Frustration on all fronts in struggle over child’s future – The Boston Globe
Court works to untangle battle of parents, doctors, and the state.
Read the full article from The Boston GlobeDr. Mark Korson, a soft-spoken, goateed native of Canada, prided himself on always keeping his cool, even when the highly stressed patients and families around him were losing theirs.
Still, as the chief of metabolism at Tufts Medical Center sat in his cluttered third-floor office in Chinatown last April, his frustration began to boil over. Two months earlier, Korson had sent a 14-year-old patient, Justina Pelletier, to Boston Children’s Hospital to see a former colleague of his who had previously treated the girl for gastrointestinal problems. But things had rapidly gotten off track.
A medical collision with a child in the middle – The Boston Globe
Justina has a metabolic disease. Or does she? Her parents and Children’s Hospital deadlocked, she was placed in state custody.
Read the full article from The Boston GlobeJust after midnight on a Sunday last February, Linda Pelletier climbed into the passenger seat of an ambulance as her ailing teenage daughter lay in the back. They headed for Boston Children’s Hospital, on the advice of one of the girl’s doctors. A crippling storm had dumped 3 feet of snow on parts of New England, and every time the ambulance began to fishtail, Pelletier gasped.