I was just 5 days short of being 17 when I had my daughter Taylor. I was still living at home with my mom who by the way works at a school as an educational assistant with children with developmental disorders and behavioural problems. When Taylor was around 5 weeks old she started screaming in pain constantly I took her to numerous doctors and nurses who suggested switching her formula, or maybe it was constipation. I did everything the doctors told me to do. Finally when nothing was working I brought Taylor into the emergency room and explained to the triage nurse that I didn’t know what was wrong but she was screaming in pain. She looked at me and said “babies cry you know” as if I was some dumb 17 year old mother. Taylor was screaming in emerge for 3 hours and still no one would see me so I left. The next morning when I was doing a diaper change I noticed that she had a swollen leg. So I went to google because that seemed to help more than the doctors. There was a story about an infant with a swollen leg and it ended up that the baby had a broken leg. So I took Taylor immediately back to the hospital and I told the nurse I think her leg is broken. She asked me why I would think that and I told her I googled infants with swollen legs. They performed xrays and it came back that she had around 12 broken bones. I was questioned by detectives the next morning then transferred to Macmaster. When we got to Macmaster I was assigned to a child abuse team which by the way had a husband and wife on it which I thought was a little biased. They did more testing and found she had over 20 broken bones all in different stages of healing her femur one was a “twisting fracture”. She didn’t have one bruise on her body, no internal organ damage, no hemorrhaging, just these mysterious fractures. I was in an appointment with the orthopaedic surgeon at the time I got a phone call to go to a meeting. I walked in the meeting and there was around 10 people there and that’s when they told me they were apprehending Taylor. I couldn’t believe it I didn’t understand I know no one hurt my baby so why was she getting taken. We got a lawyer right away and started the fight. That’s when we found Dr. Marvin Miller who recommended Dr. Hyman. We spent over 40 grand send Dr. Hyman all her medical records etc and have him fly down not once but twice to our trial. He suggested I go for a bone density scan and in that scan it was determined I was borderline osteoporosis at 17. Taylor also broke a bone in foster care after around 2 months of being there I knew it was wrong to be happy but I couldn’t help it I thought that was for sure going to be what finally brought her home. When we brought that up family and children’s services said “it was just one bone, accidents happen”. Dr. Hyman stated in our trial that he was certain Taylor had vitamin deficiency rickets. Unfortunately the judge did not agree and she was adopted out to her foster family. I was broken and depressed for years. Sadly February 14th 2021 Taylor passed away from a very rare muscle cancer called rhabdomyosarcoma. I can’t help but wonder if this is connected to what happened to her bones as an infant. Muscles are the closest things to bones what are the chances one little girl had two very rare things happen to her. If there in a connection I want to make sure that there’s something that could possibly be done before this happens to someone else.
