Woman Denies Injecting Feces Into Son’s Iv Tube

A 24-year-old Montana woman has pleaded innocent in King County Superior Court to a charge that she injected feces into her 4-year-old son’s hospital IV tube to draw attention.

Nashelle Lynn Wood was found with syringes after her son, Bradley, alerted authorities that his mother had injected something into his IV.

Wood, of Columbia Falls, Mont., was charged with first-degree assault. She entered her plea Wednesday.

Her son, who nearly died from a bacterial infection that prosecutors say resulted from the injection, was being treated at Children’s Hospital for an overdose of pain relievers. He is recovering.

When she was arrested last week at the hospital, Wood had a syringe, a needle protector and needle, and four empty needle protectors in her jacket pocket.

Authorities were called by doctors, who recognized possible evidence of Munchausen by proxy syndrome, a rare disorder in which parents harm their children to draw attention to themselves.

Wood brought her son to the hospital Jan. 29 for treatment of a Tylenol overdose. Wood had told nurses the boy had tried to kill himself, raising doctors’ suspicions. She also reported a long history of illness for the boy, including a cold medicine overdose at age 2.

At the hospital, he developed a serious infection unrelated to the overdose, according to court documents filed by Deputy Prosecutor Kristin Richardson.

Urine samples indicated the presence of E. coli bacteria in the boy’s bloodstream. The child almost died, and underwent surgery to remove his gall bladder, court papers said.

On Feb. 8, two doctors and Wood were in the child’s hospital room when he asked his mother three times to show doctors what she had behind her back. She denied she had anything. When she left the room, doctors asked Bradley what she had been hiding behind her back.

“The child replied that it was the `thing you give shots with,”’ Richardson wrote in charging papers. Bradley then said his mother had been injecting medicine into the IV tubing.

Hospital officials called police. xxxx