Guilty of not pushing for spinal tap?

[trintiybella]

When I brought my two year old to Children's Hospital and told of her hallucinations, aggression, dialated pupils, agitation, severe anxiety and insomnia, they did an EEG, blood work and MRI. They said see a psychiatris.Why was a spinal tap not done and did I really fail my child by not pushing for one? Why, with all of those horrible psych. symptoms, did they not do one??? Was it because nothing remarkable was seen on the Video EEG or MRI? Does anyone have any knowledge of the steps a doctor would follow in a case like my daughters? I know I should not dwell on this but I am sick to my stomach that if I pushed for a spinal tap she would not be in such a state right now.

[Mayzoo]

I can relate, sadly. My daughter was not in the right birth position and I and the doc knew it 30 days before I delivered. For 30 days I did exersizes to turn her, and when I went into labor, the staff never said anything about her not turning, so I assumed she turned. She did not, and the doc did not say anything about a c-section. Needless to say, she was born natural by forceps and sustained several serious birth traumas. If I knew then what I know now, I would have pushed for a c-section which is how babies in her position should have been delivered.

 

I still beat myself up over this, but I heartily recommend you do not beat yourself up--yes I am a hypocrite . I doubt you knew she should have a spinal tap, just as I did not know my kiddo needed to be delivered by c-section. Hind sight is always 20/20. Blaming ourselves does not help our kiddos now. It just wears us down (speaking from experience).

[trintiybella]

Thank You!

[searching_for_help]

I'm not sure that spinal taps always show the problem. Our dd had a spinal tap when she had a chest port put in for IV abx. The spinal tap was normal, but no one ever told us what they were even testing for. We KNOW our dd has Bartonella, as the streak like rash showed up a couple of months later, but this did NOT show up on the spinal tap.

 

The same thing with urine catches - they only test for a certain number of things. They don't test for all that could be in the urine. Even mycoplasma testing - there are lots of different mycoplasma species - they usually only test for m. pneumonia. My point being our kids CAN have something wrong, but the testing leads us to believe there's nothing there, and the docs aren't trained to know what else to look for.

 

In our case the spinal tap was NOT useful. Do not beat yourself up, this is NOT YOUR fault. Sadly, our medical establishment is in too much of a rush to brush us off and send us to the psychiatrist...