We left off in the previous episode with Madison Meyer being returned to her parents after more than a year in state custody—yet still hospitalized at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego. Today, Andrea and Bex unpack the complaint filed by her parents in 2021 and Madison’s own 2024 lawsuit. *please note that this episode contains mentions of suicide and sexual assault of a minor. For resources please go to: RAINN https://rainn.org/ International Association for Suicide Prevention: https://www.iasp.info *** This podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. *** Follow Dr. Bex on instagram: @secretdoctorbex Order Andrea's new book The Mother Next Door: Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy. Click here to view our sponsors. Remember that using our codes helps advertisers know you’re listening and helps us keep making the show! Subscribe on YouTube where we have full episodes and lots of bonus content. Follow Andrea on Instagram: @andreadunlop Buy Andrea's books here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the background of Madison Meyer's legal case?
True Story Media. Just a quick reminder that my new book, The Mother Next Door, Medicine, Deception, and Munchausen by Proxy, is on sale right now wherever books are sold. The book was an Amazon editor's pick for nonfiction, and the Seattle Times called it a riveting deep dive into MVP.
And if you are an audiobook lover and you like hearing my voice, which I'm assuming you do since you're listening here, You should know that I narrate the audio book as well. If you have already read the book, which I know so many of you have, thank you so much.
Please let me know your thoughts and questions at helloandnobodieshouldbelieveme.com and we will bring my co-author, Detective Mike Weber, on for a little book Q&A and post-retirement tell-all special. Thanks for your support. Hello, it's Andrea, and today we are sharing part three of our coverage of the lawsuit against Rady Children's in San Diego, California.
If you have not listened to the first two episodes, please do go and listen to those first, as this episode will make a lot more sense. So we have previously covered the events that led up to Dana Gaske and her husband, Bill Meyer, suing Rady Children's and a number of other defendants.
Today, we're going to be jumping back into the story in early 2020 and learning a little bit more about what happened with Madison Meyer, Bill and Dana's daughter, after she was returned to the custody of her parents and how she ends up ultimately joining this lawsuit.
I'm starting off with a solo mission to recap some of the events, and then I will be back with Dr. Becks to pick up our conversation about the legal case as it stands today. As a quick refresh, in the first two episodes of the series, we covered this complex and escalating medical and legal odyssey of Madison Meyer, who was a teenager during the time of these events.
Her story begins with a reported surfing injury in 2016. Following this, according to the lawsuit, she was then diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, CRPS, and POTS. Over the course of several years, Madison then undergoes multiple surgeries and treatments for chronic pain and ends up with a host of other complications, including GI symptoms, feeding tubes, and a central line.
Her treatment spanned multiple healthcare systems, including Kaiser Permanente, where her parents work, and a controversial specialist in New York, who we will be covering in an upcoming episode. Ultimately, Madison ends up being admitted to Rady Children's in early 2019.
During this time, the hospital's suspicions of medical child abuse prompted covert video surveillance and two reports to Child Protective Services, or HHSA, as it's known in California. The second of these reports leads to a court-ordered separation from Madison's parents, which takes us up to where we begin our episode today.
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Chapter 2: Why was Madison Meyer returned to her parents?
Chapter 3: What was the role of covert surveillance in Madison Meyer's case?
So this plays into the whole sexual assault claims.
This is kind of a function of the two complaints being combined at this point because that was from Madison's complaint.
Correct. And I think this, yeah, this wouldn't have been available or information that was in the parents' complaints just because we didn't know this piece.
But I think it always makes me think, and this makes me think of the Kowalski case that Andrea and I covered a couple years ago, this idea that I looked up for myself, and as we said, we will probably speak, hopefully speak with an Ehlers-Danlos specialist, but kind of what the standard of treatment is. And it
it starts on patient education, lifestyle changes, teaching awareness of their own body, self-management techniques, physical therapy. It lists as the cornerstone of Ehlers-Danlos care. And then pain management, obviously starting with non-opioid pain medicines and so on. And then you start getting into kind of managing the coexisting conditions that come into Ehlers-Danlos. So
Those foundational things, to me, in most hospitalizations, those very basics are available, are being offered to a child. So again, because we don't have the medical records, I cannot speak to exactly what her treatment plan looked like. But to me, this feels a lot like where they were saying that Maya Kowalski was being treated as a Munchausen by proxy victim as opposed to a patient with CRPS.
Right.
Right, or they were saying one of the malpractice complaints in the Kowalski case was that they did not treat her for CRPS, and then they also claimed fraudulent billing because they put CRPS on there. So it was sort of like a double-edged sword there. But because the standard of care for CRPS is PT, OT, pain management,
What the Kowalskis wanted was horse size, in their words, doses of ketamine and ketamine, five day ketamine comas in other countries. So they were arguing that because the hospital and that was what brought the whole thing to a head originally was that the mother was demanding these day, you know, this amount of ketamine that the hospital did not provide. would not give.
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