LONDON, Ky. (AP) — Authorities say a Kentucky man has been arrested after he threw a ham at a woman during an argument over which day Christmas dinner should take place.

WAVE-TV reports that David Brannon was arrested Sunday after he tried to flee from police officers who reported to a home on a domestic dispute call.

The Laurel County Sheriff’s Office said Brannon threw items at the woman, including the ham to be eaten for Christmas dinner.

Deputies say several items were found on the kitchen floor.

Brannon is being held in the Laurel County Correctional Center on charges of assault and fleeing or evading police. Online jail records do not show if he has a lawyer.

via: https://www.kmov.com/news/kentucky-man-charged-with-throwing-christmas-ham-at-woman/article_95491423-8730-5dc4-a435-e97f600f0317.html

When 7-year-old Bailey Sheehan arrived at a hospital in Oregon partially paralyzed, a doctor said the girl was faking her symptoms to get her parents’ attention because she was jealous of her new baby sister.

But that doctor was proved wrong when an MRI showed that the girl had acute flaccid myelitis or AFM, a polio-like disease that’s struck hundreds of children since 2014.

Erin Olivera, mother of a child with AFM and founder of a private Facebook page for parents of 400 children with the disease, says Bailey’s experience is hardly unique. She estimates that based on postings by parents, as many as 1 in 10 children were told that the paralysis was all in their heads when they first sought medical care.

Experts who study the art and science of diagnosis say the problem goes beyond this one rare disease. They say that in general, when presented with a puzzling disease, physicians too often leap to a diagnosis of a psychiatric problem.

“Mental disorders become the default position to deal with medical uncertainty,” said Dr. Allen Frances, former chair of psychiatry at the Duke University School of Medicine. “It’s widespread, and it’s dangerous.”

Dr. Mark Graber, president emeritus of the Society to Improve Diagnosis in Medicine, added, “It’s a tendency that physicians have when they can’t find a physical cause.

“It’s bad. It’s very bad.”

Bailey’s story

Bailey was a healthy little girl until October 28, 2014, when she suddenly couldn’t move her neck or her right shoulder or leg.

A rehabilitation expert at a children’s hospital said Bailey wasn’t really paralyzed, according to her mother, Mikell Sheehan.

The doctor said the paralysis was an emotional reaction to her sister’s birth four months earlier. He diagnosed Bailey with a mental condition called conversion disorder.

Sheehan told the doctor off.

“I said, ‘You’ve been with my child for 15 minutes, and you think it’s psychological? Get out of my face,’ ” she remembered.

Sheehan said the doctor hinted that she was unstable.

“He said, you know, ‘moms with new babies don’t get enough sleep,’ ” she said.

Bailey’s regular pediatrician, who’d known the girl since birth, disagreed with the diagnosis and pushed for further testing. That’s when the MRI showed that she had AFM.

Armed with the correct diagnosis, Bailey received treatment for AFM, including extensive physical therapy, and four years later is walking again.

“We were lucky that her pediatrician was such an advocate for us, but I don’t know if everyone’s that lucky,” Sheehan said.

Sheehan says she understands why doctors didn’t immediately think of AFM for her daughter, because the disease was not well-known four years ago. But there are several other causes of paralysis in children, and she wonders why her daughter didn’t get a full round of testing for those.

Dr. Benjamin Greenberg, a neurologist who’s seen cases of AFM across the country, said that even this year, when AFM has made headlines nationally, parents have told him that doctors have missed the disease and suggested that their children were faking their paralysis.

“The stories I can tell are maddening and saddening,” said Greenberg, associate professor of neurology at UT Southwestern Medical Center.

Four years later, Sheehan says, she still feels the scars from her daughter’s misdiagnosis.

“You feel violated and wrongly accused,” she said.

The dangers of false certainty

Though there’s no data indicating how frequently doctors misdiagnose physical conditions as psychiatric ones, experts in the field of diagnosis say they see it all too often.

It typically starts when a patient has a perplexing illness and doctors feel a need to come up with a diagnosis.

“Doctors are uncomfortable with not having answers,” Frances said.

The consequences can be “catastrophic,” he said, because a misdiagnosis can lead to a patient receiving treatment for a disease they don’t have and missing out on treatment for the disease they do have.

“False certainty is much more dangerous than uncertainty,” he said.

