[HN Gopher] She Ate Poppy Seed Salad Just Before Giving Birth. T...
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       She Ate Poppy Seed Salad Just Before Giving Birth. Then They Took
       Her Baby Away
        
       Author : stareatgoats
       Score  : 45 points
       Date   : 2024-09-09 20:37 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.motherjones.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.motherjones.com)
        
       | puttycat wrote:
       | Seinfeld, season 6 episode 17:
       | 
       | Elaine takes a urine test in order to go on a work trip to Kenya
       | with her boss, J. Peterman. She tests positive for opium. Elaine
       | insists she has never taken drugs, but when a frantic Kramer
       | shows up at her office begging her to let him use her normal-
       | pressure shower, Peterman mistakes him for a drug addict and
       | fires Elaine. Elaine realizes that the test is picking up the
       | poppy seeds in her favorite muffins.
       | 
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shower_Head
        
         | speckx wrote:
         | When life imitates art, and art imitates life.
        
         | ortusdux wrote:
         | The DOD reciently warned service members that they should avoid
         | eating them as well -
         | https://media.defense.gov/2023/Feb/21/2003164614/-1/-1/1/POP...
        
       | garciasn wrote:
       | My daughter was born with some serious issues landing her in the
       | NICU for nearly a week two or three days after she was born. Soon
       | after, I was pulled into a small room with a social worker,
       | several healthcare providers (nurses and doctors) and a police
       | officer. I was peppered with questions about what drugs my then-
       | wife had been taking during her pregnancy. I was honestly aghast;
       | this was a woman who spent both pregnancies puking into garbage
       | bags she carried with her everywhere because she refused to take
       | the anti-nausea medication she was prescribed to keep things down
       | and other than the epidural, she refused to take even OTC
       | painkillers or drinking caffeine of any sort (decaf or not)
       | during her pregnancy for fear of repercussions to the babies down
       | the line. This was on top of her STRONG aversion to even cannabis
       | and only occasional wine drinking in what most would consider
       | only a slight step above teetotaling.
       | 
       | While I can completely and utterly understand the medical
       | profession's careful monitoring of a situation, particularly when
       | it comes to negative birthing outcomes in the US, the first
       | response should not be the vilification of parents until they are
       | 1099% sure they have evidence that supports such action.
       | 
       | But, then again, when we had our first kiddo and she received an
       | incorrectly inserted epidural there wasn't even a single apology
       | from anyone, let alone the anesthesiologist who let the epidural
       | leak into her skin, eventually puffing up the skin to a
       | noticeable bubble, rather than where it was supposed to be,
       | leaving her in excruciating pain to the point where I had to
       | scream at the nurse's station for 45 straight minutes until
       | someone would listen instead of just telling me she was fine and
       | we were overreacting. Or the doctor who was stitching her up
       | afterward, lacking any and all bedside manner, by saying he
       | should have taken a before and after photo of her vagina, in
       | front of me and my wife, because he had done such a great job.
       | 
       | When it came to our stay in the NICU: we were asleep in a room on
       | another floor, our first in 40+ hours, they performed surgery on
       | our daughter w/o asking our permission or informing us first
       | because they attempted to call the room we were in but we didn't
       | answer--only later to find out that the room's phone had been
       | removed and wasn't there. No one thought to come to the room or
       | even call the nurses' station literally next to the room to have
       | them ask/inform us of the surgery first.
       | 
       | But, sure, go ahead and add on immense stress in one of the most
       | stressful situations of our lives through false accusations while
       | protecting your doctors to the nth degree.
        
         | getcrunk wrote:
         | Holy shit! What hospital?
        
           | OutOfHere wrote:
           | Holy Shit Hospital.
           | 
           | Fwiw, the hospital noted in the article (not in the parent
           | comment), is Kaiser Permanente hospital in Santa Rosa, in
           | Northern California.
        
         | OutOfHere wrote:
         | These could be fair opportunities to rightfully sue the
         | hospital for emotional harassment and more. If you don't sue
         | the hospital, nothing will change.
        
           | ipython wrote:
           | My wife was almost killed due to a botched surgery (for
           | cancer). She felt bad for weeks afterward - and every time we
           | returned, we were told she "just needed more time". So I
           | finally admitted her to the ER where they declared she was in
           | septic shock.
           | 
           | I inquired about suing (to some attorneys who specialize in
           | this sort of thing) and was basically told that there was
           | little chance of any recovery, and it would be a large burden
           | on us to literally re-litigate the entire traumatic event. So
           | we passed.
        
