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hizgeorgiapeach -> RE: Political: Oh, dem skeletons be rattlin' in the closet!! (9/2/2008 2:41:42 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DomKen
Total time between her amniotic fluid starting to leak and her receiving in person medical care was at least 22 hours. This was the child with Trisomy born when she was 44 years of age.
All told I have issues with her taking a flight at 8 months, not going to a hospital in Dallas when things started happening, getting on two seperate flights while in active labor, not going directly to one of two hospitals in Anchorage and driving an additional hour before getting any care for herself and her son.
While I can understand some of the issues you have with Palin's decision making process while in labor with her son, I would like to point out a couple of things that - to me at least - are significant.
Her son's Trisomy syndrome was not caused by her decision making process. It is a genetic defect, one often present in children born to women in their late 30s and older. NOTHING she did or didn't do during labor would have - or Could have - changed the fact that he was born with a trisomy. Nothing done during the entire length of the pregnancy could have changed that, short of divine intervention, if you happen to believe in such things. The only thing that Might have prevented the trisomy would be significant luck combined with the pregnancy being when she was significantly Younger. The older a woman becomes, the higher the risk of Trisomy problems - specifically of Trisomy 21, or Downs' Syndrome - showing up in the resulting child. If her son has a Trisomy other than 21, it's more likely a recessive genetic trait hidden in both families that could have shown up at any time in any pregnancy. The specific chromosone which was trippled determines the specific type of disabilities caused by a trisomy, and they are as varied as the combination of chromosones and at what point during the pregnancy the faulty split occured. Some trisomies are simply lethal in-utero, and therefore are pretty much never seen (and unnamed except by the number of the chromosone suspected to be the culprit). Others are not directly lethal, and can cause problems that range from mild disfunction to very specific varieties of dwarfism to the mongoloidism seen in Downs'.
Second - leaking fluid and a fully broken amniotic sack feel Significantly different. One is a flood - the other can easily be mistaken for a leaky bladder due to pressure from the placement of the child. She passed up 2 hospitals that were along her route, in order to go to the one where she had already made plans - where her doctor was, where her charts were, where she - the one in labor - would be most comfortable. She may not have let the airline crews know she was "in labor" because she may not have Realised she was Actively in labor. Braxton-Hicks contractions (most commonly refered to as "false labor") feel about the same - and a woman who has been through BH contractions often enough in prior pregnancies - or even during That pregnancy - might mistake one for the other - especially if eager to get home to her own doctors who have followed the case and whom she's comfortable with.
I'm willing to make a bet - even having as limited acess as any of us have to Palin's reasoning during the time in question - that her doctors either already knew, or strongly suspected, that there would be problems with her son. Her age would have been a strong factor for them to consider, in light of the plethora of research that shows older mothers carry such a high risk for a wide variety of problems. They would have planned for that - other hospitals, where she was not registered - and which therefore did not have Immediate access to her records - would NOT necessarily have been prepared In The Labor Room Already to deal with those issues. Hospital maternity wards don't typically set up for neo-nate ICU services in the labor room unless they're already aware that there's probably going to be a Need for it with a particular delivery. Yes, those other hospitals could - and likely would - have made adjustments based on Palin's age - but they still wouldn't have been the doctors Familiar with her and her pregnancy.
Regardless of how anyone feels about Palin's decision making process during her pregnancy with her son, I personally feel that it has little to do with her record as a politician. What I'm interested in is what she's done specifically in the Political Arena - what laws has she been for or against, what has been her stance on the REAL issues facing the american public like repealing unconstitutional laws, affordable health care, the ludicrous "war on drugs" and the apparantly Never Ending "war against terrorism"?
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