# A Medical Misdiagnosis and a Family's Struggle for Truth

As I continued to explorer what was going on and why we were seeing so many MSBP diagnosis, I had other families starting to come to me to talk about other misdiagnosis. My focus for the audit report was going to be MSBP patients as they were the easiest to show that there was a statisitcal anomoly in how many case we had in our area.

As my investigtation continued I heard from a mother. We met on Zoom so that I could hear her story.I could see that her hands were wrapped around a coffee cup. Her eyes reflected the turmoil of the past months. As she recounted her story, each detail was laced with a palpable urgency and a maternal fierceness that could not be ignored.

"My son was just learning to sit up on his own, full of laughter and life," she began, her voice steady despite the weight of her memories. "Then, one day, my husband called me while I was at work. I am a nurse. He told me that our son wasn't able to sit up. I told him not to worry about it, I would check on the baby when I got home. When I got home, I checked on our son. He wasn't doing well. I called our pediatrician and he told me to go to the ER"

SHe drove to emergency room of Lehigh Valley Health Network, where the gravity of her situation would magnify under the clinical lights and cold assessments.

The family's ordeal deepened with the involvement of Dr. Jenssen, a pediatrician with years of experience but, as the mother described, an apparent conviction in her own infallibility. The doctor was a Child Abuse Pediatrian. She never identified herself with that specialty. THe doctor ordered full body X-rays.

To understand the convictions that drove Dr. Jenssen that fateful day required recognizing her decades immersed in the subspecialty of child abuse pediatrics - a field demanding an unwavering belief in protecting the vulnerable above all else. Her CV read like a sustained crusade: directing child protection teams at major hospitals, lecturing widely on issues from abusive head trauma to sexual abuse, consulting for organizations like the FBI, and earning accolades from peers for her tireless advocacy. While some accused her methods of overstepping at times, few questioned Jenssen's genuine care for injured children or her bona fide expertise identifying the telltale signs of violence and neglect.

To the nurse clutching that distraught toddler, the pediatrician scrutinizing those haunting x-rays embodied a forceful, ironclad certainty that parents did, in fact, sometimes betray their offspring's safety. A certainty that, in this instance, may have blinded the doctor to other medical possibilities.

The x-rays revealed multiple rib fractures, and without hesitation, Dr. Jenssen delivered a diagnosis that was as swift as it was shattering.

"Your husband is abusing your child," she declared unequivocally. The accusation felt like a physical blow to the mother. Her immediate protest, grounded in a family history suggestive of a genetic condition affecting bone strength, was met with cold dismissal.

"Dr. Jenssen didn't just ignore my suggestions; she threatened me," the nurse shared, the frustration and fear of that day creeping back into her voice. "She said she could take my son away, that she could have my nursing license revoked if I didn't accept her diagnosis."

The consequences of the pediatrician's judgment were immediate and severe. Her husband was arrested. They didn't have much money so they needed to decide if they would pay the bail for her husband so he could remain free until his hearing or if he would stay in jail so that they could afford a lawyer. He stayed in jail.

Their son was placed in protective custody until things could be sorted out by children and youth. Ultimately Dr. Jenssen told the mom to divorce her husband as a demonstration of her maternal commitment. If she wanted to see her child she needed to divorce her husband. She did just that.

"In the darkest times," she said, "when my husband was still in jail and I was fighting just to see my son, I felt like the system itself was abusing us. It wasn't just Dr. Jenssen; it was every part of the healthcare and legal system that didn't question her judgment."

The nurse's relentless pursuit of truth led her to ask the Doctor to do a genetic test on her child. The doctore refused at first but ultimately allowed the mom to take her child to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP). It took several months to set an appointment so that she could get a genetic test. It was there, after enduring months of uncertainty and separation, that her son received a correct diagnosis: Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI), a genetic brittle bone disease that finally explained the fractures.

"When the genetic tests came back, it was both a relief and a rage," she explained, her voice breaking for the first time. "Relief that we finally knew the truth, and rage that so much pain could have been avoided if only they had listened."

The legal and social ramifications lingered long after her husband was released from jail. The stigma of the initial abuse allegation haunted them, a ghost over their interactions in their community and a shadow in their personal recovery.

"Our family was forever changed," she concluded, her story a testament to both the fragility and the resilience of the human spirit. "I can't bring back the months we lost, the moments we missed with our son, or the unnecessary pain we all suffered. But I can tell this story, and I can hope it changes something."