Celebrate Life Magazine: Thirteen hospital specialists each had provided us with a long list of dire predictions for Joseph, such as “He will only eat through a tube and won’t be able to breathe on his own,” and “Oh yes, Mrs. Pierce, did I mention he probably will be blind, deaf, unable to communicate, and severely retarded?”
The geneticist had handed us information from a medical book that was 25 years out of date. Its description of Wolf-Hirschhorn syndrome was accompanied by a picture of a wild-eyed, severely disfigured child. My obstetrician had encouraged us to institutionalize Joseph before we “bonded” with him. She was annoyed at any contact I had with him and believed he was an “inappropriate” child for us; she called him a “freak of nature.” Another hospital specialist claimed that if Joseph managed to reach an unlikely second birthday, he’d require “numerous unsuccessful, painful surgeries.”
That was 14 years and several Special Olympics trophies ago.
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