Haleigh Poutre, 11

The Boston Herald stays on top of Haleigh Poutre’s fight for survival, and reports on the dedicated staff at Boston’s Franciscan Hospital for Children, where Haleigh is beginning rehabilitation:

Doctors at Franciscan Hospital for Children say hope is never lost.

As evidence, they point to kids like Nick Prefontaine, a Shrewsbury teen who was in a coma for two weeks after a snowboarding accident in 2003, and learned to walk and talk again at Franciscan.

“It’s more often than not, we see progress we don’t expect,” said Jane O’Brien, medical director of the rehabilitation hospital.

Doctors hope Haleigh Poutre, an 11-year-old brain-damaged ward of the state, will recover now that she is at Franciscan, the largest pediatric rehab center in New England.

The Department of Social Services won permission from the Supreme Judicial Court to remove her from life support two weeks ago, but in a transcendent turn of events, she started grabbing toys with her hands and showing life in her eyes, DDS officials now say.

All doctors will say about Haleigh is she’s “medically stable” and is one of about five kids at the center with a traumatic brain injury. Of the 20 kids in rehab at Franciscan, half arrived at the Brighton center on a ventilator.

Patients spend their days around other children and work at least three hours daily with speech, occupational and physical therapists to relearn even the basics, like swallowing and talking…

Meanwhile, Wesley J. Smith reviews the “sad state of medical ethics and the law in the United States of America” and warns that Haleigh is not safe yet from the plug-pullers.

Please keep Haleigh in your prayers.

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