Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Pediatrics day.

How do you choose what is right when there is no right? Or when everything is grey?

A child and his mother that I have been following for the last 10 months came today and the mother stated she was ready to leave the child at an orphanage. WHAT?

I am not a mother, I am not a person who has had to take care of a child who has a disability as a full time job, and I am not a person who has had a child with disabilities. But how difficult can it be for one mother with 2 children, one who has severe disabilities, no job, no money, no food, no husband..... To want to give her child away.

I think the mother knows the alternatives. The patient will be left outside of a hospital. Preferably a child's hospital. He MIGHT be taken in, placed in a ward with other brain damaged children. He might and might not be attended to. He will not be stimulated other then to be fed, possibly.

What do you tell this mother in broken creole in her time of need...... That she is the best this child has. His hope for some quality of life.

Which leads us to the next moral issue. What to do with a child who can not speak, can not move, can not feed himself.... What is his quality of life compared to the strain that he is placing on his family?......

As a white women with a government that would support me if I did not have a job, did not have money, and did not have support....What do I say to her?