The American Medical Association and the American College of Emergency Physicians declined requests for comment.

Graber, who is also professor emeritus of medicine at the Stony Brook University in New York, said part of the problem is that medical students are taught that physical symptoms sometimes have a psychological basis. That’s true, he said, but doctors need to thoroughly test for physical problems before defaulting to a psychiatric diagnosis.

“Physicians have an obligation to do a thorough workup before turning to a psychological explanation,” he said. “When a doctor can’t find a cause, that’s a great time to get a second opinion or consult with a specialist.”

Frances added that it’s OK for a doctor to simply say “I don’t know.”

“Doctors need to learn to embrace medical uncertainty,” he said.

via: https://pix11.com/2018/12/22/a-growing-trend-doctor-tells-parents-their-partially-paralyzed-7-year-old-was-faking-her-symptoms/

A police officer in Bossier City, Louisiana, has been arrested after allegedly filming himself having sex with an animal, authorities announced Thursday.

Terry Yetman, 38, was arrested on Dec. 19 and charged with 20 counts of sexual abuse of animals by performing sexual acts with an animal, and 20 counts of filming sexual acts with an animal, according to the Louisiana State Police.

Yetman, a Bossier City Police Officer, was the recipient of the 2018 Trey Hutchison Award, which is presented by the Bossier Domestic Task Force to officers who champion the rights of domestic violence victims and their families, according to KTLA sister station WGNO in New Orleans.

Detectives with the State Police Special Victim’s Unit began an investigation into Yetman’s activities in August, and that investigation resulted in a search warrant for Yetman’s residence.

Detectives found pornography involving sexual acts with an animal on electronic devices belonging to Yetman, according to police.

Authorities did not identify the type of animal involved.

Yetman turned himself in when he learned warrants had been issued for his arrest.

He is currently being held at the Bossier Max Correctional Center on a $350,000 bond.

The investigation is still open and may result in additional charges, police said.

via: https://ktla.com/2018/12/20/police-officer-allegedly-filmed-himself-having-sex-with-an-animal/

A bank in Ohio called cops on a black man and had him arrested — because he was trying to cash his paycheck.

Paul McCowns stopped by the Huntington bank in Brooklyn on Dec. 1 to cash his very first paycheck for $1,082.24, Cleveland 19 reported.

He said he had just landed a job as at an electric company.

Because he didn’t have an account with Huntington, the bank teller asked McCowns for two forms of ID and his fingerprints.

But instead of finalizing the routine transaction, the teller tried calling McCowns’ new employer — to confirm he actually worked there, thinking the check was bogus.

“They tried to call my employer numerous times. He never picked up the phone,” McCowns recalled.

The tellers told him the check couldn’t be cashed — so he left. That’s when a squad car pulled up in front of him in the parking lot. Unbeknownst to McCowns, the bank had called 911 on him.

“I get in my truck and the squad car pull in front of me and he says get out the car,” he said. “It was highly embarrassing, highly embarrassing.”

The 911 call and police report obtained by the local TV network revealed that bank employees thought McCowns’ check was a fake.

“He’s trying to cash a check and the check is fraudulent. It does not match our records,” one of the tellers says on the call.

“Does he know you called 911?” the dispatcher asks.

“No,” the teller responds.

McCowns was handcuffed and placed in the back of the cop car before police confirmed the check was real and that he was, in fact, an employee at the electric company.

“My employer said, ‘Yes he works for me. He just started and yes, my payroll company does pay him that much,’” said McCowns, who wound up cashing his check the next day at another Huntington branch.

Now, he’s demanding an apology from the bank for racially profiling him.

A Huntington rep told Cleveland 19 that there had been nearly a dozen cases of fraud in the last few months and that tellers were just being vigilant.

“We sincerely apologize to Mr. McCowns for this extremely unfortunate event. We accept responsibility for contacting the police as well as our own interactions with Mr. McCowns,” a statement from the bank said.

“Anyone who walks into a Huntington branch should feel welcomed. Regrettably, that did not occur in this instance and we are very sorry. We hold ourselves accountable to the highest ethical standards in how we operate, hire and train colleagues, and interact with the communities we have the privilege of serving.” 

The bank rep said they reached out to McCowns to apologize several times but he hasn’t returned their calls.

via:  https://nypost.com/2018/12/19/bank-calls-cops-on-black-man-for-cashing-his-paycheck/