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"My daughter, Sawyer, was born on May 14, 2019. She had a Vitamin D deficiency and was sent home with a bili-blanket. I had to use the blanket and take her back to the hospital every day for a week to get her blood tested for her Vitamin D levels. We were also given Vitamin D drops to give her daily and I did this faithfully.
In September, Sawyer wasn’t eating, was vomiting, and had diarrhea. I brought her to the ER where doctors tested for flu and RSV. Both tests were negative and she was sent home diagnosed with a stomach bug. This continued. I then brought her to another hospital with the same results. Searching for answers, I went to our pediatrician who sent us to the children’s hospital. There, Sawyer was diagnosed with Salmonella and spent a week in the hospital.
After the scare with Salmonella, Sawyer’s daycare provider told me she noticed when they would change Sawyer’s diapers, she would end up bruising where the Velcro touched her skin and they noticed she bruised very easily when playing with other children. I brought Sawyer to her pediatrician and asked him to check for anemia because both me and my mother are anemic and bruise easily. The pediatrician said this was normal for a child who is crawling and trying to pull up on everything and that her iron levels were normal.
Then in February we noticed Sawyer’s hair was falling out. She went completely bald on the top of her head. The pediatrician told us this was a symptom of the Salmonella from four months prior.
Sunday evening, March 29th, I noticed Sawyer would not crawl or put pressure on her left leg so my mother and I brought Sawyer straight to the emergency room. The nurse practitioner ordered an X-ray and found that Sawyer had a fractured femur. They sent us to the children’s hospital by ambulance.
Once at the children’s hospital, the doctors completed a battery of full body X-rays, CT scans, blood draws and other tests. No one could have prepared me for the results…They indicated that Sawyer had about 11 healed fractures (healed in various stages). They told me that the only way Sawyer could have gotten these fractures on her ribs is if someone punched her. As easily as she bruises, and as many times as she had been at the pediatrician, if she would have been punched or abused, someone would have noticed bruises. There were none. The only bruise she had on her body at the time of the hospital stay was one on her forehead where she fell pulling up on her activity set. But the first and only conclusion the doctors would look at was child abuse.
CPS took custody of Sawyer. She went from being with either me or her grandparents every night of her life to being with strangers. For the first THREE months, I wasn’t even allowed to visit my daughter, even though that goes against CPS visitation policies. It took nine months for my parents to finally get custody of Sawyer.
The child abuse pediatrician in charge of Sawyer’s case had not looked at her previous medical history and had NEVER laid eyes on Sawyer, but he had the controlling power to diagnose her as being abused. He said it looked like Sawyer had been thrown against a wall or in a car accident.
I asked for Sawyer to be tested for Brittle Bone Disease and Rickets (caused by low vitamin D), but the child abuse pediatrician said Sawyer couldn’t be tested until it was approved by insurance. We even offered to pay for the procedures out of our pockets to get the tests started. The child abuse pediatrician told us that was beside the point, that it would take 3 months to get the results back.
I would later find out that the child abuse pediatrician HAD in fact run testing for osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bone disease) and turns out it showed a variant of Sawyer’s COL1A1 gene. These results were never discussed with me and no further testing was done to look into this further.
After 15 agonizing months, our case was finally over and Sawyer was able to return home for good. Today Sawyer has a family care team of a specialized pediatrician, genetic counselor, geneticist, endocrinologist, and orthopedic surgeon and they are all in agreement that she does have some sort of brittle bone disease. We are just waiting to know which one it is as we are still waiting on the WES genetic test.
I missed so many of Sawyer’s firsts, so much time that we can never get back. My daughter is terrified that someone will take her from me. The system is broken. The children’s hospital is broken. They need to be doing the proper testing before they ruin lives.
Since then, I have been speaking out to help other families. I’m going to make a difference in Mississippi. I’m going to make a change.”
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