Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I've been following the Reddit thread about this case, and quite frankly, I'm shocked that the family won. There is much more to the case that was presented in the documentary. With that said, I'm happy for the family. More than anything, they appear to be seeking validation, so this verdict should help.

I'm not shocked - it's a jury trial. But I'll be shocked if everything stands after appeal.

This. The legal experts they had on yesterday said that once the numbers are adjusted, the family will get more around $80-120 million. Not chump change at all, but not the full amount as it stands now.

Anonymous wrote:I have two emotional connections to this story. One, I was desperate enough to save my life from treatment resistant depression that I sought out IV ketamine about 6 years ago before it was commonplace. It was miraculously efficacious and hen nothing else was, and I met dozens of people in waiting rooms who had similar experiences, as well as with CRPS and fibromyalgia…not surprisingly, also diagnoses where women’s self-reporting of their own pain is often dismissed as exaggerated or hysterical. Just as ketamine seems to successfully “reset” many of a patient’s default neural pathways in a way that changes thought patterns in depression, so it can also “reset” the brain’s pain perception system that has gone haywire.

It is not surprising to me at all that ketamine is a successful treatment for CRPS. It *was* surprising that she was in such high dosages, as it is certainly also addictive at high doses, so some of the pain Maya might have been suffering in the hospital was likely withdrawal.

Even so, the removal of her child from her care and presence is so over the top cruel that I can’t fathom the level of pain the child and her mother were in. Beata was pushy and confident in her knowledge and expertise. It seemed more like the doctors and nurses were offended that she questioned their God-given authority.

The second way that it hit me emotionally was the memory of being separated from my son when he was in the NICU and I was recovering from pre-eclampsia and an emergency C section. Hospital staff wouldn’t let me see the baby until I brought my blood pressure down, which I felt I couldn’t do until could touch my baby. I felt so enraged and helpless and loooked down upon. I can’t imagine how much more magnified Beata’s stress was. That poor woman.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So did they eventually give her high dose ketamine? Or did she improve on her own like they said she would?

Seems crazy the mom gave up after less than 3 months. That’s not that long.

I don't think that Maya "improved on her own." It took her several years of treatment before she started walking again. Treatment for CRPS usually involves a multi-disciplinary approach that includes counseling, intensive physical therapy, and sometimes pain management. It also involves educating the family.

It's not accurate that the mother gave up after three months. She had been trying to help her daughter for years when the cruel treatment at the hands of Dr. Smith and the hospital put her over the edge. It's hard to imagine what it feels like to have a chronically ill child. My guess is that Beata thought that after the ketamine coma, they were on the right path, so having what seems like a major setback hit her hard.

The difficult thing about CRPS is that not all doctors agree on what to do. An older generation of doctors, which it seems like Dr. Kirkpatrick was a part of, believe that you need to address a patient's pain (calm it down) before you start PT to regain function. The newer approach is to immediately start intensive PT, regardless of the pain level. If, as a parent, you are hearing two different voices, one that appears to be addressing your child's pain and another that is going to cause pain, which one would you choose? It's a huge leap of faith to accept that your child, who is in terrible pain, will get better if you force them to endure even more pain.

It can't be stated enough how unfamiliar with CRPS many healthcare providers are. One of the things mentioned in the documentary (or maybe it was an article) was that Beata was concerned about the nurses causing pain by taking Maya's blood pressure. If your child has a condition where even a light touch causes pain, dealing with providers who don't understand or don't seem willing to understand undermines your confidence in their professional judgment.

Still, it seems horrible that she took her own life because she “couldn’t take it anymore” but her daughter had been through it all herself and was still coping and still needed her mother. I could never have abandoned my child. Never.