Dear Editor,
From her birth at 25 weeks gestational age, our daughter’s life was a miracle. 100 days later, one big exception arose: Fetal Inflammatory Response Syndrome. It was a parting gift from my unexpected and severe pregnancy complications. We call some infants miracles because they live through adverse circumstances when so many others don’t. Maesyn Conley Cahoon was both the miracle and the unlucky in her short lifetime.
Two days before Maesyn passed, she made the most intentional action of her life. Hours into holding her, she extubated herself in a split second. I will never shake the sights, sounds, and feelings of her fighting multiple attempts on an emergency reintubation, mere inches from myself. Maesyn’s spirit was too big for her now failing body, and the best we could do, as her parents, was to honor that.
We take great comfort in knowing that we provided for Maesyn as much as we could, yet her greatest gift came from the nurses and doctors on her last day. We were given the choice to take Maesyn outside for her final moments on her 115th day of life.
May 14, 2021 was the perfect day. We were surrounded by love from countless staff members as Maesyn breathed fresh air on her own, for the first and last time. It was three hours of the most beautiful yet devastating heartbreak, holding her in peace, not trauma. The same doctor who took Maesyn’s first vitals took her last, barely able to verbalize the readings through the tears. Maesyn loved, and was loved, fiercely.
If LR-131 had been law at the time, useless but still mandated chest compressions and epi shots would have done nothing but overdosed, bruised, and broken Maesyn’s already dying body. The PTSD inflicted upon those present would have been unbearable, and, likely, costing mine. I can’t imagine living with myself if my daughter had died in excessive trauma and pain.
LR-131 would have forced the short-sighted, non-medical, unrealistic, and religious opinions of lobbyists and the uninformed general public on Maesyn. Both the doctors and I would have been hopeless to protect her from it, barred from using ethics and medicine, and labeled as murderers if we did.
LR-131 has zero regard for the patient’s gestational age or medical status. It would infringe deeply on patient privacy standards. It would eliminate comfort care and the human right to a dignified death for neonatal and pediatric patients. It would turn compassionate and highly skilled doctors into felons for following their ethics and the wishes of parents. It would immediately drive providers out of the state, eliminating services currently available that save unborn and born infants daily.
LR-131 would cost far more lives than it could ever save.
As a parent, you live to make your child’s life as good as it can be, and I know, without any doubt, that the staff did the same, too. Vote NO on LR-131 so that all Montana parents facing tragic circumstances can say the same.
Lea Bossler
Missoula, MT
