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GEORGIA BUSSEY'S birth should have been a joyful occasion. But happiness turned into heartache when her parents Kim Gallagher and Dave Bussey were told that their new daughter was a Down's Syndrome baby. They were devastated - but from the moment they took her home from hospital, Kim and Dave decided that they wanted Georgia to lead as normal a life as possible. When they were first told she could have a series of cosmetic operations to alter the instantly recognisable facial features caused by Down's - surgery which is opposed by the Down's Syndrome Association - they rejected the idea. But eventually they decided that the controversial operations would be in Georgia's best interests. Today they explain why...

SHOWING a maturity way beyond most five-year-olds, Georgia Bussey says as I enter her parents' home: "Let me take your coat for you." Perhaps the air of worldliness is due to the experience of having undergone cosmetic surgery three times.

First, she had the size of her tongue reduced to stop it protruding and slurring her speech. Next, folds of skin were removed from the inner corners of her eyes to take away the "slantiness" that is a common feature of the condition. Then, two months ago, Georgia had surgery to stop her ears sticking out.

"I'm not trying to disguise the fact that she has Down's Syndrome," said her mother Kim. "But I feel the surgery allows her to get away with not having instant judgments made about her.

"We are just trying to get people to accept her and not judge the book by its cover, so to speak. Society isn't going to change overnight, not for Georgia and not for anyone else. She's got to fit into society, rather than society fitting into the way she is."

Kim, 36, is a forthright woman. But then she and her partner Dave, 34, a haulage contractor, have had to be strong and brave, because their decision to change Georgia's facial appearance has met with strong disapproval from experts on Down's Syndrome and from parents of other children with the condition.

Carol Boys, director of the Down's Syndrome Association, is blunt when she says: "Why should people have to change the way they look? There is no way people should feel that they have to undergo surgery to make them more acceptable.

"The crux of this issue is: what are the motives for parents putting their children through these operations to make them appear `normal'? After all, what is `normal' anyway?"

But Kim and Dave, who have another daughter, nine-year-old Bianca, have chosen to base their blueprint for Georgia's future on their instincts as parents - instincts which appear to be paying off. Georgia is a bright, happy child who has just started at a mainstream school, where she shows no obvious differences from the other children.

And the three operations - carried out on the NHS at a cost of around pounds 700 each - went ahead only after long and painstaking deliberation.

Kim said: "From day one, when we made the decision to keep Georgia, I said she would be treated the same as my other daughter.

"I didn't want any Down's Association connection. I didn't want to meet other parents that were in the same situation as me. I didn't want her going on any special buses.

"Obviously, Social Services, speech therapists, physios and occupational therapists all tried to push me into that corner but I didn't want it. I just wanted her to live as normally as my other daughter.

"I never wanted her to feel she was different. She has never been in a playgroup or a school where there are other children like her. Obviously, as she gets older she might choose to do that. There are clubs and youth centres and that's fine.

"But for the time being, while she is learning, I want her to be around as many normal kids as possible.

"From an early age, children mimic us and other children. And if Georgia has other children around her - who are not as capable as herself, or are dribbling constantly, or quite violent because of frustration - I think that would have been picked up by her."

Until October 1993, when Georgia became one of the two children born every day in Britain with Down's Syndrome, Kim and Dave had known next to nothing about the condition.

Recalling the day of her birth at London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, Kim said: "It was like cutting my heart out. I just cried and cried. I'd never even been around a child who had a disability. I thought, `Can I cope? What will she be like? What will her life be like? What is my life going to be like?' It was total confusion and devastation.

"It had been a difficult birth and I had lost a lot of blood and had to go straight into theatre. But I knew something was wrong because everyone was rushing around in a panic. When I came round, the doctors told me Georgia had Down's Syndrome.

"My body was still in shock and I was doped up and confused. I couldn't take it in. At first I rejected the whole idea of having her. I'd just had a baby and everyone wants their baby to be perfect. The bottom of my world just fell out.

"We considered adoption because we felt Georgia might be better off with someone who was going into the situation with their eyes open. But after the initial shock, we decided she is our child and we just have to get on with it and do the best we can and give her all the love and support she needs.""

It was during a routine visit to her doctor when Georgia was two that Kim first inquired about cosmetic surgery. She said: "Like other Down's children, Georgia was born with bat-like ears and I asked if there was anything that could be done later to correct them. My doctor said no but when she went on leave I mentioned it to her locum.""

This time Georgia was referred to Norman Waterhouse, a cranio-facial surgeon at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

Kim said: ""We were told that because of growth her ears couldn't be operated on until she was five or six, but Dr Waterhouse said he could do her eyes and tongue, which was something that had never even crossed our minds. He told us to go away and think about it and come back in a year's time.

"Our first reaction was `No'. It sounded terrible, especially the tongue operation, which involved having a large triangular section cut out of the middle. Apparently, this kind of surgery is not widely used in Britain, though it is in America.

