- Joined
- Apr 2, 2016
Gwen is so fragile in the front she puts forth that a child's innocent utterance tears her down and devastates her. She'd had years and years of dealing with reactions to her extremely disabled daughters, whose appearance is shocking. A woman who is trying to ensure her children have a decent experience in life would have gently told the boy that the girls aren't dying, that they have a condition that makes them different, and that she's glad he's concerned about them but they're really just fine. Then she would have given him a Snickers bar and smiled as he left, even if she felt a bit sad that her daughters will never have that experience of getting candy and picking out their costumes for Halloween.
Nope, Gwen experienced blinding, irrational, outrageous anger at a child. A child. A small human being with a limited experience of the world who was being confronted with very sick, fragile, emaciated children and being told to come and talk to them like they were just like him, able to speak and understand and laugh. Gwen's mental state is a house of cards that a little kid in a state of surprise or fright can bring down and if Gwen came unglued on a kid like in front of any decent mother she would have found out what real rage is, how unacceptable it is to be shaming a kid for not understanding that which is so arcane it took years for experts to determine the cause of. The girls looked so macabre dressed as mermaids that they would have fit in well in a Rob Zombie film. I would not let any kid in my control be confronted with that freak show.
Valium is straight up the best treatment for spastic hypertonia and Gwen would rather her girls suffer than give it to them because there is a chance it could affect their CNS. Because god forbid the girls ever have a moment's comfort if there is a minuscule chance they may stop breathing. Best to keep them alive as long as possible even if they feel misery day and night.
If you analyze Gwen's statements enough while understanding the basics of the girls' conditions, she sounds like a cruel lunatic. She says the girls are basically normal, that they love music, that they feel emotions, that they feel hunger. If they can feel emotions and can feel hunger, then that means they can anticipate pain and can feel pain. So once you know they cannot be helped by PT, once you have a basic understanding of what it feels like to have hypertonia so bad it dislocates the hips and creates hand sores from curled fingers biting into the palm of the hand, you begin to understand how painful it is to be forced to undergo therapy in that condition with no pain killer or muscle relaxers. And that the therapy is futile is the cherry on the sundae.
So Gwen is in essence cheerfully admitting that she puts her daughters through misery that can do them no good. I really don't think the girls can anticipate pain. I also don't know if they feel pain in the same way healthy people do. But if they are as Gwen says they are - sassy teens with tastes, personal expressions and the capacity to experience their environment, then she is flat out admitting she permits them to be tortured each time they undergo unmedicated dental work, physical therapy, months-long chicken pox contagions without any medical skin care, and on and on.
