Video above: Insight hears from people who’ve found themselves in impossible situations, facing agonising choices you’ll never want to make. Impossible Choices, Tuesday April 21 at 8:30pm and on On Demand.
Only two weeks after giving birth to her daughter, Kylie Pratt had to consider the unthinkable: amputating her baby’s leg.
Kylie’s daughter Emilee was born with tibial hemimelia, underdeveloped and missing bones in her right leg that would prevent her from walking.
Initially, Kylie thought Emilee might only need a plaster to correct her leg.
But when Emilee was two weeks old, Kylie was shocked when doctors gave the family two options: Amputate Emilee’s leg now or let her undergo multiple corrective surgeries over many years with no guarantee she could walk.
“When we first saw the specialists, we spoke to a rehab doctor and they sent Emilee for another X-ray, thinking treatment might just be a plaster on her leg, but he said we’d also need to see the surgeon in an hour,” Kylie explains.
“So, we went away and had lunch, came back to see the surgeon and the surgeon said the word ‘amputation’. I said ‘hold on a minute! An hour ago, it was just a plaster and now we’re cutting her leg off – what?!’. I cried the whole two hours on the way home.”
Kylie’s daughter Emilee was born with tibial hemimelia, underdeveloped and missing bones in her right leg that would prevent her from walking. Source: Supplied
Kylie says it was difficult for her to accept the diagnosis and the surgeon’s recommendation to amputate her baby daughter’s leg.
“I googled everything I could online and found cases in America of children with the same condition who had successful corrective surgeries and are now walking,” Kylie says. “I was clinging to that hope and any alternative I could find. My biggest fear was Emilee would grow up to hate us if we cut off her leg.”
But Emilee’s dad, James, trusted the doctors and their recommendation to amputate.
“I was worried the other way,” James explains. “That Emilee would resent us if we gave her lots of surgeries, and she’d have to undergo painful recovery and rehab”.
Kylie, James and their daughter Emilee, now 11, discuss the family’s agonising decision on this week’s Insight episode of “Impossible Choices”.
