Ashley's Treatment
This was something that my cousin has posted over at My Bit Of Earth. I was going to write a comment but it just got too long. So I thought I'd post my own.
In Seattle, a baby girl named Ashley was born with brain damage. Her mental and physical abilities are limited to that of a 3 month old. She can not raise her head, she can not hold a toy, she does not speak or recognize her parents. If my reading is correct, she is 9 now. And in what must be the recent past, her parents opted to have several operations done that they think will improve the quality of life for their impaired daughter. The operations include a hysterectomy and breast removal and appendectomy. They also have put the girl on hormone treatments to increase her growth quickly thereby limiting her total growth. The goal being to keep her a small and more manageable size for her care givers. This is being called the "Ashley Treatment."
My knee jerk reaction, my gut reaction, is that this treatment is horrible. And before I go any further, I am so glad I do not have to make these kinds of decisions. I hope and pray that any children I have in the future are healthy and grow normally and beautifully into wonderful adults who have their own healthy children.
I'm not so much opposed to the hysterectomy, or the breast removal. These are things that, sadly enough, she will not need. The hormone treatment is where I take issue, even though I do understand what the parents must be thinking. 65 pounds is easier to lift than 125. 65 pounds laying flat is a lot easier on the body than 125. It just seems cold and calculated and a lot like manipulation.
I am so glad I didn't have to make this decision. I don't envy them their decision and I don't envy them the flak they are catching for it now. First and foremost this should have been a private matter between them and their doctor. But they said themselves they wanted this treatment to be available to others with similar conditions and by doing that they open themselves up to the criticisms.
Treatments like this for disabled children frighten me. Medical treatments like this that advance our ability to control things like growth and genes scare me. The tests in invitro that allow you to see if your child is handicapped so you can determine if you want to go through with the pregnancy scare me. But with these "bad" or gray things comes great advances in treatments for illnesses that benefit us all.
And it's easy to be scared and easy to judge when it's not something you're faced with every day. And when the person suffering is not someone you love. I don't know if they did the right thing. I don't know what I would have done differently. What I do know is that what I think does not matter.
In Seattle, a baby girl named Ashley was born with brain damage. Her mental and physical abilities are limited to that of a 3 month old. She can not raise her head, she can not hold a toy, she does not speak or recognize her parents. If my reading is correct, she is 9 now. And in what must be the recent past, her parents opted to have several operations done that they think will improve the quality of life for their impaired daughter. The operations include a hysterectomy and breast removal and appendectomy. They also have put the girl on hormone treatments to increase her growth quickly thereby limiting her total growth. The goal being to keep her a small and more manageable size for her care givers. This is being called the "Ashley Treatment."
My knee jerk reaction, my gut reaction, is that this treatment is horrible. And before I go any further, I am so glad I do not have to make these kinds of decisions. I hope and pray that any children I have in the future are healthy and grow normally and beautifully into wonderful adults who have their own healthy children.
I'm not so much opposed to the hysterectomy, or the breast removal. These are things that, sadly enough, she will not need. The hormone treatment is where I take issue, even though I do understand what the parents must be thinking. 65 pounds is easier to lift than 125. 65 pounds laying flat is a lot easier on the body than 125. It just seems cold and calculated and a lot like manipulation.
I am so glad I didn't have to make this decision. I don't envy them their decision and I don't envy them the flak they are catching for it now. First and foremost this should have been a private matter between them and their doctor. But they said themselves they wanted this treatment to be available to others with similar conditions and by doing that they open themselves up to the criticisms.
Treatments like this for disabled children frighten me. Medical treatments like this that advance our ability to control things like growth and genes scare me. The tests in invitro that allow you to see if your child is handicapped so you can determine if you want to go through with the pregnancy scare me. But with these "bad" or gray things comes great advances in treatments for illnesses that benefit us all.
And it's easy to be scared and easy to judge when it's not something you're faced with every day. And when the person suffering is not someone you love. I don't know if they did the right thing. I don't know what I would have done differently. What I do know is that what I think does not matter.
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