One California couple is celebrating after a Sacramento county judge ordered their 5-month-old son be taken out of protective custody and transported to a Stanford hospital in Palo Alto, News 10 reported.
The decision came one week after police and Child Protective Services removed Anna and Alex Nikolayev’s son, Sammy, from the couple’s house. The reason: They had sought a second medical opinion for their child.
The Nikolayevs can now see Sammy whenever they want and have control over the child’s medical decisions, but CPS will continue to monitor the situation.
The Nikolayevs, a young Russian couple living in Sacramento, took their 5-month-old son Sammy to Sutter Memorial Hospital in Sacramento when he started to exhibit flu-like symptoms. But when they arrived at the hospital, the couple became concerned about their son’s treatment, after Anna witnessed a nurse giving Sammy antibiotics – something a doctor had not instructed her to do.
After hearing their son needed open heart surgery as soon as possible, the Nikolayevs took Sammy out of Sutter Memorial without a formal discharge and rushed him to Kaiser Parmanente Medical Center in Sacramento, a rival hospital to Sutter. There, the child was deemed clinically safe to return home with his parents.
