Posted on 04/07/2005 2:59:57 AM PDT by schmelvin
Well, what do you say? How would you have handled it? I mean the whole thing, not just the internet part.
Well, what do you say? How would you have handled it? I mean the whole thing, not just the internet part.
If I understand your question correctly I assume you mean the whole Mae Magouirk affair?
How do you know what the judge based his April 1st decison on? Affidavits from doctors are routine in these cases. And on the same day a doctor examined Mae to and found her to be mentally incapacitated. I call that corroboration and your splitting hairs over the word dementia. A condition of deteriorated mentality which was clearly the case.
Your claim was false in any event, Gaddy was not the only one asserting dementia.
I am so glad you brought this up..
Do you mind eloborating on how Judge Boyd came to this to be a FACT?
If you read HIS own response on this-- HE NEVER found this to be a FACT. He found it necessary to give this woman a guardian until a hearing could be held-- and he made this decision based ONLY on the facts that he had at the time- and all these facts were one-sided. YOu want US to have an open mind- try it yourself.
Smatalek-- YOur questions are interesting- the problem is that you are not payiing attention- because all of them have been answered (or at least MOST of them)
Many people on BOTH sides are making a LOT of assumptions.
READ the ACTUAL THINGS REPORTED. NOT what people are assuming...
The only party before the Court on that day was Gaddy. She appeared with her brother and their attorney. Gaddy advocates keeping Mae in hospice.
And on the same day a doctor examined Mae to and found her to be mentally incapacitated. I call that corroboration and your splitting hairs over the word dementia.
You can call it what you want. But if Mae is doped up on morphine, she is mentally incapacitated as a matter of law. The mental incapacity in that case clears up as the effects of the drugs wear off. Dementia, OTOH, does not cure itself. There is a significant difference, and your equating the two is intellectually dishonest.
Your claim was false in any event, Gaddy was not the only one asserting dementia.
You have not provided any evidence of others, besides Gaddy, finding dementia. The fact that a court says "Gaddy says Mae has dementia" is not the court's finding that Mae in fact has dementia.
YOU WOULD BE CORRECT!
ALL 3 AGREED THAT MAE WAS TREATABLE!
And the reasons Kenneth wanted Mae in Alabama at UAB
1) THey are 5th in the nation
2) He wanted Mae to have the same docor that treated his own mother so successfully with the same condition
now- why stay in LaGrange??? They CONVINCED Beth that glaucoma (sp) and an aorta dissection was "no way to live" and untreatable- because Mae was too old to handle the surgery. This in actuality is false- because it IS treatbale without surgery- Mae's siter, Ruth is living proof!
Why do you even bring up a question so obvios-- do you really want answers? or are you just being an irritating little mutt nipping at heals? You HAVE to be smarter than this? I mean if there is REAL things you take issues with- try and pick ones that have not been answered or aren't just so obvious to answer...
Just wondering if at the time Dr. Allen Jones "evaluated" Mae on April 1st, she might have "appeared" to have said "mental disability" due to the assumption she had received no nutrition/hydration for 9 days. If she was given any pain meds, she wouldn't appear to be lucid and would probably exhibit deminished abilities. I didn't see an evaluation in the documents. Wonder what Dr. Jones based his evaluation upon.
EC...did you see my earlier post regarding Mae's Living Will & financial statements?
So, I figured rather than keep the old song and dance going by wasting time over "you were wrong to believe this man because......." and the resulting "no we weren't because........." It would be more productive if you took all the facts available to us at the time and explain how you would have handled everything to date.
That's why I've asked the most vocal 'questioners' separately so there is no 'dittoing'. You seem to have some very clear ideas of how this should have played out so that it would have been more credible.
Did you mean the last part of your post to be toward Choldt?
The court did not say that and did find that Mae was suffering from dementia and the other problems. Gaddy provided enough documentation to satisfy the court. The subsequent findings by Dr. Jones corroborate the finding.
From page 7 of the 32 page court document
"...The Court finds that the Ward, Ora Mae Magouirk, is suffering from dementia, an aortic aneurism and a blood clot...."
Based, at that time, on only testimony from Gaddy. In fact, the entire April 1 order is based on Gaddy's sworn testimony.
The court did not reference the presence of any medical testimony that included a conclusion of dementia.
The order also says "That a clear and substantial risk of death, and or, serious physical injury can occur to the proposed ward unless she remains in Hospice at West Georgia Health Systems until a permanent guardian can be appointed." In hindsight, that assertion is false. She was moved out and is being treated in Alabama.
Thought some would like to know this was out there.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1382077/posts
NO!
LOL!
I'm sorry-- I am soooo lazy-- actually I am just so busy and trying to do so many things at once-- didn't take the time to click back find the heal biter it was meant for, etc---
Forgive me--
I should do a better job of being clearer about WHO I am addressing!
