The world we're living in today will often prescribe death as an acceptable antidote
or prescription treatment for suffering.
Welcome to Skywatch TV.
It's a special broadcast for Wednesday, April 26th, 2017.
I'm Derek Gilbert, joining me in studio.
My best friend, co-host of Sci Friday on Skywatch TV, my wife, Sharon K. Gilbert.
Hi, sweetie.
The author of a remarkable book about a remarkable young man happens to be the author's six-year-old
son.
She herself is an attorney, graduate from a national school of law, pastor Barr the first
time out.
Oh.
Remarkable.
The book, Through the Eyes of Hope, the author joins us now at Lacey Buchanan.
Lacey, welcome.
Hi.
Thank you.
For people who aren't familiar with Christian, and we'll show you some video of Christian
here in just a few minutes, your six-year-old son was born with some rather substantial birth
defects.
What is it called, and how rare is his condition?
His condition is called Tessier cleft lip and palate, and it just means that his cleft
clefted different parts of his face rather than into his nose and things like that.
So his eyes are also clefted, which means he's completely blind.
And what sort of treatment has he undergone since birth?
He's had reconstructive surgeries on his face.
His palate was open.
He couldn't eat things like that.
He couldn't speak well once he started talking.
So he's had reconstructive surgeries to correct that.
And that first surgery was four days.
Four days old to put in a feeding tube.
How much more treatment or how many more surgeries is he going to face before he reaches adulthood?
Lots.
No exact number, but he'll have quite a few more.
The response from people, friends, family members, well-meaning people, social media
warriors, who have learned about Christian's condition either before or after his birth.
What's been the consensus?
What sort of reaction does Christian provoke?
Most of the time, I would say people are inspired in all of him because he's just amazing.
He's rocking this thing called life, and it sort of puts life into perspective that we
can complain about this first world problems, and here's Christian just happy, go lucky
with all that he's been through.
But occasionally, we get the negative comments as well about name calling.
We've had threats.
We've had, why didn't you abort him?
We've had just some really nasty stuff as well, but those are the minority.
You learned about Christian's condition while you were just beginning law school.
How has the journey with Christian and your husband, Chris, as you've coped with this
over the last six years, changed the trajectory of your law career?
When I went into law school, I had no real aim.
I just, besides to be an attorney, I thought I might dabble in family law.
I knew some of the things I didn't want to do.
I didn't want to do criminal law.
But once Christian came along, and I started seeing the reality of what I was living every
day, it changed my whole perspective.
I wanted to pursue my degree to help other families who had been where I was at right
then.
I was facing so many things where I needed legal help, and I didn't know what to do,
and here I was in law school.
So how could somebody who had no legal background ever navigate these things, and getting an
attorney was out of our financial reach?
We were struggling trying to raise this child, and I had to quit my job to raise him.
And so I wanted to be able to help these families, and Christian was the reason that
I even realized that it was a need.
Did you ever think about ending the pregnancy?
Never.
It wasn't even, it was so far removed from us that the first time somebody mentioned
it when he was about three, four months old, I was like, abortion, really?
That was an option, and I guess I suppose it was, but for us it wasn't an option.
Had it been really hard for your marriage, though, a new child, law school, those things
add to stresses anyway, but a child that has to have operation after operation and really
cripple your finances, that had to really just about break it.
It was tough.
It wears on you as a person, and therefore it wears on your marriage, and my husband
and I both handled it very differently, and so we sort of just went opposite directions
for a while, and we had to really learn how to work together on it, so to speak, on just
the day-to-day, getting through the day type stuff.
Wow.
Now, you're practicing law now?
I'm not yet.
No.
But you passed the bar.
Yes, yes.
Are you going to get involved in legislation?
Yeah, actually.
So I've got a little bit of experience with our local state legislature, so I've already
been up there speaking a little bit to some committees and things like that, and I hope
to consistently speak to legislators about issues that are important to the disabled
community and let them know, because I feel like I'm a firsthand voice in that, and to
let them know the reality of what is going on with the disabled community, and I've sort
of got that attorney background to do it with, and so I hope that I can continue to be a
face for the disabled community with the people who make the laws that affect them.
What are some of the challenges or priorities that the disabled community needs to address
in the law?
One of the big ones right now, ADA compliance, is a big one, just navigating, just being able
to-
American with disabilities.
Yeah, yeah, just being able to go from point A to point B. There was a video recently on
social media of a guy who's in a wheelchair trying to go across somewhere like Manhattan,
some big city, I forget, just to get a bagel.
That was his challenge.
It was all in good fun, but the struggles he faced, trying to just go across town in
his wheelchair to get a bagel, and we don't think anything about walking down the street,
grabbing food, and so that's a big one for the disabled community.
One of the customers I dealt with in my previous career as an outside salesman for a structural
steel company was a company in Illinois that built elevators that could be retrofitted onto
buildings for ADA compliance that would mount basically on the outside of a building.
Actually that is a need because a lot of buildings built prior to the passage of the
ADA don't have wheelchair accessible stairs or elevators to get people to upper floors
of a building.
So that is clearly an obstacle that needs to be overcome.
