More on the other Ashley Treatment
from everyone's favorite LJ community (why'd I look):
I'm in women's health, and I've had several patients with CP or other severe mental retardation. And yes, menstruation can be a traumatic experience for such girls. The patients I've had have been placed on Depo-Provera (or, in rarer circumstances, other forms of hormonal BC) to inhibit menstruation, with great success. But hysterectomy? VERY extreme, and given the alternatives, IMO, thoroughly unnecessary.
"Other" severe mental retardation?
Strange, I wasn't aware that CP = retardation. Strangely enough I've always been under the impression I don't have that...
*sigh*
Yes, I get that this girl is probably retarded (though the article making the rounds doesn't actually mention anything about this person's cognitive capabilities, unlike the Ashley X case. There's a vague mention that menstruation will "confuse" her, which indicates inability to understand, but it's never stated outright what her cognitive capacity might be or how people know it.) And I get that in some cases, yes, CP and retardation go together.
But saying "other severe mental retardation" is dangerous. It spreads the myth that we're all cognitively impaired. Which in turn means that when even extremely intelligent people with severe enough CP that only affects them physically go about in the world, people see them drool or flail or not move or hear their speech impediments or see that they cannot talk at all and use some alternate method of speech and assume they are mentally incapacitated somehow.
This sloppy language thing has got to stop.
I'm in women's health, and I've had several patients with CP or other severe mental retardation. And yes, menstruation can be a traumatic experience for such girls. The patients I've had have been placed on Depo-Provera (or, in rarer circumstances, other forms of hormonal BC) to inhibit menstruation, with great success. But hysterectomy? VERY extreme, and given the alternatives, IMO, thoroughly unnecessary.
"Other" severe mental retardation?
Strange, I wasn't aware that CP = retardation. Strangely enough I've always been under the impression I don't have that...
*sigh*
Yes, I get that this girl is probably retarded (though the article making the rounds doesn't actually mention anything about this person's cognitive capabilities, unlike the Ashley X case. There's a vague mention that menstruation will "confuse" her, which indicates inability to understand, but it's never stated outright what her cognitive capacity might be or how people know it.) And I get that in some cases, yes, CP and retardation go together.
But saying "other severe mental retardation" is dangerous. It spreads the myth that we're all cognitively impaired. Which in turn means that when even extremely intelligent people with severe enough CP that only affects them physically go about in the world, people see them drool or flail or not move or hear their speech impediments or see that they cannot talk at all and use some alternate method of speech and assume they are mentally incapacitated somehow.
This sloppy language thing has got to stop.