8 thoughts on “Why is there a scratch on Shan’ann Watts’s neck?”

  2. Call me crazy, but they look and act lovey-dovey the moment he shows up… smiling, laughing etc.
    I have a hard time obsessively following the story and not getting why it really happened to them…
    So sorry for the girls… no words…

    Like

      • I believe that the scar would be from her neck surgery. They have perfected methods in which they can go in from the front and do simple procedures. My mom had several spine surgeries done through the front. Notice it is on a l wrinkle line? This is also chosen as a position so as to minimize scarring and reduce likelihood of being noticeable later. If you recall the autopsy did not even mention ANY surgery scars. But it DID mention the hardware in her neck. (Though even that description was shockingly inadequate)

        I realize I am posting this a long time since this was originally posted. So I won’t be shocked to find no reply. But, I wonder did anyone else notice on the autopsy that Shannan did not have ANY indications of Lupus on her organs? From what I know and have read, there should have been some type of evidentiary signs from years of Lupus on her organs. I feel the doctors most likely told her they suspected Lupus at some point or possibly misdiagnosed her and she ran with it. Never-mind all the other things she said she had as well. She may well have believed she DID indeed have these things as she would have trusted her doctors. BUT, I tend to feel she was more on the fence an simply allowed what she probably figured out was not a correct diagnosis to stand as it gained her sympathy, and kept Chris in a state of guilt and feeling responsible for her, which allowed her to “stay at home” with the kids in “school” all day.

        My theory above is based on these 2 ideas/thoughts/ occurrences:

        Having worked in medical offices for a while in the 90’s I learned that even when a patient does NOT have a diagnosis the billing dept MUST put one on the insurance billing form in order for the ins company to accept the bills. I noticed that patients would WANT a diagnosis the day they came in and doctors typically would try to give them one. Often saying they “think it is” or “suspect it is” such and such. I think it is a classic American problem which I have nicknamed : American “Diagnosi-osis”. The doctors just give them something to make them leave happy thinking they have an idea what is wrong and the insurance company gets the bill with the diagnosis code that matches. I feel this is something that has slowly evolved in the USA health system and is a direct result of the insurance/cash system in the states. Doctors feel pressure to PLEASE the patient rather than be SURE of the true diagnosis. I did not even realize it was happening to me until I moved to Canada and found doctors here wont give a diagnosis so easily and without cause. They WILL leave you here with an ” I don’t know” or a “let’s wait and see” more often than with something that may be incorrect and later require a new diagnosis. When this happens the patient can get, like me, stuck in a cycle of doctors giving diagnosis, another taking it away and another telling them it is all in their head… something which enraged me as I KNEW something was wrong with me but I did not have the medical degree to prove it.

        I was diagnosed with MS, by 5 different doctors in 1995-1997. This diagnosis was later questioned when I went to Mayo with concerns. I was then checked for Lupus, Lyme disease, Celiac, Gullian Barre, Epstein Barr, and MANY more. I moved to Canada in 2003 and began a new. I got all my records and a good doctor who did not negate my symptoms. We went through one by one. Not one doctor had suggested or even mentioned what I later came to find it was. I’d now spent 5 years keeping journals and doing lots of research. When looking through records, one day I read that I had cysts on my ovaries, back in 1998 which I was never told. I also had lesion(s) on my brain that were never disputed and the source of the misdiagnosis of MS. I had coincidentally just seen a TV show of someone with Insulin resistant Poly-cystic Ovarian Syndrome aka: PCOS. I went right away back to the endocrinologist who’d just told me the week before it wasn’t brain cancer. I asked was it PCOS. After a few simple blood and urine tests, it was confirmed. ( MANY women in USA have PCOS and very few are diagnosed, despite it being the #1 reason for infertility. Many doctors are oblivious to it. I have since noticed the signs in 4 other women and 3 of them all confirmed my suspicions with their doctors. ) Had I not spent years studying myself to find the answers, I would probably be dead now. My 35 yrs of undiagnosed insulin problems has left me now with all the issues one would have with 35 yrs of undiagnosed diabetes. I can not help but wonder if Shannan had something more like that. It would be hard to catch, would make her have “seizures” on occasion when blood sugar went too low or high. Would also cause her to have migraines from hormonal changes and MANY MANY other symptoms that present as Celiac, IBS, chronic fatigue, Fibromyalgia and MANY more. Also may I mention that the climate difference for me in Canada Vs, the southern USA was so great that I felt ALIVE for the first time in almost 10 years when I came here. So much so that i always get sad when the snow melts for I know when it warms up I will feel worse and more lethargic. So, I could see her health improving so much as it did when they moved to CO.

        PCOS is essentially is an endocrine disorder and the name is more of a symptom NOT the cause. The CAUSE is issues with the pituitary gland, sending incorrect signals to pancreas telling it ” HEY I don’t not have enough insulin.” So the pancreas churns out more and more. Cysts on Ovaries are a SYMPTOM and a result of the endocrine system being overloaded and sending out too many hormones or too little. ( PCOS was formerly known as Stein-Leventhal syndrome. But some dummy changed the name to describe a symptom, but NOT the disease itself. ) It also would be hard to spot on imaging or on autopsy unless she had obvious lesions on her pituitary gland such as I do, but many women may not have obvious lesions on autopsy. Or the medical examiner may not find them relevant. (especially this one as he seemed to forget to mention all kinds of things) . It would even explain fertility issues, IF she ACTUALLY had them. I do not exactly buy that she did based on how FAST she got pregnant each time. ( I personally feel she got pregnant each time she worried he may leave her) I do wonder if she managed to get fertility meds, which if she HAD a misdiagnosis of Lupus, her doctor may have given her oral meds to help in fertility. For PCOS they use something called Actos. Along with oral diabetes meds, I am unsure if Actos would work with “Lupus”, so I mention it simply to demonstrate that fertility meds do NOT always have to be shots. She could have gotten an oral rx for something which would promote pregnancy.

        Sorry so verbose and seemingly off topic. I hope my words find someone and help them to see my point as I feel this “Lupus” was a classic American “Diagnosi-osis” and not enough people are talking about how it ACTUALLY affected their lives. If it was something like PCOS she would have been in a chronic state of hormone overdrive, making her more OCD and anxious, as well as possibly/probably presenting as per-menstrual often. I feel her “symptoms” arenot even mentioned, but supposedly she was so bad off she required help for so much stuff… I feel this has been kind of shoved under the rug, and is one of the MANY elephants in the room in this case.

        But I also mention all of it because MAYBE one more woman will discover the cause of her ambiguous expensive symptoms that the doctors can not find a cause of, or have diagnosed as something much worse. I have made it a point to try to help any woman avoid what I went through as I now have NO kids, and it has ruined MY dream of being a wife and a mother, leaving me now at almost 50 kind of lost. It is NOT something I want any women to go through if they do not have to. (Never-mind the years of my life I lost from being sick, the THOUSANDS of $$$$ I spent, the credit I did not have for many years due to it, and the YEARS of my life I will lose because of this.)

        Thank you,

        And Nick I wonder what you think of this??

        Like

  3. Still in the emotional stew of the second Treachery book – just finished late last night. Hard to understand why anyone thinks their life is better by removing their “hindrances” for good.

    Like

  5. I had a lymph node removed and my scar looks just like this. They cut along the crease in your neck so it is less visible as it heals.

    Like

Comments are closed.