about all the weight gain. But Dr. Thomas insisted we were not listening to him. Even asked how much weight he should be gaining. The answer we got was he should be getting 20 grams a day of weight gain. Well we couldn?t argue with that, and put our trust in with the doctor. Thus began a week of torture for us and for our son. He was not just in the hospital, but also in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, and let me add not a very good one at that. Arm taped up with a splint and IV hookup to where he couldn?t even move it. Such a shame as he was really getting the hang of that arm, pulling peoples hair, drinking his bottle and such. What was the IV for? A flush, apparently if you have the IV hookup and don?t use it you need to flush it every now and then. Sorry but I do think my son has been cut and poked enough in this life that we would have preferred not to have a useless IV in his arm. Well after we get over our initial aggravation of all of this we decide to do some math and calculate out how many grams a day of weight our son has been gaining over the past two weeks. We do this and come up with about 22 grams a day. So we talk to Dr. Thomas with this information and he tells us now our son needs to gain 30 grams a day. Does my son need to gain more weight a day because my wife and I can do third grade math? There were many more indicants like this in the hospital with Dr. Thomas during the week. He would tell us one thing then give his nurses orders for something completely different. When confronted about it now he would rudely state ?I?m not discussing it?. But finally we get discharged and I think maybe we can actually breath again. All we have left is a short meeting with Dr. Thomas and we can go. But guess whom we see at the meeting, none other than Rebecca Taylor our friendly neighborhood Child Protection Services caseworker. Suddenly our entire hospital visit makes complete since now. We were apparently already convicted of child abuse or neglect. This explains why the entire hospital staff seemed so rude with us. This is why Dr. Thomas didn?t have to be honest and tell the truth to us about anything. But we do get through the meeting, and Dr. Thomas? diagnosis of our son is that he now has an eating disorder. So he has ordered us to change our entire feeding schedule. His great spike in weight the two weeks before didn?t happen. Well we thought that nasty part of our lives was over, no more Rebecca Taylor, and because of his rude and crude treatment no more Dr. Thomas. We can breath and we are now shopping for a new pulomonologist that we can trust.
Time passes and we go visit our son?s pediatrician about getting new pulomonologist on Monday. He is a great pediatrician and says its no problem, and some great doctors are in the area due the hurricane. So on Wednesday I hunt down a new pulomonologist and even make the appointment. Thursday was Dr. Thomas? appointment I decide not to even bother calling to cancel or inform him we are leaving his horrible services. So on Thursday his office calls about missing the appointment and I just blow them off saying I had an emergency at work. They get rude and ask about rescheduling, so I let them know then, don?t bother we are getting a new doctor. Friday is here and I get a frantic message from my wife ?They are here to take our son?.
THEY TOOK MY SICK SON WITH CYSTIC FIBROSIS!!!!!!
You cannot imagine the feelings we both felt that day. But taking a child with a condition such as Cystic Fibrosis really scared me beyond belief. It was stated on the instant order signed by a judge that he was take due to medicinal neglect. Our entire lives solely revolve around our son, his feeding schedule, and his medicine. How in the world could this be medicinal neglect? We missed a doctor?s appointment. Yes that?s right we missed the doctors appointment. Now I already know what your thinking, ?There must be something else?, "They wouldn't do that unless they had a reason to", "They only do that for the protection of the children", "The parents must not have been taking care of him", "The parents must be abusive or on drugs, or alcoholics, or something." Well if your thinking any of the above things, I can't say I blame you, I used to think the exact same thing. We have heard stories similar to ours and thought the parents MUST have done something wrong. Well now we know the truth, and hopefully you do to.
