I preface my post with the statement - I have not seen any interviews withthis woman. I have only read the articles listedhere and seen a couple of news flashes in Australia. I did hear a news report this morning in Australia saying that there is a backlash against her, she has set up a website asking for donations (and she takes credit cards, you will be pleased to know) and she is now in hiding. The TV news here this morning said she's admitted to having an obsession with Angelina Jolie which could explain the apparent surgical enhancement. What Angie thinks of all this - probably creepy. There is a mile of difference betwwen this woman and Angelina Jolie, who has money to help her provide for her family, she has a partner as father figure, she is only having them two at a time at most.
Right back in the first post of the thread, I grabbed this quote:
The scarey part of this whole thing to me is she is a pysch major and doesn't see the obsessivness of this whole process.
Unfortunately in my experience, about half the people I have met who claim to have a psychiatric degree, are NOT stable. That includes those who are practising. although I admit lately, the trend has been towards more stability, in those practising. I still meet people socially who claimto be psychologists, and who are really, really strange. The main observation I make about them - paranoia. Sometimes other things come in and colout the picture, but I suspect it's because someone who isn't very stable but who is determined to live their own independent life, takes uppsychology either as an interest or a career, so they can learn how to talk the lingo and fool some of the people some of the time.
Those of you who ARE psychologists - don't instantly attack me for saying this. Not all psychs are nuts. Only some of them. But before you have a go at me, run your mental eye over your colleagues. Because those who ARE nuts really make up for the sane ones.
There are so many checks and balances supposed to be in place, in IVF. I didn't realise these standards weren't world-wide (except for some suspect clinics in maybe some parts of either Mexico or Italy). We have great nationalised health insurance in Australia, but IVF is private. Fully. You can't even claim IVF on your private health cover, you HAVE to pay for it out of your own pocket. Same with purely cosmetic surgery (other than reconstructive, which is publicly funded).
Then there are the other checks - there are still more customers than can be processed, so doctors aren't losing business by telling people, "no, you cannot be a candidate." There are health checks, age checks, strong guidelines (I thought they were rules, at least for the doctors' associations). A limit on number of embryos that can be implanted is age-based - a younger mother may be implanted with up to four, I think, while an older mother can only be implanted with one or two. I could be wrong - the maximum number for us is certainly no more than four, could be only three. Our Aussie IVF has a fairly high success rate, so maybe our docs feel confident in only implanting a cople of embryos, knowing they've still got a very high chance of a successful pregnancy.
More is not necessarily better. It is shamefully irresponsible to implant more embryos, unless the parents have agreed to mandatory selective termination in the event of a large multiple pregnancy. Not many mothers, especially those who are having difficulty conceiving, can agree to that. So responsible doctors don't implant too many because this is just as bad, in most cases (worse) - you would get a bad outcome, because usually all 8 would die. As well as possibly the mother.
How did the IVF treatment get paid for? How did the hospital get paid for? If the parents begged her previous doctor to stop treating her and the woman went elsewhere, who paid for the treatment?
Whether she has a bad back or not, I can't say. I don't tink anyone can, even if she does seem to be able to move around freely. I know I had an epidural for the delivery of easy child, and had a bad back as a result of that being botched. Nobody really knew, because it hurt all the time anyway, I didn't favour one side or another, just everything. When both legs feel weak, there's no limp when you walk. Ever tried to limp on two legs? It cancels out. So her own physicla disability or not - a non-issue.
The issue is - somehow, a woman who seems to be unsuitable/unwell mentally, has been enabled by some unethical doctor (and enabled by others in there somewhere too) to have a dangerous number of babies. She is just plain lucky she didn't lose any, or lose her own life. We KNOW about her - what about other womoen who are unstable like her, who are getting whatever they want as long as they can track down the doctor prepared to do it?
And what happens now?
I don't think she had the babies in order to make money; but having them now, of course you grab onto the gravy train, you are going to have some big bills to pay. her family need support in how to not enable her, but she sounds like an extremely narcissistic, demanding, controlling person - a cuckoo. We may chide the wrens raising a cuckoo's chick at the expense of their own, but they are only responding as many parent birds do, in trying to nurture a creature foisted on them (or in this case, 14 of them). We all know how we will each of us step up and do the job when we're put in a difficult situation. It takes a conscious effort of will for us to step back and say to our kids (if they did this to us), "Stop! I will not enable you any more."
I do feel sorry for these kids. I feel sorry for the woman's parents and grandmother. and to a certain extent I feel sorry for tis woman too, because she is desprately in need of appropriate medical intervention, and instead some idiots with medical degrees have been tinkering with her face and her uterus.
Very sad.
Marg
