True Life Story: Avoiding "Death With Dignity"

My brother went into acute respiratory failure a year ago September at forty-five years old. By the time I got the phone call, he was on a respirator in the ICU of a small hospital several hours from my home. Think SARS without the contagious aspect and you’ll get some idea of what condition he was in: as the Merck site puts it, 'the survival rate for patients with severe ARDS who receive appropriate treatment is about 60%; if the severe hypoxemia of ARDS is not recognized and treated, cardiopulmonary arrest occurs in 90% of patients.'

There was the usual story: long drives, long nights, phone ringing at any old hour - “You’d better come and do you want us to resuscitate if his heart stops before you get here?” - that sort of thing, but he kept reviving despite every expectation to the contrary. There began to be a little hope, if only the ICU staff could get him off the sedatives long enough to wean him off the respirator. But you can’t wean someone on a respirator off sedatives if he’s in the full grip of an ICU psychosis. Every time they tried, he’d wake up just enough that it took most of the staff to keep him in the bed. Whatever world he was in wasn’t a nice one, and the exertion of having a knock-down-drag-out with the nurses would then send his oxygen levels plummeting and I’d get another phone call.

But he kept living and by the time a month had passed, they’d figured out the right combination of anti-psychotics and he had begun to respond a little – the right way, I mean. So we began to think he might make it. That’s when I made a major mistake and had him transferred to the ICU of a hospital only 45 minutes away instead of three hours. A TEACHING hospital, mind you.

To trim an extremely long tale, something somewhere got dropped, anti-psychotic-wise, and by the end of that first week in the new hospital a doctor ambushed me and informed me my brother was going to die anyway, so I should let him 'die with dignity'. There were other things factoring into her opinions, but the main thing was that they couldn't get him off the paralytic they had him on because as soon as he'd start to wake up, he'd go into a psychotic episode and that would start him crashing again. So they needed my permission to bring him off the paralytic long enough for him to be able to breath on his own, then they’d pull the life-support. Otherwise, it would be legally murder.

What 'dignity' had to do with somebody suffocating to death, I failed to see, but the ambush took me utterly by surprise. I tried to tell them what the other hospital had done and how he had been improving when this hospital got him, but it was to no avail - he had blood clots now and probably had brain-damage from all the crashing and he was probably having seizures, and blah, blah, blah. I, being of a somewhat timid nature, meekly left the ICU intending to come back the next day to see him taken off life-support and we came home and started calling relatives.

It took a while, but finally by late that night, my brain had kicked in along with a lot of pent-up rage over recent events in the news*, until I was practically glowing in the dark, I was so furious, and I expressed that fury in a blunt letter to the lot of them, which my husband dutifully delivered by hand early the next morning. ("If you can make him comfortable enough to die, why can't you make him comfortable enough to live?" "We can always kill him later; we can't resurrect him.") This was not enough to sate the newly savage Baillie, however, and so the nurses got an earful when I got to the hospital, which resulted in a long discussion in the meeting room.

So they put him on the anti-psychotics he should have been on all along, in a week or so he was transferred out of the ICU to Intermediate. This, of course, meant a whole new string of doctors, and the “What will his QUALITY of life be?” business to endure, but it was just tough cookies. One or the other of us showed up there every day, right on through Christmas, and he got off oxygen and then he had his trach-tube removed and started eating again and went to physical therapy and one January day, lo and behold, he went home. Wobbly, frail, confused, forgetful, but home.

Two months later he was buying books and shopping at Walmart. He’ll be on a lot of medicine for the rest of his life, but that’s a minor detail. And the reference to the news*? If I hadn't been seething for weeks over the attempted murder of Terry Schiavo, my brother would now be ashes.

I post this story here and now for a reason. If he is not stopped, Michael Schiavo will legally starve his wife Terri – a child-woman younger than I am – to death beginning on March 18th. By Easter – the time of the year when this website receives most of its annual traffic – she will likely be dead.

Terri is not a vegetable any more than my brother was a vegetable. She is a responsive human being who has been denied proper medical testing, proper therapy and due process under the law. Death row inmates have more rights than have been granted to Terri by the courts.

Her parents are willing to care for her and provide for her, if only her husband will walk away and let her live. He has not been faithful to his helpless wife: he lives with another woman and has had two children by her. The tale of Beren and Luthien this is not.

J.R.R. Tolkien was a faithful and devout Catholic. Had his wife been stricken down as was Terri in her twenties, he would, I firmly believe, have devoted his life to caring for her until she was called by Illuvatar to those white shores and that far green country under a swift sunrise.

We Tolkien fans can be of great assistance in aiding the parents of Terry Schiavo as they try to save her from being starved to death. Mostly this involves emailing, faxing, or calling politicians and government officials – little or no expense and a little time

Please be a Sam to Terri’s Frodo. Please visit these two sites to see how you can help:

"Many people believe that Terri Schiavo has had “the best of care,” and that everything has been tried by way of rehabilitation. This belief is false...

...Terri’s diagnosis was arrived at without the benefit of testing that most neurologists would consider standard for diagnosing PVS. One such test is MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging)...Terri has never had one. Michael has repeatedly refused to consent to one. The neurologists I have spoken to have reacted with shock upon learning this fact. One such neurologist is Dr. Peter Morin. He is a researcher specializing in degenerative brain diseases, and has both an M.D. and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Boston University.

In the course of my conversation with Dr. Morin, he made reference to the standard use of MRI and PET (Positron Emission Tomography) scans to diagnose the extent of brain injuries. He seemed to assume that these had been done for Terri. I stopped him and told him that these tests have never been done for her; that Michael had refused them.

'That’s criminal,' he said, and then asked, in a tone of utter incredulity: 'How can he continue as guardian? People are deliberating over this woman’s life and death and there’s been no MRI or PET?' He drew a reasonable conclusion: 'These people [Michael Schiavo, George Felos, and Judge Greer] don’t want the information.'"

Praise the Lord, thanks, and God bless you and your wonderful family.

2 posted on 03/18/2005 6:07:59 PM PST by kimmie7 (Hooking up a feeding tube is no different than bringing a tray to a hospital room. Easier, in fact.)

Callie is my wonderful friend. :o) She and her family are incredibly strong people and fervently support the Schindler family. This matter ultimately affects all Americans.

Your brother's story is a perfect example of why Terry Shiavo should not be executed.
It's ironic that John Lee Malvo can murder several innocent people with a sniper riffle and be spared the death penalty because it would be cruel and unusual to execute someone who committed criminal acts under the age of 18, yet, it's OK to send TS to death row simply because she survived a heart attack.

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