On the Cure Phanomonon and a Little Girl

Lockshmi Tatma is an Indian two year old.  She is also disabled (or at least she was) and many people in her village in a remote part of India thought that she was the reincarnation of the Hindu Goddess Lockshmi.  You see, the two year old Lockshmi had eight limbs like the Goddess.  At least she used to until doctors removed them because the reason for her extra appendages was not in fact divine intervention, but the remains of her parasitic twin.

 I really began thinking about this when I first saw the story on 20/20 a month ago.  Is it fine to “fix” someone because they don’t appear normal?  I don’t appear normal, and I don’t want to be fixed.  In fact, I've spent most of adult life trying to avoid the "fixers".  Of course, in Lockshmi’s case it was somewhat different because doctors said she was going to die if she didn’t have the procedure.  I don’t know if I personally believe doctors whenever they say anything.  They kept telling my parents that if I had one more surgery and then one more and one more that I would eventually walk.    I’m still full time in an electric wheelchair, and I’ve never walked a step without someone hanging on to me or least within arm’s reach in case I should fall.  Real functional there. 

I don’t know what I would do if someone told me my kid had to have surgery to alter them or die.  I know I would seek a second opinion and probably a third and fourth.   It alarms me that people just provided this little girl with surgery to normalize her without understanding the consequences of that.  True, I don’t understand it all either.  I just know what I saw on 20/20 and the National Geographic special which I recorded.  Even if it is in her best interest in this case, the idea of surgery to normalize disabled people doesn’t often work in the way that the medical establishment pretends it does to both parents and children.  I think that in the coming decades we as disabled people are going to need to be vigilant in this regard as the medical community gets put on a higher pedestal than it already is.