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Friday, August 4, 2006 Update by Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons

WARNING
The following update contains images of a certain specific physical deformity that may cause slightly built southern belles to experience dizziness and the lingering onset of unconsciousness. Reader discretion is advised.

Seriously, you have been warned.

There's an aborted fetus in the sky over Cleveland. A political group calling itself "The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform" is paying to tow a billboard-sized photograph of an abortion behind a plane. If you live or work in Cleveland and you look up at just the right time, you might see a bloodied bucket of limbs and little mangled face looking back down at you like some sort of horrid avenging angel. It's their grotesque way of saying abortion is bad.

When I first saw a photograph of Juliana Wetmore as a newborn my immediate reaction was "there is the response to that flying abortion billboard." Take that picture of little Juliana and fly that over Cleveland with the advice "choose death" beneath the photograph. Over the days, and after a lot of reading, I have changed my mind about that. No, of course I was right, but now I feel bad for thinking it. If you keep reading, you will too!

To say that Juliana Wetmore was born without a face is both medically inaccurate and wholly inadequate as a description of her condition. Someone "without a face" is "faceless" and that conjures mental images of mannequins and the silvery mask of Cobra Commander. Juliana Wetmore was born with a head resembling a deformed Muppet made out of skin grafts or a man-colored mutant version of Dr. Zoidberg.

"She has no upper jaw, no cheek bones, no eye sockets, and she's missing the corner of her ear," said her father, Thom Wetmore, in an article for a local news station.

Juliana was born with Treachers Collins Syndrome, a mutation that hampers embryonic development of bones and cartilage in the face and skull. Approximately 1 in 10,000 children are born with Treachers Collins and the extent of the deformity ranges from barely noticeable to severe. The real kicker is that people with Treachers Collins are usually born with normal intelligence.

Deformity was detected early in Juliana's development, but doctors believed that it was probably a cleft palate. No further diagnosis was sought. Regardless of the severity of her defect, Juliana's parents were not going to consider seeking an abortion. Juliana's mother, Tami, nearly bled to death in the process of giving birth. When her father saw Juliana he wept. Whenever Thom Westmore talks about his daughter, he weeps.

After more than three million dollars worth of surgery, paid for by the US taxpayers by way of the Navy, Juliana looks like this:

She breathes through a tracheotomy, she is fed by Gastrostomy (a tube inserted into her stomach) and she will eventually be the recipient of cochlear implants so that she can hear. She cannot speak, because of the tracheotomy and because her mouth lacks the bone structure to allow her to speak. Adults are sickened by her and children are terrified of her. She has normal intelligence.

Juliana's saga of suffering has captivated the community of Jacksonville, Florida. There have been more than a dozen news pieces done on her progress, each a mixture of carnival sideshow and heart-wrenching perseverance in the face of adversity. "Step right up and see the girl without a face! Hear the story of how she nearly suffocated because she pulled out her tracheotomy tube!"

I tell you all of this as a background to the most depressing and yet somehow blackly humorous aspect of Juliana's story: Juliana's website. Don't fucking spam it or send them nasty emails, you ingrates. Look but don't touch.

The most accessible attraction on the website is a series of captioned images of Juliana that you could assume - were her family not so agonizingly earnest - had been written with hydrochloric sarcasm. I have selected three of my personal favorites and have included the original captions. I have also added what I thought when I saw each image.

Sitting Horrid

You Can't Think Yourself a New Face

Ready for Cellar

I can already hear your head whirring and cocking back, ready for a full-strength "aw no he just didn't", but be honest here: you might not have been thinking exactly the same thing, but you were not thinking "Sitting Pretty". Those captions are soul-crushingly inappropriate.

Even more soul-crushing are the journals Juliana's mother (Tami) and Juliana's nurse (Jeanne) keep about Juliana's life. Tami's journal is predictably peppered with blessings of the Lord and answered prayers and Juliana is, of course, God's Gift. I suppose she is God's Gift in much the same way a plague of locusts or a river turned to blood are God's unnatural and ruinous Gifts.

Both journals are also packed with "adorable anecdotes" that amount to a sense of wonder that Juliana is trying to act like a human being.

The last few nights she's been watching "Toy Story II". Last night when it was over she signed "I love you" to the disk. When she finally lay down and pulled her blanket up (something else she wants to do for herself) she looked over at me and signed "I love you". What a dear little girl.

Read: monster can feel love too.

Tonight when I came in, at 10:30, Juliana was running around the house with her sister Kendra's rubber boots on. They were too big, of course, and on the wrong feet, so she was having trouble keeping her balance. She fell on her butt as I walked by and I "signed" silly at her.

Read: Thom was supposed to be keeping an eye on her but he had fallen asleep with the revolver in his mouth again.

When the disk is over she'll sign "change". OK. I'll do that. I'll change the disk once or twice, but not after she's just chosen one and I've put it in and sat back down. I'll sign "no". "Change." "No." "Change." "No." "Change, change, change." "No, no, no". Usually she'll give up and watch the disk. But now she's learned something new to add—"Change, please.” Change, please." "Change, please." It's hard to say "No" to that. Sometimes it takes what I call "hardening my heart".

Jesus Christ, the kid looks like Admiral Ackbar, let her watch whatever she wants. Let her watch Robocop or porno or whatever.

Besides Juliana's favorite DVD's, the Signing Time series, she has one more favorite, "Monsters Inc.". She wants to watch it almost every night. So we thought she would really love the stuffed animal of the main character, Sulley. But she didn't want anything to do with stuffed Sulley. She wouldn't touch him or even look at him. She continued to love the Monster's Inc. DVD, so when she watched it I would point to Sulley on the screen and then to the Sulley doll. It took quite a while for it to "click" but one night she actulally touched the Sulley doll and signed "I love you"!

I don't know whether to laugh at the fact that her favorite DVD is "Monsters Inc." or cry for the very same reason.

Juliana is becoming so independent. She is trying to dress herself now. But I better have the shoes laid out that she wants, or it is complete DRAMA in our house.

I would think shoe choices are the least of the DRAMA in that house, although maybe her eyeballs shoot out of her face when she's upset or something.

At the grocery store today I set a turkey roast in the cart next to Juliana, and then I went about my business getting more groceries. I watched her for a minute trying to figure out what she was doing with the turkey. Then she put it down and signed "baby" to me. She picked the turkey back up and began rocking it again and cuddled it up to her cheek. And then the delicate little flower that she is she began swinging it over her head and trying to throw it out of the cart. Not even a trip to the grocery store is uneventful with Juliana along.

Juliana Wetmore will probably never have a face that looks even reasonably normal. She may never be able to speak, swallow food, or breathe normally and she will experience every agonizing detail of her life with the mind of a normal human being. Her struggle to exist normally in human society will come at an immense financial cost and take an incalculable emotional toll on those around her. Her story, so impossible to empathize with, will be broadcast to the world again and again by TV crews and documentary filmmakers.

Only time will tell if she is raised up as a symbol of the pro-life movement, but I stand by my opinion that she would make a perfect candidate for the opposition. Even without being announced, I feel she can be a living martyr for the movement.

Save me from the world and save the world from me, her pictures seem to say to me, spare my family the suffering. Spare the medicines and surgeries for those who already live. Some should die so that they do not needlessly suffer. I think Juliana Wetmore lives so that the world suffers with her.

Welcome to the club and have a nice day.

Thanks to Shmorky for the awesome Achewood parody, Melonbread for rubbing my nose in the great quotes from the journal and DocEvil for the hilarious shoutout to the boys in cellblock 904.

- Zack "Geist Editor" Parsons