If you haven’t heard the appalling news about 11-year-old Madeline Neumann’s tragic death of diabetic ketoacidosis last week, you can read about it here in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.  The gist of it was that her parents decided to pray over her body instead of take her to a fucking doctor after she had been sick for two weeks and, at ten or so days in, COULD NO LONGER WALK OR TALK.  Madeline was healthy before her episode.  At her death, she was emaciated, as the body eats it own fat to raise insulin levels during diabetic ketoacidosis.

Around the same time, the idiot parents of poor little 15-month-old Ava Worthington of Oregon were indicted in Ava’s death for their attempts to ”faith-heal” the baby of her bronchial pneumonia–which led to a blood infection that could have been treated with antibiotics. 

As the article about Ava notes, laws were passed in the 1990s that struck down legal shields for faith-healers after the deaths of several children whose parents were members of the fundamentalist church.  The Worthingtons were indicted on Friday on manslaughter and criminal mistreatment charges, but it is unclear whether the Neumanns will be charged.  According to a Chicago Tribune report, Wisconsin law says that a parent cannot be accused of abuse or neglect of a child if “in good faith” they selected prayer as a basis of treatment for a disease.  An investigation has begun into whether the Neumanns had a “a good faith belief” that their daughter could be cured through prayer.  

My thought is that if Madeline was FUCKING BEDRIDDEN, there’s no way in hell the parents could have had a good faith belief she would be fine if they lit some candles and said a few Hail Marys.  Fucking assholes.

I believe in God, and I pray.  I pray more when I need or want more, which sucks, but you can bet your sweet ass that I’d be praying to my God, everyone else’s God, the real doctors and the people that play them on TV if my babies were that ill.  If my babies were lethargic and wanted to stay in bed for a few days, and they appeared to be getting thinner, and they just wanted me to hold them, I would probably have a Civil Protection Order against me to stay AWAY from the doctor’s office because I’d been there too many times.  

My son had a five-day fever last year and the doctor’s office staff was probably referring to me as “Norm” from Cheers I had been there so many times.  I’m not saying I drugged him up with everything under the sun, but I wanted a professional medical person overseeing my child and informing me thoroughly so that I could make proper decisions about his care.

My son ended up losing five pounds with that fever and looked so thin that I burst into tears when I put him in the bath at the end of that week.  I called in my husband so I could run out and buy milkshakes. 

What about the Worthingtons and the Neumanns?  I wonder what they’re feeling now.  Milkshakes aren’t going to bring back their beautiful daughters, and I hope all their asses get locked up for so long they forget what ice cream tastes like.  

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Remember those great Judy Blume young adult books?  I checked out the one about Margaret awaiting her period from the library about a thousand times.  Looking back on that book now, I can so relate to the waiting, the wondering.  Except in my case, it’s not the waiting for my period.  I got that about 26 years ago, and that’s what’s gotten me to the more important waiting I’m doing now.  

I’m waiting–and praying–for the day I can go to Target.  Alone.

When I can, the first thing I’ll do (after I tell all my friends about it and they beg me for all the gory details), is go browse the bra the undies section.  And browse, I will.  I will pluck every single bra off the rack and hold it up to my chest, read its label, and perform a material-feel check, just because I can.  And then I’ll take another hour to try them all on. I will not spend my time there picking up and rehanging forty bras that little hands have strewn along the aisle, or chase small people out from under racks of underwires, or shush little-boy shrieks of, “Mommy, these are for your boobies!”

After I’m done QC-ing all the underthings, I’ll shuffle over to the sunglasses section and try on every pair.  I need a few new ones now because my last two were thrown on the ground at the zoo and run over with the stroller, and stretched out until they snapped in half.  Not by me.

Moving on, I’ll grab a coffee at the food bar without even looking at the snack bag rack and cold juice box display, then head to the media section, where I’ll read every single magazine and newspaper cover-to-cover.  I will read for comprehension and finish every sentence the first time, even if it’s about poor Brit or silly Posh, just because I’m actually reading.  I’ll relish the muted house muzak in the background as opposed to the elevated, “Mommy!  He’s eating my yogurt!” background noise at my house. 

Then, I will go try on clothes.  I might even buy some, since I think the last time I bought anything new was 1963.  Oh wait, I wasn’t born yet.  It just seems like it’s been that long.  Say what you want about a woman who fantasizes about buying clothes at Target; they make good enough stuff and if I can do that in the same store I get my coffee drunk and my reading done, well, good for me.

Of course, I’ll follow all this up with a trip over to women’s shoes, where I will try on several pair and stand very still in them, instead of trying to run in the damn things, tripping over those bloody elastic shoe-attacher bands while chasing cackling little boys up and down the aisles.

On the way out after 8 hours with my overflowing cart(s), I will bypass the toy department (actually, in my ideal Target experience, there would be no toy department), the Pokemon card display, the diaper section, the birthday party aisles, and the toy department (did I already say that?).   

And I will be a good girl, and use my manners, and be nice to my brother.  Please, God?

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