Gold Coast fitness model and entrepreneur Tammy Hembrow spent the holiday season in and out of hospital with her youngest child, one-year-old Saskia.
After three visits to the hospital and doctors telling her it was, at first a stomach bug, and then the heat, Saskia was finally diagnosed with acute cerebellar ataxia, which is caused by inflammation in part of the brain.
Luckily, the damage is not long-term and Tammy’s daughter is home and slowly recovering.
However, after being inundated with questions from her 7.6 million Instagram followers, the 23-year-old mother-of-two has shared a YouTube video about Saskia’s symptoms with the resounding message: if you know something is wrong, keep persisting.
“When Saskia woke up from a nap I went to change her nappy and as soon as I put her down she started screaming, as if she was in pain or something. She’d never done that before,” Tammy told her viewers.
“I put her down to see if she would stand up and she couldn’t stand. She couldn’t even try to stand.”
Tammy called her partner, Reece, and examined Saskia’s body for any sign of injury or abrasion – some clue as to what was making her baby scream in a way she’d “never heard before”.
Top Comments
The contrived hospital bed photo was completely unecessary. Shows her priorities
The article suggests that the child was sent home once, re-presented after little improvement, was admitted, mother (perhaps collectively with doctor) decided to take child home after she improved temporarily, was readmitted when she deteriorated, after which point, after a transfer to another hospital and subsequent tests, the correct diagnosis was made. Whilst the message of "trust your gut" is important, so too is not making up hyperbolic claims about doctors "sending her home three times" when in fact the same story seems to contradict those claims. Sometimes it just takes time to find the right diagnosis, which was the case here.