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Phoebe Gleeson blogs about life, mothering, knitting, and stuff.
I’m overwhelmed with spam comments. I won’t be posting for a while while Sean gets the blog reorganized. In the meantime, if you want to tell me something, anything really, email me - link at left.
I’m going to be keeping a Flickr going for a bit, if you’d like to check in there from time to time:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/feebeeglee/
(It’s going to be mostly The Bede for now, and posts to the PosAutive group.)
A few months back, there was a stir in the news over a little girl named Ashley who is profoundly physically disabled by cerebral palsy. Her parents had her sterilized and her growth permanently attenuated through hormone treatment at age 6. Here’s wikipedia for background on the “Ashley Treatment,” as her parents call it.
Now, here’s an op-ed from a woman who survived her own “Ashley Treatment” - severe state-sanctioned malnutrition attenuated her growth (she was 35 pounds at age 18) because she was unable to move or talk.
Like Ashley, I, too, have a static encephalopathy. Mine was caused by brain damage at the time of my breech birth. Like Ashley, I can’t walk, talk, feed or care for myself. My motor skills are those of a 3-month-old. When I was 3, a doctor assessed me as severely retarded (that is, as having an IQ of less than 35) and I was admitted to a state institution called St. Nicholas Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. As the hospital didn’t provide me with a wheelchair, I lay in bed or on the floor for most of the next 14 years. At the age of 12, I was relabeled as profoundly retarded (IQ less than 20) because I still hadn’t learned to walk or talk.
Like Ashley, I have experienced growth attenuation. I may be the only person on Earth who can say, “Been there. Done that. Didn’t like it. Preferred to grow.”
Unlike Ashley, my growth was “attenuated” not by medical intervention but by medical neglect. My growth stopped because I was starved. St. Nicholas offered little food and little time to eat it — each staff member had 10 children with severe disabilities to feed in an hour. That was the roster set by the state and accepted by the medical profession. Consequently my growth stopped shortly after admission. When I turned 18, I weighed only 35 pounds. I hadn’t developed breasts or menstruated. I was 42 inches tall.
My life changed when I was offered a means of communication. At the age of 16, I was taught to spell by pointing to letters on an alphabet board. Two years later, I used spelling to instruct the lawyers who fought the habeas corpus action that enabled me to leave the institution in which I’d lived for 14 years.
Read the whole thing, here.
I’m still recovering from the knittting circle. Well, not really. (It was great btw!)
For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s a a slice of fried gold for ya. Enjoy.
There will be something like 20 children and 7 mothers in my house tomorrow for the unschooler’s knitting circle.
What the heck am I gonna do with all those people? Eeek!
Faith and Abby are gleefully figuring out the different ratios of girls to boys. “There will be 12 girls and 8 boys!” says Faith. “No, there will be, um… 7 girls and um… 14 boys!” says Abby. “That makes 21, Abby,” says Faith. “Oh. I mean… 6 girls!” There they go, learning through living and stuff.
Anyway.
Wish me luck!
An ER nurse and her blog. Great (scary) read!
http://ernursey.blogspot.com/.
(Reason #2318 that routine homebirth is better than routine hospital birth!)
h/t: Melly