UPDATED: Parents Want 2nd Opinion on Child’s Health; CPS Takes Child

UPDATE MONDAY 7PM MST: A judge has ruled that the baby be transferred to another medical center and will allow the family to be reunited with their child. The parents must not take the child from the hospital without appropriate discharge and must follow all medical advice.

Additional information provided indicates the child has had a known heart murmur and the family has been under regular pediatric cardiologist care with the understanding that heart surgery would be necessary but had not been considered an emergent basis.

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As mom to a special needs child our family is well acquainted with social workers and state agents. In these tough financial times many state workers are being paid less and working more.  For the most part the workers want to do what is best for the family. But what happens when an accusation appears to be made without merit? Can a child be removed from its parents simply because an accuser thinks he might know best?

In the case below parents of an ill baby take the child to the hospital. Following, by the parents’ accounts, what appears to be errors on the part of hospital staff and talk of extreme open heart surgery the parents remove their child and take it to a neighboring hospital for a second opinion. At the second hospital doctors release the child to be taken home with the parents for continued health care.

At one point, Anna says, a nurse came in and started giving the baby, named Sammy, medicine.

When she asked what it was, the nurse allegedly replied, “I don’t know.”

“I’m like, you’re working as a nurse, and you don’t even know what to give to my baby…?” Anna said in an ABC10 Action News interview. They later found out that medicine was antibiotics, which Anna claims the doctor told her Sammy shouldn’t have received. After doctors started discussing heart surgery, the Nikolayevs decided they wanted a second opinion.  They weren’t categorically opposed to the procedure, but they wanted a different doctor. “If we got the one mistake after another, I don’t want to have my baby have surgery in the hospital where I don’t feel safe,” Anna explained.

We all want our children to be safe, to be protected. Child abuse is horrendous and should be treated seriously. Everyone believes that it is better to be safe than sorry.

But when is the accusation the only proof necessary to take a child from its parents?