A Texas mother who allegedly took her 4-year-old son on hundreds of hospital visits is facing charges after authorities say she put the child through needless procedures and treatments.
Forth Worth Star-Telegram reports that 30-year-old Megan Gee is accused of faking her son’s medical issues, which ultimately ended up with the child undergoing unneeded surgery. A Tarrant County arrest affidavit indicated that she harmed through the boy via medial child abuse, also known as Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office investigator, Michael Weber, filed the case at the Tarrant County Court on Wednesday. He was assigned to investigate Gee in May, but the case spans back for numerous years.
Gee is accused of taking her son to a whopping 227 hospital visits in both Wichita and Tarrant County. At one visit, Gee allegedly insisted that a doctor place a feeding tube in the boy’s stomach after claiming he would not eat.
Over the course of four years, doctors prescribed the little boy 77 different medications, although many physicians said the child showed no symptoms of illness.
In 2017, a Child Protective Services investigation resulted in the boy being placed in foster care. The foster family said that the child seemed normal and healthy and did not exhibit the numerous ailments his mother claimed he had.
The boy was eventually returned to Gee.
The investigation began after several doctors filed complaints against the woman for allegedly abusing her child medically.
Dr. Kenneth Sultemeier at Clinics of North Texas in Wichita Falls was one of the doctors who filed a complaint against Gee, after she reportedly took him to the hospital numerous times, insisting that the boy was throwing up and had diarrhea. Doctors didn’t notice the symptoms at all.
During the same time period, Gee allegedly took the boy to Cook Children’s hospital in Fort Worth. She told physicians that he was constipated, had seizures, was throwing up, and wouldn’t eat, according to the arrest warrant.
Dr. Lyn Hunt, who provided care for the boy at Cook, said she was the one who surgically inserted a feeding tube into the boy’s stomach at Gee’s insistence.
“It’s difficult as a pediatrician because you rely on the parents’ statements about what’s going on with their child,” Hunt said. “And if the parent is not honest, then you may do things that are not necessary to try and help the child.”
“If a mother tells you, ‘My child is not eating, he does all these things,’ and you’ve exhausted all the other possibilities, then a feeding tube is a way to get nutrition to a child that refuses to eat or can’t eat or vomits everything they eat.”
Clinical Psychologist Dr. David Sabine said that parents with Munchausen syndrome by proxy seek attention for themselves and are usually in complete denial about their actions, Texomas reports.
“The only recourse is to remove the children and if the parent is willing which is rare, years of psychotherapy, there is no medication you can take, there is not any kind of quick fix.”
Gee was arrested and charged with “causing serious bodily injury to a child.” She has since bonded out on $25,000.
According to NBC News, it’s not clear who currently has custody of the boy. CPS indicated that the agency could not comment on the case.
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