learning lessons- Fragile x Guardian

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She is a joy!  She is usually smiling, she says" I'm happy" twenty times a day,  she loves music, loves to dance and adores food and eating out. I am a lucky woman to be able to be be her guardian  and her friend.  She lives in a beautiful group home, her roommates are truly her family, her team of caretakers love her to death and God has blessed with good health.

My girl was born with (fragile x) syndrome and she has many, but not all of these symptoms.

• intellectual disabilities, ranging from mild to severe
• attention deficit and hyperactivity, particularly in young children
• anxiety and unstable mood
• autistic behaviors
• sensory integration problems, such as hypersensitivity to loud noises or bright lights
• speech delay, with expressive language more severely affected than receptive language
• seizures (epilepsy) affect about 25% of people with Fragile X

Recently one of her doctors decided on a course of treatment for which I did not understand or agree. Although I've have a lifetimes worth of opinions I am by no means unwilling to listen to a doctor’s reasons for treatment or medication. So I called and I faxed and I got no response, no explanation. NOTHING!

When I took over her guardianship, she had doctors in place and it never dawned on me to check on their credentials. 

Why would he decide on doing xyz and then refuse to discuss it with me? So me being me, I got suspicious and did background check of the doctor.

This doctor WAS and IS without question a criminal. He has a documented history of personal use/addition to drugs in two states. There is a record of malpractice, a history of prescribing adult psychiatric meds to children, he has been cited numerous times for over medicating venerable foster children in clinical drug trials by the FDA and he’d been arrested for drunk driving and possession of cocaine (and entered into a court diversion program).

It is beyond me how he was allowed to see patients with this record. And you can bet she will never ever enter his office again. 

I am bewildered with how the lenient medical licensing boards are with doctors and it is scary to think how our most vulnerable are at risk if exposed to these horrible doctors.

I needed to do a better job reviewing her health care providers; something I have come to regret. 

  

Do you check the background of your physicians?