The Baum Years - Part Two.

Hari continued to survive (much to the disappointment of some doctors!) but made little progress in relation to growth. She would gain a little weight but it was fairly unremarkable.

Naturally this was a cause for concern and there was still no effort to investigate and diagnose the cause of this problem.

Every four or six months we would dutifully attend David Baum's outpatients clinic and he would go through his 'list' of Hari's problems. If I pushed him on the subject of her small stature he always felt that now was not the right time and say that he 'would maybe investigate it in a couple of years' - even when it WAS a 'couple of years' from such a previous comment!

So we were expected to carry on waiting for the vague possibility of a diagnosis, whilst accepting the usual harassment regarding Hari's diet and allegations of my failure to feed her properly during every admission.

The waiting was to continue for considerably more than 'a couple of years'.