Posted on 03/23/2005 5:09:24 PM PST by Hildy
You are in your 20's, and you're visiting somebody in the hospital. You pass by a room where somebody is all contorted up, in a vegitative state. Would you say to your husband:
a)Honey, Don't ever let me live in that condition.
b )Honey, If I ever get like that, please make sure you do everything in your power, whatever the cost to you and our family, financially and emotionally, to keep me in that vegitative state no matter how long it takes. I want you to come and sit by my side every day and go home alone every night. I want to have strangers tend to my most personal needs. If I don't respond in four or five years, make sure I'm kept alive by a feeding tube in my stomach. And, most importantly, if you're not sure if I know what's going on around me, please err on the side of caution and keep me in that bed, indefinitely.
Remember, you're 24 years old. Which one would you pick?
What these young-uns do not realize is that life is one big class of learning. Some good, some bad, some heartbreaking and some the most heartwarming highs you think you could ever experience. It is so easy when you are young to look down at those less fortunate than you and think, I would rather be dead than to be like that. It is also easy it seems for some to help/push their loves ones on to the hereafter. This is their choice and I am not in a position to judge nor would I but to deny us and our loves ones the opportunity to die a natural death just......
My sister for those two years was not only surrounded by deep love but she gave it also. God, I miss her so much but I take comfort in knowing that when she passed on she knew she was loved and we knew we were loved back. My sister was not helped into death. She died naturally, this was her wish.
There are religious considerations. Terri as a catholic might have been a cafeteria catholic at 41 or she might have taken the pope's words seriously. We cannot know.
I highly doubt if she would have wanted any of the people she saw killed in the manner she is being killed. She would have been unlikely to have known what happens to the human body in the process unless she had medical training.
If I walked past those people in those nursing homes and pulled the plugs on their machines, I would be arrested and charged with attempted murder. It has happened already to others.
What's in this for you?
*****The church is pretty hypocritical on these medical dillemas. There was a time, not too long ago, when people died "naturally" cause we didn't have the medical advances we now have. So how is it that the Church ok's artifical insemination ( talk about UN natural ) yet will not allow an "end point" to be decided when Un-natural means are u
used to keep a person alive.*****
Adapted from Modern Catholic Dictionary:
"Artificial Insemination (AI) is different from natural intercourse. As used with animals this poses no moral problem. However the Church teaches that among humans, AI violates the dignity of the person and the sanctity of marriage. It is therefore contrary to the Natural and Divine Law. In an address to Catholic doctors, Pope Pius XII condemned AI. It is condemned because a third person becoming involved in a marriage is like "mechanical adultery": the donor fathers a child (with his sperm) yet he has no responsibility to the child; and a process that isolates the sacred act of creating life from the marriage union is a violation of the marriage union (which alone is the way to create life). However, if the marriage act is preserved, then various clinical techniques designed to help create new life are not to be condemned."
You should have been a little more specific. The Church says AI is permissible as long as the couple is married and uses the man's semen. Still unnatural, yes.
I'm sorry I meant your mom and my sister did NOT die the way they did for nothing.
I don't need a doctor's opinion of that video. I trust my own eyes.
If the woman in the affadavit was in the PVS state for 15 years instead of 50 days your post might be valid. But it's not. Sorry.
do you even know? have you asked yourself?
been reading plenty, but you are right..I do avoid your threads b/c you are so caustic.
If you're lost in the desert you're going to die of dehydration, not starvation. It's not the kind of starvation you're talking about. That's the problem. The patient is also given pain medication which speends the process up.
For real? They didn't used to say that. I thought that insemination had to be a resulting of sexual intercourse.
I just fed my 88 year old mother who has had Alzheimer's for 10 years. I then gave her water. If somebody doesn't feed her, she would starve. That will never happen in my liftime.
I don't know if she recognizes me or not. It doesn't matter because I know who she is.
God bless you lonestar, you sweet and loving daughter. And prayers for your mother.
And I'd say that's a VERY direct answer.
LOL .. Scared my hubby too.. cause he know I mean what I say :0)
if it were legal I'd go the Dutch way,
no extraordinary measures, especially since I've signed my organ donor card, I'd love to think some part of me was usuable and could help someone else, and if something should happen I'm on a feeding tube, don't starve me, send me off with a lethal dose of morphine, isn't that what we do to our suffering pets?
remember the movie Soylent Green, never mind where the Soylent Green was coming from, I remember thinking as a teenager that the scene where Charlon Heston's buddy goes to a special room to die was so cool,
you go to the room, you lie down on this comfortable lounge chair, they make the room your favourite colour, your favourite scenery is projected on the wall, your favourite scents are pumped into the room, your favourite music is pumped into also, and the nurses are gorgeous women in his case, they give you an injection and you go with a big smile on your face
of course in that movie the planet was grossly overpopulated, another interesting question for the future, real food was rare/scarce unless you were rich, I remember the scene when Charlton Heston got an apple and shared it with his old buddy there, they looked at the apple like it was gold......
asked myself, what?
"If the woman in the affadavit was in the PVS state for 15 years instead of 50 days your post might be valid. But it's not. Sorry."
I would be sorry if I judged that someone should suffer death by starvation based on how long the spouse wanted them dead.
Not terribly long ago, the Terri Schiavos of the world would have died within minutes or, at best, within hours of their collapse/injury. That's God's way -- the genuinely natural way in the sense that God designed our bodies to die comparatively quickly from severe brain injury.
So I wonder whether or not it is vanity or mercy that makes us keep someone like Terri Schiavo nominally alive year after year, when God's natural way would have given her a quick death 15 years ago.
Well, I'm sure if my husband tried to honor those wishes a bunch of people who didn't know me would get very upset.
Semper Fi Miss Behave :)
Not ALL is well, but all is well as can be expected.
and yes I did give her permission ;)
Oh cool. Thanks. Will I be needing popcorn?
I know what you meant :-) We will win. Thank You for your thoughtful post. Your words mimic how I feel, I just can't express how I feel as well as you do. Sounds like we have both blessed with wonderful families.
Bless you and yours
People lose their health and go on every day.
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