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“They had one goal, to take my baby.” A local mom is furious at SOMC, Portsmouth Police, and the Scioto County Sheriff’s Office after an incident involving her three-year-old son last week. She claims a nurse practitioner at the hospital flat-out lied to police and CPS, causing officers to treat her like a criminal. The woman says it’s all the more frustrating because she’s a nurse herself. “They forced my son into admission to Nationwide Children’s under false diagnoses with threats to take him away and arrest me.”
The woman said it all started last Wednesday when her son was in the care of his father. She said the dad has been sober for six years and takes Suboxone as a maintenance medication. He was taking his daily medication when an older child’s school bus pulled up at the home. He went to get that child off the bus, but when he came back, his Suboxone wasn’t in his bedroom. He panicked, thinking the three-year-old might have gotten into the medication, and rushed him to the Wheelersburg Urgent Care.
However, shortly after he arrived at the facility with the child, the man’s roommate called to say that the medicine had actually been put back in its proper place and hadn’t been left out at all, and the dad had just forgotten to put it away. The roommate even included a video to show that the medication had been safely put away.
Staff at the urgent care called for an ambulance to take the child to the SOMC Emergency Department, saying that they would still need to check the boy out and make sure he was okay. The child seemed fine, and the father waited several hours in the emergency room with him while waiting to be seen.
The mom, who was working on shift as a nurse at the time, called down to speed to medical personnel. They said the boy was fine and that he would be discharged once he tested clear for drugs. The mom said she told them she’d be down at the end of her shift.
However, once she arrived, the mom says she was confronted by an angry nurse practitioner. “Who stated my son was being sent to Nationwide Children’s for overdose? I was super confused at this point because everyone already knew that our son had not ingested anything, and he was still running around playing. They had not been monitoring his vitals or anything, and they had not even done bloodwork or a urine collection. Another staff member came in and shoved papers in my face demanding I sign them. They stated that my son had overdosed and was being transported to Children’s. I kindly said, ‘I am not signing that, or anything, until I speak to a social worker, because this is so insane.’ Her response was ‘fine, you don’t want to sign these, then I will call Children Services and we will just have him removed from you.’”
The woman says that’s when things went from bad to worse. “Next thing I know, the social worker is threatening me with CPS. And my son’s ER room is surrounded by security, Portsmouth PD, and Scioto County Sheriff’s Office deputies.” She said when her child’s father tried to go outside for fresh air, “The security guard chest bumped him and blocked him in and told him he was not going anywhere. Then CPS arrived.”
That’s when the mom said she learned the nurse practitioner had told CPS the child ingested medication and that the father had found the child with the empty packaging. “. I explained to CPS this was a complete lie!”
The angry mom says she believes the nurse practitioner discriminated against her child’s father when she saw what kind of medication he was on. “She had one thing on her mind that night. She labeled him a junkie, and her goal was to have our son removed from BOTH of us! FOR NOTHING!”
The woman said social workers and law enforcement seemed angered by the fact that she was aware of her medical rights as a parent. She said she chose to go live on her Facebook page to talk about the situation, and officials threatened her with arrest and tried to remove her from the hospital. She said when she told them she wanted to take the boy home, they placed a medical hold on the child, though they didn’t do any drug testing on the boy until nearly 10 pm after she demanded it. That test came back negative for drugs.
When the mom asked to leave the hospital with the child, she said police threatened her with arrest. hospital “I asked what charge they were going to arrest me on and they said ‘we don’t know yet’ and I said, ‘So this isn’t a criminal matter then?’ And again, I got the response, ‘We don’t know yet.’ So I asked, ‘Can leave now?’ And they said yes, so I picked my child up, and they told me I was not taking my child. I told them they had no court order or right to separate me from my child.”
She said the hospital transferred the boy to Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, where he once again tested clean for any drugs.
The mom says she’s so angry, she plans to sue. “Since coming out with our story we have heard tons of others with horror stories about that ED and CPS taking their children due to the hospital lying or making up things. I have made complaints to the board of nursing. I will be filing a grievance with the hospital. And I am also seeking litigation. I will not stop, and I will not give up until my family receives an apology for how disgusting we were treated, and I ensure things like this do not happen to others!”
She says the frustrating part is that there are children in real danger in Scioto County, “There are a lot of children in this county that really do need CPS help. This was a gross and utterly embarrassing misuse of resources.”