             | OutOfHere wrote:
             | The trick is to settle out of court before the full case
             | plays out in court. If they choose not to settle, you still
             | don't have to continue with the case if you don't want to.
        
               | ipython wrote:
               | This sounds like something the attorneys would have
               | suggested if they thought it was worth the time. I don't
               | mean to be snippy, but have you done this? It's easy to
               | make this comment online- it's a whole other thing to
               | actually go through with it on top of all your other life
               | stressors and reliving the trauma. I would welcome your
               | story, so I can learn on how best to approach if there is
               | ever a next time.
        
               | OutOfHere wrote:
               | Btw, even if there is no "recovery", the doctor's
               | insurance will still shoot up due to the judgment against
               | the doctor, which can be a desirable outcome. If good men
               | do nothing, the same doctor will kill someone the next
               | time. As a motivating example, please lookup "Florida
               | surgeon removes man's liver instead of his spleen,
               | causing his death". This doctor had been injuring people
               | for a while, nothing was done, and finally he killed
               | someone. Frankly, it seems that the attorneys you spoke
               | to were not the right ones for the task.
               | 
               | The thing about trauma is that you're already reliving
               | it. You came here to share the story which is proof of
               | this. I understand though that life can be burdensome as
               | it is, with no time for a difficult lawsuit.
        
           | dzhiurgis wrote:
           | In all honestly this looks more like swiss-cheese issue than
           | systematic problem.
           | 
           | Post-op vagina pics is quite funny one, but I can see not
           | working at that moment.
        
             | falcolas wrote:
             | Yes, a photo of an unnaturally tightened vagina, giving the
             | wife discomfort or outright pain during sex going forward
             | in an effort to "make the vagina tighter for the husband",
             | sounds fucking hilarious.
             | 
             | Especially since they very rarely ask if they can do it,
             | and if they do, they ask the husband. It's surprisingly
             | barbaric in this day and age.
        
       | doctorpangloss wrote:
       | > She wondered aloud what neighbors would say if they saw her
       | daughter playing in the mud, if someone might accuse her of being
       | a bad parent.
       | 
       | I can't really get inside the head of the assholes who judge kids
       | playing in the mud. It's real.
       | 
       | > The day after Smith delivered her son, a doctor told her that
       | she and her baby had tested positive for meth and that the
       | hospital had notified child protective services... Smith's
       | husband, Michael, asked the doctor to review his wife's medical
       | records to confirm her prescription, according to the doctor's
       | notes.
       | 
       | Is there a reckoning coming for OB/GYN training in America?
        
         | falcolas wrote:
         | Yes, but (unfortunately) not from this. From fewer and fewer
         | states having candidates come to train in those states to
         | become an OB/GYN due to the restrictive abortion laws. Not to
         | mention the experienced OB/GYN are leaving for the same reason.
        
       | petermcneeley wrote:
       | There was a talk show host that use to talk about this about 15
       | years ago. I tried but I cannot seem to find any clips of him on
       | youtube.
        
         | irowe wrote:
         | Not a talk show, but the pilot season of Mythbusters tackled
         | this. They registered some false positives and the test
         | manufacturer refused to admit it was possible.
        
           | falcolas wrote:
           | Yeah. That was really eye opening. They had to go to a proper
           | lab to have the false positive properly assessed. And they
           | had that false positive for close to 24 hours, as I recall.
        
       | OutOfHere wrote:
       | Sue the hospital is all I can say. Also sue the social worker
       | personally, and their employer too. Document and record
       | everything.
       | 
       | Be careful about making any statements that could be misconstrued
       | as evidence against you, but feel free to yell at the staff
       | (never at the police) to show your immediate disgust.
        
         | kylehotchkiss wrote:
         | Sue the social worker personally, this represents exceptionally
         | poor judgment and critical thinking skills. Truly bottom of
         | their class, local governments hiring the bottom of the barrel.
         | Costco would even have a digital receipt for any member
         | purchase if they discarded the paper one. Wouldn't police at
         | least have to have probable cause before even running a test
         | like this?
         | 
         | 1 visit to this families home the day after should have been
         | sufficient to clear this up.
        
