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My son needs a heart.

kmcorby's picture
Submitted by kmcorby on Thu, 03/22/2012 - 11:13

My 22-year-old autistic son was denied placement on the heart transplant list because of his mental disability.  As a mother, I am willing to do whatever it takes to get him a heart.

I have created a petition on www.change.org to force Penn Cardiac Care at Radnor to put him on the recipient list.

Please take a moment to sign this petition by searching for transplant on the petition website.  The picture is the same as I use for this account.

It only takes a minute and is completely free.

Please help us stop this discrimination against all who are SPECIAL!

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Editor's note:  Karen's actual petition can be found at

http://www.change.org/petitions/help-my-autistic-son-get-a-life-saving-heart-transplant

Comments

11
jeda1429's picture
Submitted by jeda1429 on Fri, 03/23/2012 - 08:45

Please know that I am praying for you and your son. Let me know if there is anything else I can do to help.

 

kmcorby's picture
Submitted by kmcorby on Fri, 03/23/2012 - 08:50

Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.  If you could help get the word out about his petition, that would mean so much to us.  It has been a very difficult time for him as he does not understand why he was turned down for the transplant.  How do you explain to someone that has the mind of a child?  It is very heartbreaking.

seebert's picture
Submitted by seebert on Fri, 03/23/2012 - 15:29

I have edited Karen's original to provide a direct link to her petition.

Ok, the Captchas have gone to far, I can't type in Hebrew on my work computer.

kmcorby's picture
Submitted by kmcorby on Fri, 03/23/2012 - 15:32

Thank you for editing my original blog.  Keeping my fingers crossed that it reaches many people. 

seebert's picture
Submitted by seebert on Fri, 03/23/2012 - 15:26

This sort of thing drives me crazy.  Prenatal testing to target the disabled for abortion, denial of health care to the mentally disabled, is there any difference between that and the story of this old German nun I recently ran across (a pro-life friend is reading The Silent Holocaust by Rev John Powell, SJ; and this story was one of the shorter chapters):

Death Comes to the Convent Children
   By the end of my course at the Goethe Institute, my German was fairly fluent.  So I became a summer chaplain to a convent of Sisters in the village of Flittard, outside Cologne.  On of the older Sisters, "Schwester Rutilia," practiced German conversation with me in the convent garden each afternoon.  The spirit of this dear Sister always seemed bent under some hidden burden.  I presumed for a while the it was my German.  Then on a particularly sunny afternoon, the spirit moved me and I plunged right into the question: "Sister, is there some deep pain inside you?  Do you want to talk about it?  I listen very well in German."
   The dear Sister poured out to me a heartful of sorrows.  She explained that she and her Sisters at one time provided a home for retarded and handicapped children.  The Sisters in Sister Rutilia's religious order had been trained to take care of these children and loved them "as if they were our own children."



Then one day we hear that the government was planning to take them away to kill them, just because they were retarded or handicapped.  At first we could not believe this, but we prayed anyway.  On, how we prayed for our children!  But one day the vans came and soldiers took away or little babies.  They threw them into the vans like sacks of potatoes and took them off to the killing centers."  They said they were killed because they couldn't make a contribution to the Third Reich.  They were only an expense, a burden.
kmcorby's picture
Submitted by kmcorby on Fri, 03/23/2012 - 15:34

It amazes me that this type of discrimation (but certainly not as severe as the story you shared) can still be allowed to go on in this day and age. 

seebert's picture
Submitted by seebert on Fri, 03/23/2012 - 15:40

I actually think it's *worse*.  Hitler only killed maybe 8 million.  Worldwide, we've killed that many Downs Syndrome kids since the prenatal test became available in 1998 alone.  And that doesn't include other unfit people.  In my home state, it's legal for a doctor to prescribe 9 grams of barbituates to insure the early death of a terminally ill adult.  I'd like to know who thought choking down 18 horse pills was a "dignified death".

Hitler was just more systemic about it, probably realizing his time would be short to establish his Reich.  

Funny- one of the words in this captcha is Fawkes- as in Guy Fawkes, the Catholic who tried to blow up Parliment at the beginning of the English Protestant Oppression.  His memory is with many American Catholics this year.

kmcorby's picture
Submitted by kmcorby on Fri, 03/23/2012 - 15:50

It is so terrible.

I know that even it there were such a prenatal test to tell me what challenges my son would face, I would not have even thought of terminating my pregnancy.  He has brought me so much joy even with his mental and physical health conditions.  I can't imagine my life without him.

seebert's picture
Submitted by seebert on Fri, 03/23/2012 - 15:54

Why is it so hard for the bean counters to understand all human beings have worth?

I'll be spreading your link among my pro-life groups on facebook- I'll bet they never thought somebody would try to force abort a 22 year old fetus.

kmcorby's picture
Submitted by kmcorby on Fri, 03/23/2012 - 15:57

Thank you for spreading the word.

jeda1429's picture
Submitted by jeda1429 on Sat, 03/24/2012 - 08:54

I will spread the word as well. This makes me sooooo angry. Our children are just as worthy of life as anyone else.