PACE 6 December 10, 1993
Warm Springs Oregon
SpilyayTymoo
A eye
upon the unb
When pregnant mothers drink, their babies
can be born deformed or retarded doomed
to a life of misery. No group in the United
States has a higher rate of alcohol-caused
infant deformities than Alaska Natives.
A tiny baby struggles In a
hospital Incubator and lets loose
a muffled cry. Ills wrinkled face
turns red from the effort, while
pencll-thln ribs stand in sharp
relief on his palm-sized chest. The
baby has been Isolated in the
plastic box because he has almost
no fat on his scrawny. 4-pound
body and because one of the walls
in his heart hasn't completely
formed.
The hole In his heart will
eventually heal, either on Its own
or with a surgeon's help. Eventu
ally, too. he will put on weight,
although he always will be a
small, spindly child.
But nothing will change the
damage to his brain or the wreck
age on his face. This child, who
could have been an Einstein or a
leader of his people, or Just a
normal, healthy boy. will not be
like other children. His face will
be flat, his Hps thin, his eyes
curiously folded. He will be sus
ceptible to sickness and seizures.
The stunted brain Inside his tiny
head may never learn to read a
book or count the fingers on his
hands.
The baby's deformities are not
the result of a rogue gene, an
unnatural trauma or some act of
Cod.
He is he way he is because his
mother drank.
Alaska Natives have the highest
known rate of fetal alcohol syn
drome in the country. Alcohol
stunts one in every 25 Native
babies, and the full-blown syn
drome arrested growth, organ
defects, facial deformities and
mental retardation mars at
least four of every 1,000 infants
born to Native women, according
to the Alaska Native Health
Board. . .,... , .....
That's more than twice the rate
discovered among the Navajos,
the only other Native Americans
who have been studied, and two
and half times the rates in Seattle
and New York.
The Alaska figure only counts
children identified by health aides
at village clinics or pediatricians
at the Alaska Native Medical
Center.
"Not everyone comes into the
clinics. I think there are a lot of
addicted women we Just don't
see," says Jerry Nasenbeny, a
pediatrician at the medical center.
No one knows the FAS rate for
other Alaskans. The state health
department has never surveyed
the general population, and
private doctors aren't required to
report children they think might
be affected by alcohol. But the
Native health board and many
pediatricians believe the non
Native rate is also high.
"We know of one (non-Native)
woman in Homer who has had
sever FAS kids," says Vicki Hild.
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coordinator of the board's FAS
prevention program. "The youngest
is 5 months old. And the mother is
still drinking."
These children carry an enor
mous financial cost. Their hospital
bills, special education and welfare
payments virtually none will
ever be able to live independently
will run at least $1 million in
each child's lifetime.
But what bothers pediatrician
Nasenbeny most is the human
potential lost.
This is an entirely preventable
syndrome," he says. These kids
could have been Rhodes scholars.
We'll never know."
THE CHILD AS VICTIM
Mack Kvasnlkoff, Jr., now 9,
was the first to show the effects of
his mother's drinking.
His four older brothers and
sisters had been normal, healthy
children. Three were bom before
their mother started drinking, and
the fourth, now a pretty 16-year-old,
shows no ill effects from her
mother's occasional drinking
during pregnancy. But Mack
wasn't so lucky. His mother drank
heavily and didn't stop or even
slow down when she found out she
was pregnant with him. Mack.
Jr.'s, round, wide-set eyes and thin
lips were apparent from birth.
When he reached school age, he
fell behind the other children and
had to be left back a grade.
The public health nurses gave
me pamphlets (about alcoholism
and FAS). I threw them away,"
remembers his mother, Justina, a
38-year-old resident of English
Bay. When friends commented on
the child's small size, she would
say. "He's short like me. He's
skinny like his dad."
By the time Justina's sixth
child. Nicholas, was born in 1962.
. the Kvasnlkoff family had almost
fallen apart. Justina and her
husband. Mack, fought constantly
over booze and hoarded bottles
from each other.
Mack, Jr. remembers going to
school with uncombed hair and
dirty Jeans. The oldest daughter,
Kathy. now 21, remembers her
parents passed out in the cluttered
living room while the children
struggled to make some kind of
dinner usually scrambled eggs,
because that was all they could
manage.
Justina remembers her state of
mind during those chaotic, ugly
days, and it was brutally single
minded: all that mattered was
alcohol.
"When Nicholas was 6 months
old he got sick. . . Timmy (the
oldest son) told me he might die,"
she says "All I thought was. 'So
what? Then I will be free. Free to
drink some more."
Today, Justina sits at her
Formica-topped kitchen table, her
eyes following little Nicholas as he
o
m
Justina Kvasnlkoff drank heavily while
bounces away to watch Sesame
Street on TV. Nicholas also turned
out to be a FAS child. At 5 he has
the body and mind of a 3-year-old.
Nicholas is also deaf, the result of a
diabetes-related illness at 6
months. Doctors told Justina his
deafness wasn't directly caused by
FAS. but she says she still feels
responsible.
But though small and prone to
sickness. Nicholas is as bright-eyes
and rambunctious as most chil
dren, and he wrestles playfully
with his older brother Mack before
settling down In front of the screen.
The wall over their heads holds a
Russian Orthodox shrine, with
votive candles and pictures of
Jesus that look over the small,
spotless living room. A pot of coffee
steams on the counter, completing
a scene of order and neatness, an ,
island of domestic tranquillity In .i.
this wind-whipped village south of
Homer. , , ; ,
But Justina still vividly remem
bers what the home looked like five
years ago. Clothes and debris were
scattered everywhere. Dirty dishes
piled high in the sink. The smell of
unwashed bodies and unemptied
ashtrays hung In the air.