       | anigbrowl wrote:
       | _Federal officials have known for decades that urine screens are
       | not reliable. Poppy seeds--which come from the same plant used to
       | make heroin--are so notorious for causing positives for opiates
       | that last year the Department of Defense directed service members
       | to stop eating them._
       | 
       | Absolute meme country. Why do we institutionalize such stupidity?
        
         | kylehotchkiss wrote:
         | Because it's cheaper than trying to design higher quality or
         | more specific tests.
        
         | ChainOfFools wrote:
         | By selecting for efficient test taking robots at the critical
         | gateways to the graduate level education necessary to obtain
         | these decision-making "leadership" roles.
         | 
         | A comparable phenomenon is at work in medical school
         | admissions, with similar results that lead to the sort of
         | appallingly callous group-preservation outcomes described in
         | the original article and some of the comments here.
         | 
         | The entire system is irreversibly broken at the most
         | fundamental levels, as this same class of decision makers are
         | the ones who are consulted when developing the next round of
         | gatekeeping tests and curricula.
        
       | OutOfHere wrote:
       | Technically, heroin should be legal just like marijuana is legal.
       | It was used for thousands of years as a minor addiction and
       | without harm, providing much needed relief to people. (I'm not
       | saying it's suitable for prenatal use.) The pharma industry will
       | never allow it to happen, preferring to sell their narcotics
       | instead.
        
       | tokai wrote:
       | The drug testing nonsense in the US is the weirdest thing. Here
       | it seems that it even supplant the actual thing you want to
       | achieve - identifying children with development damage from the
       | mothers drug abuse. If the child is perfectly healthy it
       | shouldn't matter what any drug test states. It's like the testing
       | is more important than the outcome.
        
       | adamnemecek wrote:
       | Why is the US government like this?
        
       | ipython wrote:
       | My son was embarrassed that he wet himself during class one day
       | (he's way too old for this, we've had him medically evaluated and
       | come out with no medical issues, etc... he just will get
       | engrossed in screens and relieve himself because he doesn't want
       | to leave to the bathroom).
       | 
       | Anyway the substitute teacher that day believed his sob story
       | about how angry his mother would get when she finds out he's
       | soiled himself, and this ends up in a referral to child
       | protective services. A case agent is assigned, comes to visit the
       | house while I'm out of town (we had no idea until she showed up
       | at the door). Thankfully, no action was taken. But now we have
       | this "black mark" on our record as parents for five years.
       | 
       | I get why these agencies exist, and there are real problems out
       | there. But to be caught up in these bureaucratic regimes is a
       | total nightmare, as you're presumed to be a total douchebag until
       | proven otherwise. It's terrifying.
        
         | falcolas wrote:
         | It's the classical problem of how do you provide protection for
         | someone with no power in a relationship against the person with
         | all the power in a relationship.
         | 
         | Do you believe the rape victim, or the rapist? The child or the
         | parent? The physically/mentally disabled or their care givers?
         | 
         | Sadly, there's been too many people in power who have proven
         | themselves to be assholes to just trust the people with the
         | power when they say they're not assholes.
        
       | jimt1234 wrote:
       | The article seems to focus on the unreliability of drug testing,
       | which is a great topic, but IMHO, the real issue here is mothers
       | being drug-tested, seemingly without their consent or knowledge.
       | Furthermore, I feel like focusing on the reliability of drug
       | testing (again, a great topic) implies the practice of drug
       | testing mothers is acceptable. It's not. We all wanna protect
       | babies, and punish bad parents, but why does this seem to always
       | fall on mothers/women? Yes, I know there's plenty of laws that
       | _could_ apply to fathers, but I 've never heard of a dude getting
       | drug-tested without his consent as a condition of fatherhood.
        
         | lazyasciiart wrote:
         | Because many people really really want to criminalize using
         | drugs while pregnant. Some states already have.
         | 
         | Edit: Washington state updated their state guidelines so that
         | if a baby tests positive for opiates _and they match a
         | prescribed medication the mother is taking_ then they don't
         | need to make a report to CPS. You literally had news articles
         | screaming that babies would die because of this change.
         | 
         | e.g this article is a good example of the coverage: mostly they
         | never even explained that it had to be a prescribed drug to get
         | out of reporting https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-
         | news/health/wa-hospital...
        
         | jimt1234 wrote:
         | Also, CPS is a joke:
         | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40379325#40381801
        
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