Chapter 17: Why Millions of Kids Are Misdiagnosed and Harmed Annually

What You Can Do For Your Children. Now.

Driving home with my then three-year-old son Brandon in the back seat of our car, I heard, “Mommy, my chest hurts.”

We had been well trained for this; at two, Brandon had been diagnosed with severe asthma, a condition that didn’t seem to improve despite his daily doses of inhaled steroids and bronchodilators. “How bad is it? What kind of animal?”

“There’s a hippo on my chest.”

I slammed on the brakes, made an illegal U-turn towards the local emergency room, and parked haphazardly outside the hospital doors. Snatching Brandon from the back seat, I ran into the ER, shouting, “There’s a hippo on his chest. There’s a hippo on his chest.”

The triage nurse took him out of my arms. “I’ve got him,” she said. When I returned a few minutes later, hyperventilating from fear and the sprint from the parking lot, I found Brandon sitting on an examining table, swinging his legs and eating a cookie.

“He’s fine,” she said. “No bronchial sounds, no symptoms.”

I asked him, “Does your chest still hurt?”

“Yeth” …