Mom Puts Son in Hospital with Too Much Care
Wed May 14, 9:52 AM ET Add Oddly Enough - Reuters to My Yahoo!
ROME (Reuters) - An Italian mother stuffed her 14-year-old son with so many unnecessary medicines that he ballooned to 310 pounds, could not walk and eventually had to be taken to a hospital, media reported on Wednesday.
The housewife from Pavia, a northern Italian town near Milan, kept her only child away from school for more than a year, plying him with pills and potions to protect him from all of the illnesses she imagined could claim him.
Police visited his home after teachers raised the alarm when she tried to keep him out of school for a second year.
"The boy was in a wretched condition, swollen beyond belief, incapable of moving. It was foul, we called an ambulance immediately," one policeman told Corriere della Sera newspaper.
Doctors found cortisone-based drugs in his blood. Used to treat a variety of illnesses, they can cause swelling and imbalances in metabolism in large doses. After a few months in hospital, doctors were surprised at the still-dangerously-high chemical levels in the boy's blood.
They then discovered the mother, while pretending to deliver home-cooked food to her son, had actually been sneaking in more medicine and was slowly killing him.
Doctors said the woman was suffering from Munchausen Syndrome by proxy, where sufferers fabricate symptoms for other people and then try to cure them.
A local court has severed the mother's parental rights.
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