Touchy Topic tuesday: Surgeries for Deaf/Blind Children

NEWSFLASH: Giveaway coming up!!!

I will announce it tomorrow, and I am hoping very sincerely for an excellent turnout. It will be something that is very important to me, that is very close to my heart and that I am passionate about.

Think hard friends! See if you can guess!!

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Welcome to Touchy Topic Tuesdays!

Surgeries for Deaf and Blind children

Movies kind of rule my life(metaphor) Okay, not as much as music does, but I believe that the secret of happiness is trapped on the silver screen.

For example, we learn from horror movies that you should never run up the stairs or down the stairs, and you should never split up. Ever. All you have to do is make it to sunlight. And then you're safe.

From thrillers, we learn that the government is spying on us, and if you kill someone in self defense, you'd better empty your bullets into them or they'll grab your ankle. Even after you do that, keep an eye on them until the authorities show up, or they'll grab your ankle.

From Sci-Fi movies, we learn that where there is corn, there are aliens, and never trust the Secretary of State.

From comedies we learn that everything that is wrong with us is okay, because it's wrong with everyone else too. If it weren't, it wouldn't be funny.

From natural disaster movies, we learn that we're killing our planet, that it will get back at us, and once again, we are reminded to never trust a Secretary of State.

There is nothing to learn from a romance, except that you married the wrong guy.

Yes, I've learned many a good life lesson from watching movies.

One life lesson started in a 10th grade sign language class when we watched several movies about deaf people.

Among the movies we watched, one stands out to me called "Bridge to Silence."

Essentially, the synopsis is about a deaf couple who have a hearing six year old daughter. They are all in a terrible car crash where the father dies, and the mother and daughter survive. The hearing mother of the deaf woman files a law suit to get custody of her hearing granddaughter because she feels that her daughter, being deaf, isn't fit to care for her.

This has always stuck with me, and the unfairness makes me seethe. How could anyone do that to their child? What kind of bitterness could turn a mother against her child in such a way?

The movie stuck. The lesson stuck.

And recently I saw the movie The Family Stone, in which the gay, deaf son and his partner are talking about adopting more children, possibly deaf children as well. His brother's girlfriend, a control freak from New York played by Sara Jessica Parker continually puts her foot in her mouth through this whole conversation as she says over and over again that she wouldn't understand their choice to adopt a deaf child because SHE would want a 'healthy' child.

Studies have shown that many couples with disabilities, such as deafness, blindness, dwarfism, and so on, if given the chance to use science to rid their future children of the genes that cause these disabilities, would turn it down.

I am blessed with children that are healthy in all respects. They can see, hear, think, walk, and talk- and they have the sass mouths to prove it.

Six months ago, my youngest daughter had a television fall on her head, and her right inner ear was cracked and fractured. For awhile we faced the possibility of our precious, previously perfect daughter suffering hearing loss before the age of two.

Of course, the movies I had seen surfaced once again, and I vowed that I'd do anything to help her. We would all learn sign language, if needed- my husband, my children and I. All of us.

One of the things that always broke my heart about the movie "Bridge to Silence" as well as some personal experiences I had with a set of hearing-impaired twin sisters I met at the deaf community in my hometown was that their parents made them learn their English language, despite their disability and their struggle, yet the parents never even attempted to learn their child's language. The language that should be native to them, and the language that they could understand without any misunderstandings.

I refused to do that to my daughter.

Through many miracles, my daughter is still perfectly healthy in every way. She has recovered with 0% hearing loss, and I am so desperately thankful for that.

A few days ago, my children and I were watching reruns of the Brady Bunch (which Lilly calls "The Gravy Bunch") and afterwords, Little House On The Prairie came on. It was an episode in which one of Laura's friends, a blind girl, is given a surgery on her eyes to give her vision. She doesn't want to do it at first, but then decides to do it, and she is able to see for the first time.

Again, my life lessons surfaced and the the questions arose. The theories about children-or even adults- who have a disability (deafness and blindness, specifically) and their ability to be 'healed'.

Now, I don't by any means think that a person who is deaf or blind is 'unhealthy'. But my question here is: Is it ethical to give a blind or deaf child a surgery to correct their disability? Many deaf or blind people say no. That they were born that way for a reason.

And yet, I have to admit that if I had a blind or deaf child, in addition to do everything I could to involve myself in their own world, I would want my child to hear things, or see things. I would want them to hear me sing to them, as my other three children enjoy so often. I would want them to see me with their eyes and know that I'm their mommy. To see all the colors of the world, and to be, for lack of a better word, 'normal'.

And, yes, I know that 'normal' is relative.

But what parent wouldn't get a child with a tumor or cancer any surgery that would save them?

Deafness and blindness is not a life or death situation, but ethical or not, I would probably feel that, given the opportunity, I would take that leap and give my child their sense.

For the record, I would not feel that it was unethical for a parent to choose not to give their child a surgery to dissolve their disability.

What about YOU. What do you think? Are surgeries to correct a disability ethical or unethical? Would you do it? Why or why not?