"Dave was against the idea. Georgia had been born with a heart defect and spent her first two weeks in an incubator attached to tubes. He felt she had gone through enough.

"But we were very aware that Georgia's tongue was a burden to her. It was very large and protruded, which made her dribble and impaired her speech.

"Then she had a couple of falls where her teeth went through her tongue and that made my mind up. We decided to get the folds of skin taken from her eyelids at the same time. We were worried that things might go wrong, but then we thought, `Georgia is going to gain from it'.

Georgia was three when she had the tongue and eyelid operations, which lasted an hour-and-a-half.

Kim said: "When she came out, her eyes were quite red and the redness took about seven months to go. Her tongue looked terrible. It was purple, red and black - but in four hours she was eating ice cream and two weeks later it had healed completely.

"Afterwards we noticed a big change in her. Her breathing improved - she used to sleep with her tongue out and make little grunting noises - and her speech was much better."

"With the ear surgery earlier this year, we tried to give her more insight into the operation because she was older.

"We told her the doctor was going to make her ears nice and she was going to have her ears pierced. She understood that a little bit."

The natural exuberance of a child has helped Georgia cope. "She just bounces back and has not made a fuss at all," says Kim.

Kim is aware of the criticisms levelled by the Down's Syndrome Association, but insists: ""I'm not trying to disguise the fact that she has Down's Syndrome. Though we are changing the features by having the surgery, you can't ever take it away. I'm not ashamed of her. She is what she is and that's that. If Bianca had been born with ears like Georgia's, I would have got them done too."

"Georgia's surgeon Norman Waterhouse points out that few people object when ordinary children with prominent ears have operations. "There is therefore no reason to deny Down's children surgery that will help them avoid teasing," he said.

"The issue here is that we are a `lookist' society. It's geared towards the way we look and discriminates against people who look different, whether that is from a birthmark or something else."

Dr Waterhouse operates on around six Down's children each year, and their parents tell him that the youngsters suffer less teasing and isolation afterwards.

Carol Boys of the Down's Syndrome Association remains unconvinced. "While it may take away the facial traits, it won't take away the learning disability," she said.

"There are some very good-looking people with Down's Syndrome and we have absolutely no evidence to support claims that Down's children are more likely to be bullied at mainstream school than anyone else.

Kim, speaking at her eighth-floor flat in Central London,said: ""I realise I am not going to change the way Georgia is. I know I can't take away her learning difficulties.

"I'm just trying to give Georgia a little bit of edge. Everyone at her school loves her and she has never had any problems, but she isn't always going to be little and cuddly. She's going to grow up into a teenager and adult and that's when a lot of the nastiness starts.

"You know what it's like when there's someone in the class with a big nose, or big ears or they're fat - they get the mickey taken out of them.

"I just feel that Georgia has got enough to cope with without having extra bullying."

Georgia - whose case is featured in an ITV documentary, Changing Faces, on November 24 - is a pupil at St Peter's Primary School, in Belgravia, Central London, and Kim hopes that one day she may join the list of Down's children who have passed GCSEs.

Kim said: "It is difficult to know at this stage how severe or mild her learning disability will be. If I get reports from the school that she can't cope, then I'll have to think about sending her to a special school.

"She gets a little bit of extra tuition, just as any child who was a little slow at reading would get. But I have told her teachers I don't want any special treatment or pity for her.

"That's not going to do her any favours in the long term. I might be right, I might be wrong, but that's the way I want it to be."

Though Georgia was born with a faulty heart valve, it corrected itself and she is lucky not to suffer from the digestive disorders which are often associated with Down's Syndrome.

Kim and Dave have firmly rejected the idea of any further cosmetic surgery for Georgia.

"I don't want to play around too much and I don't want to play God to her,"" Kim said. "There's nothing wrong with her to look at it hadn't crossed my mind to play around with the rest of her face."

She added: "I don't want her to have major plastic surgery, though if she wanted it when she was much older then that would be something to think about.

"But as far as I'm concerned she's fine. She's perfect really."

Why I think this surgery is wrong

JOHN Hogan, whose five-year-old daughter Shauna has Down's Syndrome, believes that the cosmetic surgery amounts to child abuse.

"The child has absolutely no say whatsoever about this kind of process," said Mr Hogan, a Children's Society worker from Liverpool.

"Shauna has a reasonably severe learning disability and is probably a couple of years behind other children. She has got the classic Down's features with the slanted eyes and folds of skin.

"Children have said she looks different and a cousin once said she was ugly. But when we explain why she is different, children just shrug their shoulders and treat her like anyone else.

"There must be risks with a three-year-old child undergoing any kind of surgery and it strikes me as unnecessary to put your child under that risk just for cosmetic reasons.

"We are more interested in dealing with Shauna's learning disability than her appearance. My advice to anyone even considering cosmetic surgery is that they have to accept their child for who they are."