"Misdiagnosed Child"

My child was referred to the Armadale hospital paediatricians back in early 2023 with what our gp suspected was absent seizures. When we finally saw the dr at Armadale, I felt very fobbed off by the dr. I had two videos to show them that displayed my child laying quite motionless on the floor with some lip smacking activity, I also exclaimed that their lips would go slightly ashen. But I also hadn’t notice my child do it for a few weeks.

I felt the dr was quick to tell me they just seemed tired or perhaps it was a ‘weird post Covid’ symptom as they had, had Covid two weeks prior. I assured the doctor my child shouldn’t have been tired as in both videos they had just woken from a nap. As a first time parent though and someone who had put all their trust in drs I believed the doctor and we were discharged from the service.

A month or so later my child went on to have a massive seizure at home where we had to call an ambulance due to them being completely blue and unresponsive. This Dr did meet us down in ed and apologised to us but we later found out that in the time we had seen the dr initially to now my child had been having seizures this whole time which massively hindered us getting into neuro at pch and starting on medication.

We are grateful for the apology and for one to admit when at fault but we would like to see drs take a little bit more time to look at what is presenting to them.

My child was admitted to Armadale hospital a few months later after having a seizure, they did a finger blood glucose test that came back at 14 both my spouse who is type one diabetic and myself asked the drs if our child could be diabetic and were reassured and told no.

We both believed the Dr and didn’t think much more about it. We had an uneventful stay at Armadale due to the seizures and then were discharged home. During the next week or so at home I had started to notice my child drinking more but reassured myself the Dr said they didn’t have diabetes.

The next fortnight we were back at Armadale with seizures again and this time when they checked my child’s bgl it came back as high and now they’re telling us they more than likely have diabetes! Later on when I looked at the blood test results from 2 weeks before I believe there were so many red flag indicators for type one diabetes that were somehow missed. Including:

High sodium

High potassium

High chloride

High anion gap

High glucose

High lactate

High calcium ionised

All of these can be a sign of undiagnosed diabetes or Diabetic ketoacidosis

We never heard anything from Armadale regarding this and it wasn’t until it slipped up in conversation while we were at pch that I believe they seemingly were disgusted my child wasn’t diagnosed earlier when they should have been.

I believe they literally could’ve gone into dka and died or needed to be admitted to icu if it wasn’t for us representing two weeks later.

The following month, I presented my child to Armadale with working to breathe. The staff took through emergency noting my child was working to breathe but only intermittently had them hooked to the monitor. When my child would go on the monitor their stats would appear as normal, even though I let staff know it was worse while they were sleeping (head bobbing, receding at ribs and throat, stridor like noises) we were discharged.

The next day I noticed my child had a blue tinge around the lips so ended up driving to pch and they were taken straight through on a code blue into resus. Their oxygen was down in the 70s, temp over 40, and was severely dehydrated and they struggled to get a vein due to this.

We ended up being in pch for 7 days as every time my child would go to sleep their oxygen would drop to the 80s. They ended up having RSV that had turned into pneumonia.

I feel if Armadale had kept the monitor on my child continuously and not for just 10 minutes here and there they would’ve noticed how sick they were earlier.