18-month-old girl kept having seizures. Doctors say her mom was causing them
A woman in Saudi Arabia brought her 18-month old baby to the doctor because the girl was having seizures.
The baby had been healthy for the first nine months of her life, after a short stint in a NICU unit after birth, the mother told doctors.
Doctors said the baby would lose consciousness and her muscles would spasm, according to the baby’s mother. Her eyes would roll back in her head and the attacks would last two or three minutes, an April 4 case report published in the Journal of Medical Case Reports said.
Four months later, the baby’s mother noticed that she was acting “lazy” and sleeping for long periods of time, the case report said.
The baby was admitted to a hospital and later diagnosed with hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, according to the case report. She was lethargic, drowsy and irritable.
Despite this, the baby was discharged just two days later with recommendations on changes to her diet that may help her low blood sugar episodes.
The seizures didn’t stop.
Her mother told doctors that she “did not improve” and even got worse, experiencing “another episode of seizure and decreased level of consciousness.”
The baby was once again admitted, and doctors diagnosed her with persistent hyperinsulinemic hypoglycemia of infancy. It meant that there was an “inappropriately high” amount of insulin in the girl’s body, and left untreated, it could lead to “serious neurological deficits” and even death.
Doctors set out to find what was causing so much insulin to build up in her body, the case report said.
Then, they started noticing red flags.
When doctors examined the baby, they noticed swelling on her thigh and shoulders, according to the case report. They also saw needle marks on the same parts of her body.
“In addition, the nurse noticed that the child is calm and not crying every time they prick her with the needle,” the case report said.
Instead, the baby “was not scared of the needle as any normal child would be. On the contrary, she was very comfortable as if she is used to being injected regularly.”
Then, the mother started pushing doctors for a pancreatectomy, a procedure that removes all or part of the pancreas when someone has pancreatic cancer or a serious case of pancreatitis, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
Doctors wanted to conduct a medical scan, but the mother was “insisting” on the major invasive and life-changing surgery, according to the case report.
The doctors became suspicious and noticed that the attacks and seizures were only occurring when the baby’s mom was around.
To test their theory, the baby was separated from all members of her family for five days. During that time, she didn’t experience a single attack, the case report said.
Even when the doctors tried to trigger a hypoglycemic attack, it took the baby 18 hours before her insulin levels reached a dangerous point, according to the case report.
The cause of the baby’s illness wasn’t medical, the report said. Doctors said it was her mother.
Social workers confronted the child’s mother, and she confessed to intentionally injecting her baby with insulin for more than six months, the report said. According to the case report, the mother would inject her child before and during hospital visits to create the symptoms of hypoglycemia.
When asked why, the mother told doctors she was trying “to get the attention of her ex-husband after their recent divorce,” the case report said.
The baby finally had an accurate diagnosis: caregiver-fabricated illness.
Caregiver-fabricated illness, known more widely as Munchausen syndrome by proxy according to the case report, is a “psychiatric disease in which a person induces intentional harm to another to gain personal benefit from the treatment process.”
The case report said that caregiver-fabricated illness has become more prevalent in children and is now considered a form of child abuse in most countries.
“The goal of the perpetrator, who is frequently the mother, is allegedly to attract the attention of medical professionals and win their sympathy to make up for the psychological neglect, as well as abandonment, they most likely experienced as children,” the case report said. “To get her husband’s attention, or avoid having to do things she finds unpleasant, the offending caregiver, for instance, the mother, may play the part of a parent with a sick child when under stress.”
Munchausen syndrome by proxy garnered media attention after the case of Gypsy Blanchard, a young woman who was forced to use a wheelchair and tell people she had leukemia and other serious illnesses caused by her mother.
In Blanchard’s case, her mother created fake illnesses to control her daughter and defraud charity organizations, ABC reported. Blanchard was later charged with killing her mother after she was found stabbed in their home.
In Saudi Arabia, the 18-month-old’s case was caught early.
The baby spent 19 days in the hospital under supervision from protective services. With no more hypoglycemic attacks and a clean bill of health, the baby was discharged with her maternal grandmother with permission from her father.
The case report did not disclose if any action was taken against the mother.
This story was originally published April 11, 2023 at 7:14 PM with the headline "18-month-old girl kept having seizures. Doctors say her mom was causing them."