But you know also the insurance structure of the United States is really shifting toward
a one-payer system, and it seems to me that because there are only so many dollars to
go around that there will eventually be people that have no vested interest in your child
who will be trying to make decisions for you.
How do you think that an attorney yourself can make a change in that?
I've got firsthand experience with people who don't know my child making these very
critically serious choices about his health care.
We're in the middle of some of that right now.
Just personally getting ready to go before a judge on Christians behalf, not as an attorney,
but as his mother and as his advocate about care that is trying to be taken away from
us that he obviously needs.
And so I hope that, you know, I feel like the overarching issue is the value and worth
that is put on people with disabilities in our society.
And I feel like if we can overcome that, then it won't be a question of well, you know,
you don't need that much health care, so maybe they don't either or that you can get
into that building.
Why do they need something special?
You know.
But worse yet, they may look at certain people as well.
You are less important because you're sort of disposable, and what can you contribute
to society?
Exactly.
What it comes down to is what our friend Wesley J. Smith calls human exceptionalism.
All human lives are sacred because we are all created in the image of God as God's
imagers on earth, His representatives on planet earth, regardless of whether you are an all
star major league baseball player or a precocious, intelligent, happy six year old boy who just
happens to have a genital, a birth defect that has left him without sight.
In our utilitarian, our increasingly utilitarian society, our worth is determined by how much
we can contribute to the state.
And as you said, we go to one pair system with people who don't have that frame of reference
making decisions on whether or not dollars should be allocated for people like Christian
because of what they can contribute to society.
We run the risk of marginalizing vast groups of people because it wouldn't stop with him.
Then it would become the elderly, and it would become, you know, people who suffer severe
depression or whatever, you know, people with too many outstanding parking tickets.
It is a...
Sorry, but you're a conservative.
You're a Christian.
Exactly.
Yeah, you're abusing your children by teaching them this hateful worldview.
Yeah, it is a remarkable, slippery slope and where people might see Christian and young
children like him as disposable, it won't stop there.
Because once you make the decision, we're going to view people on the value of what
they can contribute to the state, then everything is open to question, everyone is at risk.
So as we do for the least of these, so, yeah, you're in our prayers and we are honored to
have you here today.
And just to show you the young man who was the star of the program that you will see
on Skywatch TV coming up in just a few weeks, let's introduce you to Christian Buchanan.
Christian, I understand that you really like elevators.
Is that true?
Yeah.
Yes, sir.
Yes, sir.
Oh, and very polite too.
Because he's going to go far.
Now what kind of elevator do you have in the hotel where you're staying?
Tissencrup.
Tissencrup.
He even pronounces it correctly.
Most Americans say thyssen.
It's tissencrup.
Is that the best kind of elevator, or do you have another kind that's your favorite?
My favorite is Montgomery.
Montgomery.
Montgomery.
Oh.
I didn't even know that.
I never heard of Montgomery.
I didn't even know that.
I never heard of Montgomery.
Montgomery heard.
Montgomery heard.
Oh.
Wow.
Hug.
He knows some I don't.
Now why do you like elevators?
I give it a little hug.
Oh, a hug.
What do you like elevators?
What do you like doing with elevators?
I like wrestling on them.
Wrestling on them.
I don't know that you've ever wrestled on them.
You're a little bit of a character.
I didn't know that's what elevators were for.
I did, but you know, when you're on an elevator, it is sort of like the shape of a wrestling
ring.
Kind of is, yeah.
You are all boys.
And a handrail.
A handrail, yeah.
I need those.
The longer I get, the more I appreciate them.
He likes to sit on the bottom because I think it flips his belly a little more.
Oh.
And it has a bell.
A bell?
Oh.
Yeah.
Very cool.
You're staying in a hotel while you're here.
Do you like hotels, too?
I like hotels.
You do?
Yeah.
And it has a button.
Lots of buttons.
Oh, buttons to push.
Oh.
Lots of buttons.
In the elevator, lots of buttons to push.
An alarm button.
An alarm button.
We don't press that one, though, remember?
Yeah, that could be, that could make some people angry.
It's like the magnet button for the kid.
I always want to go for the alarm.
Christian's in going to school for the wine time.
And it has an annoying fan.
An annoying fan.
You're so silly.
He doesn't seem bothered much by these challenges that he faces.
No.
He's not.
You know, we've never let him know that it is hard on us sometimes, but, you know, he's
young and he doesn't deserve to carry that weight.
And so we've never let him know that, you know, that he's different or that there's,
you know, that these are challenges.
This is just life to him.
This is just who he is.
And he's happy.
I mean, he's happy to be who he is.
Why wouldn't he be?
You know?
He's a brilliant young boy.
He really is.
He is.
Well, I know he's looking forward to getting out and seeing the ponies at the Spring Ponies
Ranch.
So we'll let you go.
But we encourage you to watch for those programs coming up.
It will be June, but you don't want to miss those because you get a chance to see Christian
in more, you know, a longer stretch there.
The book is through the eyes of hope.
Lacey Buchanan is the author, the mother of the young man, and it is our honor to have
you here today.
Thank you.
It's Sharon Gilbert.
I'm Derek Gilbert.
And we thank you for watching as we keep watching.
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