Dr. Sally Smith
Appearances
Nobody Should Believe Me
S03 Ep07 RERUN: Trial of the Century
I took, as part of my medical evaluation, I took a fairly extensive history from Mrs. Kowalski and a much more abbreviated history from Mr. Kowalski. The meeting with Mrs. Kowalski took place on October 11th, 2016, and the relatively brief interview or history taking with Mr. Kowalski occurred on October 13th.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S03 Ep07 RERUN: Trial of the Century
So at that time, Maya was still in the pediatric ICU. They have a like a family conference room kind of thing outside of the main entrance to the pediatric ICU. And because of the investigation that was being initiated and everything, I scheduled a time where the child protective investigators and the people in law enforcement that were investigating
Nobody Should Believe Me
S03 Ep07 RERUN: Trial of the Century
investigating the case could join me while I took my medical history. So as I recall, there were about five of those people, two or three child protective investigators, I think two law enforcement people, and Mrs. Kowalski. They were all in that room already when I got there for the scheduled meeting, which I believe began at 545 in the evening on the 11th. Okay.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S03 Ep07 RERUN: Trial of the Century
I always say, I'm Dr. Sally Smith. I'm a pediatrician with the Child Protection Team. And that's what I said to her.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S03 Ep07 RERUN: Trial of the Century
That's it's completely irrelevant for a child protection team medical evaluation because that's the whole point of the of the evaluation and gathering all the records. The problem in these cases is that the treating physicians have not done that. And so the fact that he who sent her to Mexico for the ketamine coma told me not to investigate child abuse was completely irrelevant to me because.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S03 Ep07 RERUN: Trial of the Century
my job was to investigate child abuse. So if I had come away from my job saying, I was supposed to do this, but this doctor told me not to, so I'm not doing it, and there's no evidence of anything here, I would not have been doing my job even remotely near a standard of care.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S03 Ep07 RERUN: Trial of the Century
The both sides of the story is the responsibility of the various people who are going to present it to the court.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S03 Ep07 RERUN: Trial of the Century
My job as the medical director for the child protection team is to do what I need to do to assist the investigators and the detectives and the attorneys that are involved in the case as to whether there is evidence to support a diagnosis of whatever type of child abuse is being assessed.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S03 Ep07 RERUN: Trial of the Century
So it's not my responsibility to lay out some whole long argument about what it might be otherwise if I had extensive evidence to support that it's a type of child abuse.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S03 Ep07 RERUN: Trial of the Century
Medical child abuse is a child abuse pediatric diagnosis. There is a parallel track in psychiatry where there's a thing called factitious disorder imposed on another, which is assessing the perpetrator or the caretaker in that scenario. But I don't need a psychiatric diagnosis. degree to assess medical child abuse.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S03 Ep07 RERUN: Trial of the Century
I'm very well trained to evaluate medical child abuse based on my child abuse pediatrics experience and board certification.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S03 Ep07 RERUN: Trial of the Century
I believe in the history, I made reference to that. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I did say that he, you know, made that diagnosis. But this is a doctor who was giving a child, a 10-year-old child who's on the small side, 1,000 milligrams of ketamine, anywhere between 8 and 32 milligrams of Versed,
Nobody Should Believe Me
S03 Ep07 RERUN: Trial of the Century
doses of Zofran, dose 1,750 milligrams typically of magnesium, all at the same time in an outpatient setting with no documentation of vital signs. And there was indication in the records that appeared to me to suggest that the family member was the person monitoring the pulse oximeter.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S03 Ep07 RERUN: Trial of the Century
So that person, to me, is not particularly reliable in terms of whether this child needed the treatment that she was getting, whether he made an accurate diagnosis or not. So I put his information in my report. Yes, I discounted his diagnosis.
Nobody Should Believe Me
S03 Ep07 RERUN: Trial of the Century
Well, I never got any records from Dr. Cantu, so I couldn't really address that whole situation other than from the WordPress blog. This person put a nine-year-old child in a ketamine coma for days. It took her probably about a week to just be able to be discharged from the hospital after that. I didn't find him reliable from what I saw.