Labeled: Labels Belong on Soup Cans, Not Our Children

By Susan McAndrew

Could a child or young adult in your life have an underlying medical condition that is being explained away as a psychiatric problem? This type of misdiagnosis has become surprisingly common. This is a heartfelt, informational, true story of a thirteen-year-old girl who had an unexplained weight loss and other bizarre symptoms that were deemed to be psychological before all avenues of a physical illness were explored. The names have all been changed in order to protect the identity of the involved persons. The eleven-day confinement at a psychiatric hospital, involuntary commitment trial, and testing for the actual physical illness and simple cure are all documented to explain why this young girl should not have to live with a lifelong label of mental illness. This story suggests decisions made in fear are often poor. Doctors should not be afraid to tell their patients that they do not know, and parents should not be afraid of questioning health-care professionals' decisions. The nearly fatal mistake was thwarted with the support of family, friends, open-minded, true professionals, and most of all, with divine intervention.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Apr 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9781681979694

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Labeled

Labels Belong on Soup Cans, Not Our Children

Susan McAndrew

ISBN 978-1-68197-968-7 (Paperback)

ISBN 978-1-68197-969-4 (Digital)

Copyright © 2017 by Susan McAndrew

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

296 Chestnut Street

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

1

Perfectly Healthy

At the time, I had been married to my husband for about fifteen years. My husband and I have four children (two girls and two boys), and Kate is the oldest. When my husband and I were first married, he was a full-time working engineer with an associate and a bachelor’s degree, and I had both degrees too but in management. I also was working full time for the federal government until I had Kate, and then I started working four days a week and taking Wednesdays off to spend the day with my baby girl. During this time, we decided that my husband should pursue his master’s via video and computer. When he wasn’t at work, he was studying and was not able to contribute a lot of time to household chores. We also decided to move when Kate was two months old because we would be closer to my mom (her babysitter) and our work. By the time Kate turned a year old, I knew I was pregnant again, and I was trying to make the very difficult decision to quit working or keep my secure government job.

In the meantime, during July of 2001, I was still working and was on the phone with a client when my boss (who was a very big guy) hurries over to my desk with a panicked look on his face. All he could say was, It is your husband. I couldn’t imagine why my husband would call the administrative line instead of waiting for me to get off the phone to call me direct. I picked up the line, and my husband was crying (this was the first time I had ever heard him cry). He got a horrific call from his mother telling him that his father was dead. He and his dad were very close and enjoyed going out every Saturday to have a beer or two at the local club. It was their time to catch up and just to be together as father and son. My husband’s dad had a triple bypass surgery, which he had finally recovered from, and then he found out that he needed prostate surgery. After the prostate surgery, he was obviously depressed. He had gotten to the point where he didn’t want to leave the house at all, not even for his traditional outings with my husband. He started making statements that he should do as his older neighbor did and just end it all. He kept saying that there was something wrong with his gut, and looking back, we think he was afraid that he had stomach cancer. My sister-in-law had made an appointment with his doctor, hoping that he would prescribe some form of antidepressant to lift his spirits, but before she had a chance to take him to that appointment, my father-in-law had committed suicide. It was a shock to everyone and it made me question what I thought I knew about him. It was one of the very worst times of my husband’s life, and it did cause him a lot of distress for many years.

I had made my decision, and my last day at the office happened to be the Friday before 9/11. It happened to also be the same day we attended my cousin’s wedding. My son was born a month and a half later. Even at the time, the signs seemed clear that I did the right thing by leaving my job, and besides, I didn’t want to burden my mother watching a second baby (being that my two oldest children were only nineteen months apart) and wanted to try to avoid day care. I felt that if we could financially manage, that there was no better way to spend my time than with my children.

Kate never had any major illnesses, had never been hospitalized, and had never even been taken to the emergency room. The only difficulty I can say that we had with her was that she was in great need of glasses the summer before she went into third grade. That summer, she had played baseball with mostly boys and made it to the all-star team. While playing a scrimmage baseball game against some older kids, she was standing at the pitcher’s mound (by the pitching machine that was set to about sixty-eight miles an hour), and one of the older children hit the ball straight to my girl, who surprisingly caught it. I was told by the coach and some of the other parents that she made a heck of a catch considering how fast the ball was going because most kids that age would have been afraid of a ball going that fast and would have gotten out of the way. When we went to the eye doctor, she told me that Kate could only see about three feet in front of her face, so I suppose it was either she caught the ball or get her face rearranged.

Kate and my other children have always gone to small private schools, and we live in the country, where our neighbors are few and far from our house. Kate was a dancer for about nine years. She had played soccer, baseball, and softball, touch football, and basketball for many teams through the years. She also started playing the guitar when she was in third grade. There was never a reason to worry about my oldest. Other than the glasses, she had had an occasional strep throat and some jaundice as a baby, we were always blessed because Kate was the perfect picture of health, and there was nothing ever wrong with my little girl.

The summer of 2013 was a great one for my beautiful, athletic daughter. Kate had just started the older team in girls’ softball, we had gone on a fantastic two-week family vacation, and she and our other three children enjoyed a local public pool most of the summer. Kate loves softball, and her favorite position (at the time) was catcher because of the constant action. Before the softball season had started, she was a bit concerned that she wasn’t going to be able to handle playing with the older girls, but all her fears were lifted after the first few practices. The team had a regular catcher already, so Kate ended up playing whatever position the coach told her to play, but before the season was over, she did get to catch. The summer before, she had made it to every game, and she was the oldest on the team and mainly played her favorite position as catcher and therefore won a trophy. But this summer, I was sure she wasn’t going to win because there were only two trophies given out per team, per season, and because of our long vacation, she had missed quite a few games, not to mention that she was one of the youngest on the team. To our surprise, the coach