AN AMAZING CASE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19448, 6 November 1925, Page 5

AN AMAZING CASE

TWENTY-FIVE DOCTORS WRONG. GIRL SWALLOWS HAIRPIN. TREATED FOR TUBERCULAR HIP. (Sydney Daily Telegraph). For four years Eileen Florence Goodwin went from hospital to hospital, from doctor to doctor, and apparently was doomed to a life of pain and certain death from tuberculosis. She had consulted over 25 doctors, most of whom were of opinion that she was suffering from a tubercular hip and could see no hope of her recovery. At long last, however, a Coast Hospital doctor located a hairpin, over two inches in length, in the bowel. This has been extracted, and the girl is recovering.

Four years ago, when sickness first manifested itself, Miss Goodwin was fourteen years of age. Thinking that a swelling near the hip was nothing serious, her parents tried home treatment, but when gradually she became worse they consulted a doctor.

His verdict was that the girl had a tubercular hip and that there was little hope or her ultimate recovery. She was not told this, however, because of her sensitive temperament. Then began a heartbreaking round of visits to doctor after doctor, covering a peril- 1 of four years.

With tuberculosis of the hip constantly in the minds of her parents, the girl was X-rayed time after time, and though no consumption of the bone was evident tho doctors held to their decision. Not Much Hope. Finally, when she was admitted to the Coast Hospital, it was thought that very little could be done except postpone the inevitable end for a little while. By this time the abscess was in a bad condition —suppurating and menacing.

As a forlorn hope, X-ray photographs of bliss Goodwin’s bones were again taken, but with no more success than form er J v.

Then" the father made another suggestion. Ho was positive that no indications of tuberculosis had ever shown in his family, and ventured the opinion that the trouble was the result of an accident. So he asked that the bowels should bo X-rayed.

A young medical man. who was operating the X-ray apparatus, agreed that there was a possibility of intestinal trouble. He starved tho patient for some days and then took a photograph of tho bowel. When the negative was developed he was startled to find recorded on tho plato the picture of a largo hairpin, the point of which had perforated the bowel.

No timo was lost in getting the girl on to the operating table, and a comparatively simple operation resulted in the removal of the cause of four years’ pain and sickness. Miss Goodwin has progressed rapidly since tho operation, and will soon be ready to leave hospital. How did the girl come to swallow the hairpin? That is a point of interest. No one knows definitely, but Mr. Goodwin has an idea on tho point. His daughter has an exceptionally fine mass of hair, of which she has always been careful. The father conjectures, then, that there must have been an occasion on which the girl was very tired and that she fell asleep while dressing her hair for tho night—with the pin in her mouth. “Must Have Swallowed It.” Miss Goodwin herself has no knowledge of how tho hairpin came to be where it was found. “I must have swallowed it when quite a baby,” she said to a “Daily [Telegraph” man “but I have, no recollection of it. ’ ’ ! Miss Goodwin is warm in her praise of the toast Hospital and ifs staff. “I’ve suffered a great deal for four years,” she declared, “and got no | satisfaction until I came here. The ; kindness and attention I have received ; at the hands of tho doctors find nurses have been wonderful, and, naturally, 1 have nothing but admiration for the professional ability of tho men who succeeded where so many doctors had failed. “Thank goodness, I didn’t know that they suspected I was tubercular. If I had, I don’t think I could h'ave stood the strain. But that hairpin was bad enough. No wonder I often felt as though a knife was driven into me.” Her History. bliss Goodwin is an Australian of the third generation. Her great-grand-father was tho discoverer of the Gren- ’ fell goldfields, and her grandfather and father are both natives of Australia. > Her father is A. F. (“Dodger”) Goodwin, the one-time popular Queensland jockey, and she is a niece of Aid. Bates of Paddington.

“Thanks to the Coast Hospital and its staff,” she concluded, “I fan now look forward to a complete recovery instead of tho living death predicted for me by so manv doctors.”