My wife attempted to tell Rebecca Taylor that we had another appointment with a new pulomonologist. But all Rebecca Taylor could do was ask the police officer to get my wife to hurry up and gather his things. So my son was gone Friday before I could get home. I called everyone under the sun I could think of. I called his pediatrician, he had just talked to Rebecca Taylor and told her ?You?re making a mistake, I saw this child Monday, and he isn?t neglected?. I myself called the Child Protection Office demanding to know why my son was abducted. I was then told that they would not talk to me if I were going to be hostile. So I took the opportunity to stress, and stress, the care my son needed. He is nine months old! He has Cystic Fibrosis! They assured me they had qualified people to take care of him. Well we would soon find there was also no truth to that also. So we began the most stressful, weekend we have ever experienced with our son. Our child has not gone a single day without seeing his mom or dad. We were not allowed to know anything about who our child was with, where he was, no visitation, no anything, and defiantly no cooperation. We spent all weekend researching everything we could. We find out Child Protection Service needs some type of immediate danger to take our son away in a way that they did. There was no immediate danger to our child. We also learn that a Child Protection Service caseworker must make reasonable efforts to keep the child with their family. We tried to figure out what were the ?reasonable efforts? Rebecca Taylor made. Seems all her efforts were made to take our child from us, regardless that our pediatrician stated your making a mistake, regardless that our home health nurse stated the child is not neglected but doing great.
We did not hear any news at all about our child until 5 PM on Monday. Sharee Baham who is the foster care placement officer finally gave us a little news. She of course said our child was doing well. When I asked her about what training the foster parents has with our child?s condition and with his medications she told me they went to the emergency room to learn everything on Saturday. She also informed us he weighed 14 lbs. This is actually 5 oz less then he did when they took him. The damage to our son had apparently already started. We did everything we could to get letters, and records from everyone that is involved with our son?s health. Our pediatrician wrote an amazing letter for us that probably saved our sons life. We got proof that all our appointments were made before any of this started. Also we retrieved our son?s medical records from his home health nurse. We were outraged with what we found in there. There were summaries from calls made with Rebecca Taylor. In there we found our home health nurse told Rebecca Taylor that we were getting another pulomonologist, and that we even already had another appointment. Rebecca Taylor was made aware before she took our son that we did indeed have another appointment. Where is the neglect? Where is the investigation? Why would she totally disregard facts that we were not neglecting our son?s medical needs? We still do not have the answers to these questions. When we got to court we were amazed at all the lies and complete fabrications that Rebecca Taylor made. A majority of her case was built around the issue of the continuous night feed. This issue was corrected only a day after first visit. And yes she was aware that we did have doctors written orders to discontinue the night feed. She had no proof of any neglect at all, only countless lies. This was because there was NO NEGLECT at all. I just would have hoped that there would be a need for some proof before our child was taken. After we spoke our peace the judge did order the child be returned to us.
Now we go the Child Protection Services office to get our child. I was really expecting the foster parent to be maybe a kindly old lady, or just a normal looking couple. It was two middle-aged men that were the foster parents to our child, our catholic child. When got our son, he didn?t smile, he didn?t laugh, and he didn?t giggle. He was like a zombie. He was not himself, and he was very sick. He had apparently caught a really virus or possible something worse in their care. We immediately brought him to his pediatrician. There we discovered a few bruises on his back, and his G-Tube site was severely infected and covered in puss. All the things that we as his parents had sought to protect him from the 4 months he was with us was compromised in a single weekend. He has not had any illness since he has been home. His G-Tube site had always remained free from infection since he has been in our care. Keep in mind also that our home health nurse gave our son a clean bill of health just the day before he was taken. Now our child that just loved to laugh now only cries and whimpers. I have heard cries from him yesterday that I have not heard since his last major operation. He is severely congested, coughing, his breathing is labored, and throws up whatever he eats. We can only hope that this sickness will not have a lasting affect on his health or his already limited lifespan. I would like to say we could breath now, but we can?t. It?s still not over. Rebecca Taylor is still not convinced that we do take care of our son and Sharee Baham has just threatened my wife that if we do not cooperate they will take our son again. I don?t know if my son will be able to survive being ?saved? by Rebecca Taylor and the Child Protection Services again.