To Clarify My Point of Last Post

[Guest guest]

The Medical Gestapo

How did the birth and death of their baby put Barbara and Bob in jail?

Baby came seven weeks early, weighing only three pounds at birth.

In spite of his untimely entry into the world, the tiny tyke took to his

mother's breast with little difficulty. The home birth allowed the

family to devote their care and nurturing to full-time. Even Polly

and , four and five years old, seemed to understand that little

needed extra attention.

But as the week went on, it was clear that little was having more

and more difficulty breathing. It was time to go to the hospital. Polly

and would go to Grandma's house.

Airlifted from the local county hospital, little ended up in the

pediatric intensive care unit at the large Springfield hospital, tubes

coming and going from all parts of his body. There was no more mother's

milk or father's cradling, as the medical staff worked to combat

nature's short-comings. But the diagnosis was grim. A CAT scan showed

that half of little 's brain was missing, had never developed. His

heart wasn't normal, either.

" Why didn't you come to the hospital sooner, " Barbara and Bob were

asked in a challenging tone, as if getting there earlier would have

somehow supplied the missing brain parts. Two days later, their son

died. While they were sad to lose this dear little fellow after such a

struggle, Barbara and Bob understood nature's way. Just as a cow will

abort an imperfect calf before its time, 's abrupt entry into the

world carried a similar message they were able to accept.

The doctors wanted to study little 's body further and requested

permission for an autopsy. Barbara and Bob felt he'd had enough invasion

from the medical people and, in line with their religious beliefs, said

" no. " They'd lost a son to cancer five years earlier. It had been

painful to watch all the needles and poking and probing then. At least

they could spare little any more of that. They would bury him next

to his brother and do so as a family, together.

Because I've written a book Caring for the Dead: Your Final Act of

Love, Barbara's friend called me for some walk-through advice.

Knowing that one pediatric oncology nurse says parents who have had a

hands-on funeral experience heal much more quickly in their grieving, I

was sympathetic and supportive of this family's plan to handle the

funeral arrangement themselves. I suggested that the parents contact the

hospital social worker, someone who was supposed to be trained in

understanding families' needs and who might help them through the

hospital bureaucracy in obtaining a timely release of the baby's body.

Sometimes hospitals are unfamiliar with the laws that permit families to

care for their own dead, and it's necessary to educate the

powers-that-be when this is a new experience for a hospital.

I was astonished to learn that that advice had immediately backfired,

however. State social services were instead contacted to investigate

this home-schooling do-it-yourself family, to check on the well-being of

Polly and and Grandma's house. Furthermore, the hospital was

refusing to release little 's body until an autopsy was done, per a

statute for investigating Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), a

condition that certainly didn't apply to 's death-in the hospital

and attended by physicians. The mis-application of the law made Barbara

and Bob even more determined not to consent to the autopsy.

But things soon got much, much worse. At 8 p.m. the police arrived and

arrested them on suspicion of manslaughter charges. There would be a

20-hour investigation, they were told, the longest a person can be held

without formal charges. The parents were stunned by this totally

unreasonable and crazy charge. Police herded Polly and into the

police cruiser with their parents. Panic-stricken, Barbara called her

friend from the police station and signed custody of the terrified

children over to her. picked them up right away.

The next 20 hours were an unbelievable torment, not knowing what would

happen next. Here was a family that was grieving the loss of their baby,

a family that should have been shopping for the soft blue cloth to line

the small casket Jean's husband had built. The cemetery had been called

and was expecting them the next day. Friends were planning to gather at

the graveside. But most of all, they belonged with Polly and who

had just lost their baby brother. How could they not be angry at a

system of government that was so abusive?

At 4 p.m. the following day they were released and all charges dropped.

* * * *

This tragic situation points out not only an abuse of power but raises

serious questions about when to make use of medical technology and who

should decide. Would state officials have preferred the outcome if

extreme measures had kept alive a severely handicapped child who really

wasn't meant to live? Who among us does not fear that, as we age,

medical technology will trap us into a prolonged and helpless purgatory,

that will not let us elders die when we are ready?