A baby girl whose parents were prepared to take off life support so her heart could be donated came off life support . . . and is holding her own.
Baby Kaylee, two months, was born with a rare brain malformation that doctors expected would keep her from every breathing without medical assistance. Her devastated parents made the decision to take her off life support when they learned there was another sick child who could use her heart via transplant.
As far as they knew, there was no hope for their daughter. When doctors removed her breathing assistance, however, Kaylee started breathing on her own. Not perfectly - she's stopped as much as thirty times in one night - but the fact that she's done it at all means doctors have removed her from their transplant list.
If it all sounds too good to be true, it is. Because on the other side is the second baby girl, a one-month-old named Lillian, who Kaylee's parents say will still get the heart if their daughter succumbs in the near future.
Jason Wallace, father to Kaylee, has spent the past day lashing out at people saying that he wants his daughter to die, people who criticized the choice he and wife Crystal Vitelli made to remove their daughter from life support. He says they didn't want their daughter to suffer, and they were being told there was no hope for her to live without medical help.
Now that she's surviving, the parents are cautiously optimistic - they say they want their daughter to live . . . if she can. But they feel too for Lillian's family, a family that had gained hope when they thought their daughter was going to receive a heart. As Wallace says, his family has waded into an "ethical minefield."
Comments on the media reports have run the gamut - from the "you want your baby to die" nuts to the "yay, Kaylee, keep fighting" cheerleaders. But with every piece of this story unforeseen, I'm having a hard time seeing my way to judge any decision this family has made. Their daughter has an incurable brain tumor, one her parents admit she's unlikely to overcome. Losing a baby is hard enough, but to know you could have saved another by choosing to donate her heart, some of that pain could be assuaged.
Now she's surviving . . . and people are criticizing the family, how? Because they didn't know their daughter might have a remarkable reaction to removal from life support? All around this story broke my heart, and as much as it's my job to comment on other people's situations, this is one where I just have to sit back and wonder how anyone can. What do you think Babble readers?
Image: CBCNews
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