Nine Lives

Nine.

That's how many foster and adopted children from across Texas are currently on life support in Vicky Thorp's "little intensive care unit" - to use her words.

The West Odessa facility is called Vicky's Kids, and it's a center for children who are under the state's care who suffered severe brain damage as babies and never recovered.

Today, they're bed-ridden. And most are even unresponsive to visitors.

Inside the ordinary-looking home - an old welding shop turned medical facility - the subdued sounds of whispering respirators puff and whiff in rhythm with the beeps of heart monitors. 

The room appears much like any other intensive care unit in any U.S. hospital, except for the purple dinosaur dancing and singing on a television in the corner, its volume turned down low.

A 27-person team of nurses and caregivers tend to the children in shifts around the clock.

"I mean, you've got to have some serious medical problems to come here," Thorp said as she walked from bed to bed, introducing each of the children and playing with those who had enough cognitive function to respond.

Several of the children smiled faintly and even giggled when she gave them a gentle tickle and said, "We're basically a pediatric ICU unit, is what it is."

 She said their ages vary, but her current group consists of kids between 7 and 15 years old. Most have spent their lives either partially or completely paralyzed - a grim example and reminder of newborn fragility.

Their injuries vary and not all are the result of parental neglect, Thorp said, but some never recovered from, for example, being shaken or drowning when they were mere weeks or months old. 

Then, for whatever reason, their parents lose or relinquish custody and the state calls on Thorp, who established the center about 24 years ago in Odessa before moving it to Balmorhea, then Pecos and then to Midland.

She returned the center to West Odessa three years ago after a mix up with her planned new destination created a frenzy to find a new facility.

What she eventually found was an old welding shop on a sun-bleached dirt road out west of town.

Together with her boss with the Department of Family Protective Services in Odessa, Thorp saw potential.

"It was nasty and greasy, and she said, ‘We'll never get this ready,' " Thorp recalled. "I said, ‘Oh, yes we will.' "

The medical staffing for Vicky's Kids comes from S&R Home Health in Midland, which is owned by Darren Berryhill, who said finding nurses to work with at Thorp's home care center can prove tricky - or, to be more specific, he said it sometimes can be "extremely hard to staff."

But Thorp said those who stay, stay for good.

"This is not for everybody," she said. "Either you're cut out for this, or you're not."

"They are workers," she said later, "and they love these kids."

Berryhill said the nurses who do end up staying on Thorp's staff do so because they see the importance of what she does.

"It's awesome that these kids have a chance at life," he said. "They actually get care here. They're not just patients in a bed."

And some of them have even found a new family.

Of the children at the center, Thorp said she has adopted three as her own, including , now a 17-year-old high school student who, like the others, came to the center as a 3-month-old on life support only to eventually make a full recovery about five years later.

"I was in the kitchen one day, and I sneezed," Thorp said. "She said, ‘Bless you.' "

Today, Casey still has the scars from her feeding tubes, but otherwise is a normal teenager who loves to run track at Odessa High School.

"I love to run," she said, emerging from the kitchen with a plate of freshly sliced apples. "I'm good at track."

But for most of Vicky's children, the future is much bleaker.

"I can't dwell on that stuff," she said. "We look for the good in our kids. We treat them as normal as kids can be."

She also adopted 12-year-old Daniel, a once shaken baby who is now comatose, and Devin, whose umbilical cord cut off oxygen to his brain during the crucial first moments of his life.

Today, Thorp said, Devin is "very medically fragile," yet still manages to find his own strange way of showing personality.

"He's ornery," Thorp, now his mother, said. "If he doesn't like a nurse, he'll just shut down and stop breathing. If he doesn't like a nurse, he'll let you know it right quick."

Rebecca Hildebrand, Devin's nurse, said few of the others want to work with Devin, who's known around the center for his volatile temperament.

But the two seemed to be getting along recently as she gave him his morning medicine.

"It's a great job," she said, filling out a chart at her desk at the foot of Devin's bed. "I mean, c'mon, you get to come play with kids all day long."

Daniel's nurse, Mary Lane, said many people come into the unit and see children without hope of a normal life, but what they don't realize is that Vicky's kids have the best life possible - and who's to say they know there's a better one out there.

"A lot of people just walk in here, and it freaks them out," she said. "They ask why we don't just let them go. But we can't tell them when to breathe, you know?"

Funding for the center comes from the state, Thorp said, but it often falls short of what is needed.

Although she said she has a good working relationship with her umbrella state agencies, "I couldn't make it on what the state pays."

With all the medical equipment inside, her electricity bill alone runs between $1,000 and $1,700 per month.

"The life support equipment eats me alive," she said.

Then there's the cost of baby wipes, shampoo, body wash, tissues ... and the list goes on.

"No one understands the magnitude of the cost of running a facility like this," she said.

So she said she augmented her meager budget by establishing her own fundraising enterprises.

One of these projects is a pony ride business called Vicky's Horses - which explains the twenty or so small horses eating hay in a small pasture outside the building - that she rents out for area birthday parties. 

Her outside efforts also explain the miniature train parked in the driveway - another of her enterprises to raise money for the center.

"I get out, and I hustle," she said.

But Thorp said she refrains from taking "handouts."

Instead, she prefers to do birthday parties and, of course, is not above taking donations of supplies.

And, besides, Thorp knows shutting the home down is out of the question.

"There are days when I think I can't do it anymore," she said, "but you have to think, ‘What's going to happen to these kids if you don't.'"

Thorp surmised that, without her, most of "her kids" would end up in a nursing home - and that's assuming they make it that far - where their standard of living could drop.

"It's really a whole lot better than a nursing home," Lane said. "They wouldn't get the same level of care there. The only better place they can be is with God, but apparently, that's not where He wants them to be right now."

CONFIRMED ALLEGATIONS OF ABUSE BY TYPE

Physical Abuse.

>> 2007: 15,150.

>> 2008: 14,858.

Sexual Abuse.

>> 2007: 7,050.

>> 2008: 6,468.

Emotional Abuse.

>> 2007: 839.

>> 2008: 743.

Abandonment.

>> 2007: 331.

>> 2008: 241.

Medical Neglect.

>> 2007: 2,440.

>> 2008: 2,235.

Physical Neglect.

>> 2007: 8,107.

>> 2008: 7,714.

Neglectful Supervision.

>> 2007: 49,710.

>> 2008: 50,310.

Refusal to Accept Parental Responsibility.

>> 2007: 792.

>> 2008: 636.

Source: Texas Department of Family & Protective Services.

HOW TO HELP

>> To donate supplies to Vicky's Kids in West Odessa, to book her ponies or train rides for a birthday party or for more general information, call Vicky Thorp at 530-0970.