Praying for a Miracle

The father of Charlotte Wyatt, a desperately ill 11-month-old baby in a court battle between her parents and doctors, made an impassioned plea to a high court judge yesterday to not allow doctors to let her die.

It is a sad day in the world when you have to go to court to fight doctors to keep your child alive.

The judge was hearing a plea by Portsmouth Hospitals NHS Trust for a declaration allowing doctors not to put the baby on a ventilator in the event of a future breathing crisis and to allow her to die.

It's so nice of them to try and "allow" this child to die.

The Wyatts will learn on Thursday, when he delivers judgment, whether their arguments prevailed.

The judge had to think about it? Man, oh man. What kind of person has to "decide" if another human being deserves a chance at life? We are not talking about an unborn baby, we are talking about an 11 month old little girl, who's name is Charlotte, and who's parents want to give her every chance at life. Is this wrong? To want your child to live?

But the balance tipped against them yesterday when Cafcass, the Children and Family Courts Advisory and Support Service, representing the baby's interests, told the judge it did not believe going on a ventilator again would be in her best interests.

Oh, so now the "Children and Family Courts Advisory and Support Service" are medical experts? You know, if people would pull their heads out of their asses long enough to smell the sunshine, they would realize that the "best interest" of this little girl is not death. No one can guarantee the quantity nor quality of another person's life and when did it become our place to start making the decision to pick one over the other?

She has been ventilated five times for breathing difficulties, and her lungs are scarred. Putting her on one again would probably give her only a few extra months, it emerged at the hearing.

It would give her "only a few extra months"? How many is a few? 3 or 4? 4 months is more than one third of her life already. Are they saying they can extend her life by one-third if they DO put her on the ventilator, or let it end quickly if they don't? What if she was an 11 year old girl and that ventilator could extend her life by one-third? Would they choose to let her die at 11 or give her the chance to live until she was 15? My aunt was on a ventilator for quite a while, and we all thought she was going to die. But guess what? One day she opened her eyes and recovered enough to go home. She lived for only another year, but during that year she spent time getting to know her granddaughters better and she left us in a better state than she would have if her doctors had chosen not to ventilate her. That extra year of life, while lacking in quality and quantity, healed more wounds and gave family members (including my aunt) the time that was desperately needed by everyone involved to come to terms with her death.

And doctors say her life is measured in months rather than years. They say she is bound to catch a virus that will prove fatal within months.

How do they know she would "catch a virus"? Are they trying to be fortune tellers now? If so, they better not quit their day jobs, that's for sure (not that they are doing any better in their day jobs, mind you).

It also emerged yesterday that her parents realised only in this week's hearing how profoundly brain-damaged she is.

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Doctors say she will never see or hear, walk, sit or eat properly, and will require round-the clock care until she dies.

My sister-in-law, April, is severely retarded, because of complications from birth. The doctors told my mother-in-law that April would not live more than a few months, and then later on they said she would not live past 3 or 4 years of age. That was 45 years ago, and April is still going strong.

The doctors told my mother-in-law that she would never walk, talk, feed herself, or go to the potty on her own. And guess what? She ran instead of walking, in the Special Olympics (winning a gold medal), she talked, in fact her first words were "son of a bitch". mimicking her mother who had slipped in the tub, she feeds herself, and she potties. All because her mother took the time to find a doctor who truly cared about his patients and a few miracles from God.

Nowadays, in addition to the troubles of any other 45 year old, she does not talk, she has seizures on a daily basis, and she requires mountains of medications. She requires constant supervision, and intense daily care. Throughout the years, my mother-in-law has made ANY sacrifice necessary for April's benefit, always doing what she thought was best for April and never giving up on her.

When she was young she could have done anything with her life that she wanted to, if she just chose to "put April away", but she chose to stick with April. She chose to give up any other hopes and dreams to care for her daughter. Why? Because that's what mothers do. That's what human beings do. At least I would like to think so.

My mother-in-law considers April one of God's angels, and I believe it. When you sit with April and she smiles at you, or she reaches her hand to you to touch you on the cheek, or when you are lucky enough to dance with her, you know you have experienced something truly awesome. All because one woman made one choice 45 years ago.

I have been married to my wife for just seven years and I cannot imagine how life would be if April had not been here. Let's hope and pray the Wyatt's don't have to live with that reality.