She also remembers what she
looked like then. Now a soft-spoken,
smiling woman with bright
eyes and a pixie haircut, then she
was an unkempt drunk. Her face
bloated from alcohol, her body
battered from her husband's
drunken rages, she would stand in
the comer and scream obscenities
over the citizen's band radio when
ever she was on a binge. She would
drink from morning until insensi
bility; she drank so much on the
night of Nicholas' birth, in fact,
that she passed out in the middle
of her contractions.
Justina says she started drink
ing at 19 to cover her natural
shyness. Already the mother of
three, she wanted to escape from
some of her responsibilities and
o
o
o
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pregnant with Mack, Jr. and Nicholas.
loin in the fun her husband and
nis friends seemed to be having.
She drank until she blacked out.
The next weekend, she did it again.
The fun quickly turned into week
long binges and then into months
of dally, heavy drinking.
Finally, the Division of Family
and Youth Services stepped In. The
children were taken away and
given to relatives. The Kvasnlkoff s
were ordered into treatment at the
Salvation Army's Clitheroe Center
In Anchorage.
That was the turning point.
Both Mack and Justina had
been court ordered to treatment
before, but neither could admit to
alcoholism. This time, the message
sank in and they began to face
what they had done to their lives
and their family.
"At first it was hard to accept
(th at alcohol had damaged th e
children).. Denial was very strong,"
says Mack,' Sr. But it was a mis
take that we both made. I'm not
letting her suffer alone."
The Kvasnikoffs have been sober
for four years. They say part of
their healing comes from talking
about what happened to them.
Mack is now English Bay's drug
and alcohol counselor, and Justina
talks with her daughters and sons,
and their friends, about the dan
gers of drinking.
They also talk about learning to
forgive themselves, although they
say it isn't easy. The evidence of 15
years of binges, blackouts and
hangovers always will remain on
the laces, bodies and minds of
their two youngest sons.
"Kids at school told Mack, Jr.
that he was small and slow be
cause his mother drank while he
was In her stomach. He asked me,
is that true. Mommy?" Justina's
brown eyes fill with tears. Her voice
drops to a whisper. "I didn't know
what to say. I say. yes, it's true."
NO DRINK IS SAFE
No one knows how much alcohol
One man's
lonely night
Late October and early Novem
ber were particularly tough for
George Logusak of Togiak.
Halloween day found him
sprawled out in an alley between
Fourth Avenue and barrow Street
drunk and unconscious. Anchor
age police officer Dale Pittman,
pictured above, found Logusak
there and used his finger on a
pressure point behind his ear to
awaken him. Then he took
Logusak to a non-criminal lock
up at Sixth Avenue and C Street
to sober up. By the next night,
Logusak, right, was drunk and
unconscious again, this time on
the park strip as Anchorage
received its first snowfall of the
winter. Community Service Patrol
technician Kelli Munn and
supervisor Alex Fortuine lift
Logusak onto the gurney. He
was then taken to the Clitheroe
Detox Center.
it takes to damage a baby. Re
searchers so far haven't seen the
full-blown syndrome in women
who drink less than one fluid
ounce of alcohol the equivalent
of two shots of whiskey or two
beers a day. Some women can
drink a six-pack a day and pro
duce healthy children.
But as few as two binges, with
five drinks or more at a time, can
cause birth defects like stunted
growth or mild retardation. Be
cause research on the syndrome
is Just beginning it was discov
ered by a Seattle doctor In 1973
many doctors don't consider
even a single drink during a
pregnancy to be safe.
Most Native women now know
alcohol can hurt their babies and
stop drinking as soon as they find
out they are pregnant, says Janet
' Allan, a nurse at the medical
center who screens pregnant
women for alcohol problems.
That's what impresses me the
most. It's what I can daily hero
ics," she says. These women
often have the courage to get out
of bad situations. (Many) are
faced with domestic violence,
sexual violence. It's hard to quit
when everybody around you is
drinking. But some do."
Alaska has few places that
pregnant women can go to escape
the pressures of abusive, alcoholic
families. Care Cottage, a hospice
for women with high-risk preg
nancies, keeps a few beds for
alcoholic mothers, and shelters
like Clare House and McKinnell
offer some support.
But many of the pregnant
women who stay at the shelters
last only a few days or weeks,
shelter workers say. Then they
return to their friends and their
families and their drinking. Some
women never seek help at all.
"An addicted person who's
using heavily sees alcohol as her
best friend," Allan says. "Often
the women feel guilty, but they
continue to use anyway. They are
Into the denial stage of the dis
ease." Their denial is fueled when they
see other women drink and give
birth to seemingly normal chil
dren a not uncommon experi
ence, since fetal alcohol syndrome
is not Inevitable. Even the heavi
est drinker has less than a 50
percent chance of producing a
defective child during the first
pregnancy.
But once a woman has one
child stunted by alcohol, the next
babies will be more and more
damaged, unless the mother stops
drinking, according to research
ers. That's why the Native health
board urges villages and regional
corporations to develop preven
tion programs, to educate chil
dren as early as junior high about
the dangers of drinking and to
step in with counseling and
guidance when women are in
danger of producing alcohol
damaged children.
What's at stake, many health
care professionals fear, is the
future of the Native population as
a whole.
"What's going to happen if we
keep reproducing children that
are so badly affected? How effec
tive are we going to be?" asks
Elenore McMuDen. a village
health aide who runs the fetal
alcohol prevention program In
Port Graham. "People have to be
Involved. Or what's the Native
population going to be like In the
years to come?"