BOOSTED BY MEDIUM

The Methamphetamine Cook House Children

These two are with me forever

It has been 20 years but I can still see their skeletal limbs, still feel their pounding pulses, still smell the stink of their unwashed little bodies.

They were both sequestered in the social worker’s office, running wild, tearing up the place, unable to control themselves or still their manic movements.

Jana and Jolene, age three and five, had been brought to my Emergency Department (ED) following their father’s arrest for drug manufacture and distribution.

Mom had vanished.

The police wanted the girls medically evaluated. And the two needed a safe place to stay.

With help from the social worker and some ED techs, I was able to perform rudimentary physical examinations on both girls. They were held in the tech’s laps and lavishly petted, like recently-captured feral creatures.

Once I determined it was safe to do so, I asked that both Jana and Jo receive weight-appropriate sedatives, benzodiazepines (Valium-like medications) to help slow their racing hearts and calm their hyperactivity. When slightly calmed they were brought food and encouraged to eat. Neither girl was much interested.

Since the initial sedative medication doses had only a minimal effect, both Jana and Jo received a second and then a third dose. Neither became sedated, but at three times the usual sedating dose they calmed enough to stop destroying the office. They also allowed blood draws and a more in-depth physical examination, checking for bruises and other evidence of trauma beneath the tattered filthy rags that covered their bodies.

Thankfully, signs of overt physical abuse weren’t found.

Much later a specialized team was brought in to evaluate for evidence of sexual abuse. Again, thankfully, there was no evidence to suggest that either girl had been victimized in that manner.

I did check to see that neither girl was anemic, had any significant blood chemistry abnormalities or had a urinary tract infection. I also did chest x-rays to check for trauma, like rib fractures, or pneumonia. No striking or treatable medical problems were found.

In the midst of this, the police checked back in with some social background.

Per their investigation and interviews with neighbors it emerged that both Jana and Jolene had been essentially imprisoned in their father’s meth cookhouse since birth. The girls were rarely seen outside. Neither had ever been registered for school or daycare.

Why no one ever called child protective services or the police is beyond me. But I knew the neighborhood the girls had been rescued from, having driven through it occasionally on my way to work. I’m certain most of the people living there had their own dark secrets to keep. Involving the authorities in their lives or even in the lives of children at risk was not something these folks were likely to do.

When their house was searched, meth, meth precursors, meth manufacturing waste and lab equipment occupied every room.

The girls had been subjected to a methamphetamine high nearly daily from birth to ages three and five. They’d also been exposed to toxic wastes of various kinds.

Later that day, Jana and Jolene left my ED in the care of emergency foster parents.

I fully expected to be called to testify in the legal case involving Jana and Jolene’s father, but never was. Perhaps the evidence against him was so compelling that a doctor’s assertions that a father had harmed his daughters, likely for their entire lives, was unnecessary.

The girls passed from my presence but not from my life.

When I conjure their beings, like now when I write their story or consider how bent and twisted they are still likely to be, I see them. I feel them. I smell them.

In my heart and in my head I am with them again.

But, there was nothing I could do for them then. There’s nothing I can do about it now.

Suddenly, writing this and repeatedly re-reading it, there’s a twinge behind my eyes.

There’s nothing I can do about that either.

Not every problem has a solution.