Heather Ferguson was beside herself.
The 34-year-old mother of 2-month-old twin boys had just spent several days in a Charlotte hospital with one son as he underwent diagnostic tests for heart failure and other life-threatening ailments. When nothing was found, doctors resorted to an Internet search. That yielded a possible diagnosis and a recommendation that Ferguson consult a pediatric surgeon.
But the surgeon who saw Dylan Ferguson in December 2006 offered little beyond a cursory exam of the infant's badly swollen legs and groin. "Let's just keep an eye on it and bring him back in six months," Ferguson remembers the surgeon telling her.
"That was the worst moment," she recalled. "It's so horrible to know that something's wrong and to get the brushoff. I felt like we were on our own and that the medical system had just washed its hands of us." Every time Ferguson looked at the normal legs of Dylan's fraternal twin, Devdan, the contrast was upsetting.
