A three-year-old girl, who had to suffer for three months by consuming gluten despite her intolerance to determine if she would have a more serious illness, will have to suffer the ordeal again due to a hospital error, according to his mother.
“I don’t even have the words to explain how physically and emotionally destroyed I was when the doctor called me. It was devastating, said Natasha Contardi, the girl’s mother, in an interview with Global News. Three full months of suffering for my daughter that were not supposed to happen.
Struggling with gluten intolerance since birth, little Teagan, 3, should have recently undergone medical tests to check if she has celiac disease.
Because in a patient struggling with this disease, gluten would physically damage the intestinal mucosa, instead of simply causing discomfort, according to what the mother would have explained to the English-speaking media.
“With celiac disease, as little as a breadcrumb in the mouth could make the person sick for days,” she reportedly said.
Except that, to perform the test at the Montreal Children’s Hospital, the little girl would have needed to put gluten back into her system, forcing her to add it to her menu for 12 long weeks.
“She complained during meals, saying that she was no longer hungry or that her stomach hurt […] She developed a pale, itchy rash; she scratches herself until she bleeds. She was crying on the way to the bathroom,” her mother would have described.
But all this would have to start from scratch, since after two blood tests, in February and March, the mother would have remained without news from the hospital despite repeated calls for the results. After a while, she would have finally been informed that the blood samples would not have been tested in time by the hospital and would therefore no longer be viable.
However, this would be a rare situation, according to what Montreal Children’s Hospital spokesperson Christine Bouthillier reportedly said in an email to Global News, noting that the hospital’s laboratories would perform 8 million tests per year.
“Emergency cases are usually seen within 24 hours. Sample loss is very rare. However, sample processing is delayed for some tests that are not clinically urgent. The priority of treatment is determined by the doctors”, she would have specified.