GIRL SUFFERER.

Hokitika Guardian, 13 November 1925, Page 1

GIRL SUFFERER.

SWALLOWED A HAIRPIN

SYDNEY. Nov. 4

The story of a girl who suffered great pain for tour years and whose ailment was wrongly diagnosed by 25 doctors, lias been revealed by a Sydney newspaper. For those four years the girl. Eileen Goodwill, wont from hospital to hospital. Iroiu doctor Io doctor, niul nparenlly was doomed to a life of pain. AVlieu the sickness first manifested itself. Miss Goodwin was 14 years of age. Thinking that a swelling near her hip was nothing dangerous her parents tried home t ivuimont. but when gradually she hoeame worse, they consulted a doctor. His verdict was that the girl had a tulmrcular hip and be held out. little hope for her ultimate recovery. Then began a heartbreaking round of doctors, who, in spite of the fact, that X-ray photographs of the hip showed no consumption of the hone held to tlie-ir decision. Twenty-five in all told the heart-broken girl and her heart-broken parents that the hip was tubercular. At last the swelling on the bip became so bad that Miss Goodwin was forced to seel; admission to the Coast Hospital. There her father made the suggestion that the girl’s bowels should be photographed by the X-ray, being positive that no signs oT tuberculosis bad shown themselves in his or his wife’s family. He won the attention and sympathy of a young medical man, who starved the patient for several days and then took a photograph of the bowel. AYlien the negative was developed be was startled to find recorded on the plate the picture of a large hairpin, tile points of which had perforated the bowel.

Xo time was lost- in getting bliss Goodwin on to the operating table, and a comparatively simple operation resulted in the removal of the cause of four years' pain and sickness. Since then she has been progressing rapidly and she will soon be ready to leave the hospital. Miss Goodwin cannot remember swallowing the hairpin The theory entertained by her parents is that growing tired when dressing her fine mass of hair one night, she went to sleep and swallowed a hairpin she had had in her mouth. All the while she was ailing she had never been told that she was thought to be suffering from tuberculosis. She is thankful for this fact. “If T had known.” she told an interviewer. “I don’t think I could have stood the strain. But that hairpin was had enough. No wonder I | often felt as though a knife was being driven into me.”