Conversations about mental retardation, blindness, deafness, cardiac abnormalities, tube feeding were more than I could take. Especially since. she had been born that way despite how hard I had prayed to avert this calamity during my pregnancy as I kept having recurring nightmares about a baby born with different physical disabilities.
I grieved for what will never be then. threw myself into making her as ‘normal ‘ as possible: Life saving esophageal repair, ligation of a patent ductus arteriosus in the heart, hearing aids, speech therapy, physiotherapy, fundiplication to deal with life threatening reflux, cochlear implant, eye implant to replace a ‘jaga-jaga’ small blind eye with a big, beautiful, blind eye. Suddenly, without warning on November 11, 2003 at the age of 9 , Patricia died in her sleep from a perforated gut , a complication of the fundiplication performed 8 years earlier.