Under intense scrutiny of baseless abuse probe, Dahl family comes through for ailing daughter
By Jennifer Eisenbart
Staff writer
When 4-year-old Eve Dahl arrived at Karcher Middle School Friday morning, she was all decked out in pink – right down to the pink cast on her left foot.
When asked how she broke it, her mom Deb Dahl reminded people how easily Eve’s bones break, then explained that Eve had broken her foot by stepping on her brother’s foot while playing.
It’s just another step on the road that comes with being Eve Dahl – by all appearances, a happy, smiling, joyful child.
“She’s the happiest little baby you will ever meet,” says Haylie Dahl, Eve’s oldest sister at 15. “She’s happy and smiley and girly. She’s all sorts of normal.”
Normal in every way but one. Four years ago, Eve was diagnosed with Osteogenesis Imperfecta – otherwise known as brittle bone disease.
Eve suffered her first break shortly after birth. When she was later examined and X-rayed following a broken arm – likely gotten while her mother was exercising her arms and legs one evening.
Deb Dahl took her daughter to the doctor the next day, where the fracture was discovered. What followed then was six weeks of what can only be termed as hell for a parent – Child Protective Services trying to take Eve away from her parents, and Deb and her husband Lance fighting to remain in custody of not only Eve, but their other four children, and get a diagnosis for their youngest child.
Perfect – and imperfect
OI can take many forms. According to the Osteogenesis Imperfecta website, there are at least eight different types of OI – ranging in severity from the weakness of bones to frequent fractures, bowing of the bones and involvement of other defects.
None of that was evident when Deb Dahl delivered Eve by cesarean section on Feb. 15, 2008. Eve was in a breech position, and rather than try to turn her, doctors decided to perform the C-section.
Other than that…
“Everything was uneventful,” Deb explains. “We had her home as an infant, and she did infant things.”
Everything was fine until one evening on spring break that year, when Deb sat bicycling Eve’s legs and Eve began crying. Deb retreated to the couch, and moved Eve’s arms.
“I moved her arm above her head, and she started crying,” she says. “I put it down, and she stopped.”
Expecting that if it was something major that the pain wouldn’t have subsided, Deb waiting until the next morning to take Eve to the doctor. Deb says Dr. Melanie Smith ordered an X-ray, expecting to find a dislocated shoulder or elbow.
Instead, they found one of Eve’s arms broken. After a trying few hours – time when Deb called “horrible” as Eve needed to be restrained – the arm was finally set and in a splint. Deb took her youngest daughter home, and Eve proceeded to cry uncontrollably all night.
The next day, Smith called back, and said that a second fracture may have been found on the X-ray. She wanted Eve at Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin.
But Smith also took the time to give Deb Dahl the only warning she was going to get about the descent she was about to undertake.
“She said, ‘I want you to be prepared,” she said. “They’re going to ask questions.’”
Protective, but persecuted
Lance Dahl is a firefighter in Kenosha, working 24 hours shifts. He says he has seen numerous abused children.
“I understand the need to rescue children that are being abused,” he explains. “It’s very easy to look at it from that perspective if you’re not in the 1 percent where they make a mistake.”
“They” is social services and Child Protective Services, which were involved in the “barrage” of questions Deb said was thrown at them when they reached Children’s Hospital.
“They took Eve back to be X-rayed, and we weren’t allowed to be with her,” says Deb. A social work doctor eventually came out and told the family that Eve had 14 different fractures in various stages of healing – including two in her legs that to this day Deb believes came from restraining Eve to set the first fracture in her arm.
OI was mentioned at the time, but as Deb says, “the doctors decided that non-accidental trauma could not be ruled out.”
According to Deb, Eve did not look like a “normal” OI child. Her bones were stick straight, and her face didn’t show either the low nasal bridge or the triangular shape doctors look for.
As a result, while the family waited for various genetic tests to come back, Eve was officially removed from her parents’ custody. She was set to go into foster care when she left Children’s Hospital, but a last-minute deal was reached to allow Eve to go home – if someone besides her parents was also with her 24/7.
“It’s maddening, really,” says Deb. “You’re being investigated. They’re not nice. You’re being threatened every day.”
In the six weeks from Eve’s admittance to a letter that finally cleared her parents and closed the CPS investigation, every member of the family was questioned – interrogated, really.
Haylie and Caitlin Dahl both remember the people who spoke to them. Haylie calls her interviewer “fake,” while Caitlin uses the word “weird.” Both were told by the people questioning them that it was OK to tell if anything was wrong.
“She asked me if I ever had any problems with my mom,” Haylie says. “My mom and I are really close.”
Lance Dahl perhaps sums it up best.
“First of all, the word ‘frustrating’ is an extreme understatement of what a family goes through in that situation,” he explains. “Fear and desperation are very real words.”
Eventually, Dr. Jeffrey Schwab at Children’s wrote a letter to CP saying that it was probable that Eve had OI. Smith also penned a letter testifying to the closeness of the family.
It was enough to close the CPS case, but it took another seven months to get an official diagnosis on Eve, who not only suffers from the rare disorder, but suffers from a rare sub-type of it as well. In the last twist to Eve’s case through Children’s, the one genetic test they ran on Eve came back normal.
She was eventually officially diagnosed in Canada at a Shriner’s Hospital for Children.
Love, hope overcome scrutiny
Life will never be easy for Eve. Already, she has suffered more than 50 bone fractures. The “long” bones in her arms and legs – the humerus and femur – both bowed, and Eve has stabilizing rods in all six of her bones in her legs. Deb says doctors are holding off on any surgery to Eve’s arms in hopes of avoiding any nerve damage in surgery.
But right now, in a cool Wisconsin spring, almost all is right with the world. Eve is still wearing a pink cast from her misplaced step with her brother, but she’s grinning and playing princess. In fact, when her mom tries to hush Eve, the 4-year-old responds, “I’m not Eve, I’m Tinkerbell!”
Deb says, “She loves to play make believe. She’s in a constant stage of imagination wherever she is.
“She loves everyone,” she adds. “She’s not a shy one, typically.”
And it’s clear many, many people adore Eve in return. On Friday, her sisters helped “get out the support” for a yellow balloon release – balloons with tags attached to give people a chance to let either the Dahls or a website for Wishbone Day (an “international day of celebrating life with Osteogenesis Imperfecta”) know where the balloons were found.
Karcher Middle School students not only released hundreds of balloons, but they chased them across the school’s athletic field, trying to get all of them to fly into the air. Similar balloon releases were done at other schools.
Already, Dahl says, one balloon apparently made it all the way to Pennsylvania. That kind of audience is exactly what she hopes to attract in spreading the word about OI.
Both Deb and Lance feel that in spite of the knowledge out there about the disease, that doctors weren’t quick enough in diagnosing their daughter. More awareness, they feel, is key in keeping others from experiencing the pain they did as parents – and in educating people about the disease.
But they also want to share another message – one about happiness and hope.
“It’s important for the word to get out that people are living and thriving with OI,” explains Deb. “It comes from your attitude and how you approach life. I think Eve is an inspiration to people because she’s happy.”
That happiness is exactly what Lance wants others to see in his youngest daughter.
“She’s a very positive and loving child,” he says. “She’s very determined. She’s very independent. She does realize as she gets older, she knows her limitations.
“(But) she wants to be just like every other kid.”
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