A Texas mother suspected of suffering from Munchausen syndrome by proxy brought her 4-year-old son to the doctor’s office or hospital more than 200 times — culminating with the insertion of a feeding tube, authorities said.
Megan Gee, of Wichita Falls, was arrested Wednesday on a charge of causing serious bodily injury to a child after putting the toddler on 77 different medicines, according to an arrest warrant affidavit obtained by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The 4-year-old was taken to a medical professional 227 times in just four years — accounting for at least 33 percent of his life, the affidavit states.
But several doctors had told Gee that her son didn’t show signs of the illnesses she claimed he had, beginning with multiple emergency room visits in Wichita Falls for vomiting and diarrhea in January 2016.
At the same time, Gee was also taking her son to a hospital in Fort Worth, where she told doctors the boy was suffering from seizures, vomiting and constipation. But again, physicians were unable to diagnose the boy with a major ailment after a litany of tests showed no major problems, according to the affidavit.
Gee called one doctor at the hospital 42 times between October 2015 and March 2017, claiming that her son wasn’t eating. That led a doctor to insert a feeding tube in March 2016, some two months after a Texas Child Protective Services report was filed by another physician in connection with the boy, authorities said.
“If a mother tells you, ‘My child is not eating, he does all these things,’ and you’ve exhausted all the other possibilities, then a feeding tube is a way to get nutrition to a child that refuses to eat or can’t eat or vomits everything they eat,” Dr. Lyn Hunt, who inserted the tube, told the newspaper.
Hunt said she would not have inserted the tube in the boy’s stomach had she known that child welfare authorities were looking into allegations that Gee had falsified his medical records.
Parents who misrepresent the medical history of their children sometimes visit several hospitals or facilities in search of treatment, Hunt told the newspaper.
A doctor in Wichita Falls then made another report to CPS about Gee after the feeding tube was inserted, but the allegation that she was fabricating her son’s symptoms was closed, apparently without a “face-to-face interview” with any doctors, the affidavit states.
Texas CPS workers do not get trained in how to spot suspected cases of Munchausen syndrome by proxy, according to the affidavit. The disorder is characterized by a caregiver fabricating or inducing illnesses in another person, usually for attention or for other emotional needs.
The cases are very rare and employees at the state agency typically don’t experience them, a spokeswoman told the newspaper.
“With a condition as rare as this, that can be difficult to detect, it makes sense to use agency-wide resources instead of trying to extensively train thousands of workers,” CPS spokeswoman Marissa Gonzales wrote the Star-Telegram in an email.
Messages seeking comment from Gee, who was released from custody Thursday after posting $25,000 bail, were not returned Monday.