Sorry.
Which references Mae's doctor's statements to her. Easily refutable if false. They have not been refuted in spite of the intense scrutiny placed upon this case.
No argument from me on the "refutable if false" part. And no argument that Mae's doctors told Gaddy that Mae was terminal. Apparantly, there is disagreement between those doctors, and the team of three doctors named on April 4. Gaddy agreed to abide by the medical conclusion of the three doctor team, which was unanimous that Mae's condition was treatable, not terminal.
They have not been refuted in spite of the intense scrutiny placed upon this case.
I agree, the assertion of demetia has not been refuted. Yet. In the present condition of Mae and the legal proceedings, a false assertion of dementia has no practical or legal effect.
Just because I've been called a idiot pagan doesn't make me one ;-)
I don't have all that info..
There is no doubt that it is drugs, no eye drops, insuficient food and water, etc- that may make Mae seem worse thanshe truly is.
We all know how this works!
Here-- here is a link to a story that ya'll HAVE TO READ! It is horrifying and explains a LOT about what we are dealing with here.
http://www.baou.com/newswire/main.php?action=recent&rid=20141
Her is an excerpt:
On Monday, February 20th, my grandmother was admitted to a local Catholic hospital with a fracture above the left knee. She was alert and orientated upon admission but became unresponsive after 48 hours and was transferred to hospice on the fourth day and died upon arrival.
I was in Mexico City conducting a pilgrimage and unable to be at her side so there were many questions upon my return. The doctors could not tell me the cause of her death so I began to search for the answers and was fortunate to obtain the hospital chart. It then became very clear that my grandmother had been targeted for euthanasia!
Carefully tracing the events it was evident that my grandmother became lethargic and unresponsive after each pain medication. She would awaken between times saying “I don’t want to die, I want to live to see Johnny ordained”; “I want to see Greta walk.” Johnny was her grandson studying in Rome to be a priest and Greta was her new great-grandchild. Even though over-sedation is one of the most common problems with the elderly she was immediately diagnosed as having a stroke. When she became comatose a completely hopeless picture of recovery was portrayed by the nurses and doctors who reported that she had a stroke, was having seizures, going in and out of a coma, and was in renal failure.
The truth however can be found in the hospital chart which indicates that everything was normal! The CAT scan was negative for stroke or obstruction, the EEG states “no seizure activity” and all blood work was normal indicating that she was not in renal failure! How were we to know that the coma was drug induced and that all the tests were normal? Why would they lie?
Looking over the chart it is clear that obtaining a “no code” status was the next essential step in executing her death. This is an order denying medical intervention in emergency situations. The “no code” was aggressively sought by the medical profession from the moment of her admission but was not granted by my family until it appeared that she was dying and there was no hope. Minutes after obtaining the “no code” a lethal dose of Dilantin (an anti-seizure medication) was administered intravenously over an 18-hour period. It put her into a deeper coma, slowing the respiratory rate and compromising the cardiovascular system leading to severe hemodynamic instability. The following day she was transferred to hospice and died upon arrival. The death certificate reads “Death by natural causes.”
My grandmother had no terminal diagnosis but the hospice admitting record indicates two doctors signed their name stating that she was terminally ill and would die within six months. How was this determined? The first doctor, who was the director of hospice, never came to evaluate her or even read the chart. More interesting is the fact that the second doctor was on vacation and returned three days after her death! Obviously these signatures were not obtained before or even upon her admission to hospice. How can this be professionally, morally or even legally acceptable? Can anyone therefore be admitted to hospice to die? It certainly seems possible especially if sedated or unresponsive. In fact, this hospice has recently been under investigation for accepting hundreds of patients who had no terminal illness.
READ IT ALL!! There are SEVERAL stories in there that will SHOCK YOU!
The quote from the FINAL ORDER on Pg7 you referenced, states: "....incapacitated by reason of mental disability...". It doesn't say dementia. Mental disability can be contributed to her prior condition following her heart problems, medications, and going 9 days without nutrition/hydration. All of those things could vastly improve with proper follow-up care. There were no actual documents included with the orders; just stated that they were received. Just an opinion...based on what has actually been reviewed.
A fair question, even if is appears that my answer may already have been prejudged.
If you look back at the very earliest posts on the Mae Magouirk case on the 3 or 4 early threads, you will find me simply questioning the sole source of information being Ken and the sole report being WND. Now I don't know Ken personally as one poster here does, but the questions I posed then did not denigrate Ken nor acquit Gaddy. I wanted to know the substance of any court order, and some corroboration of statements purportedly made by Gaddy.
I took exception to the very titles on the threads which clearly seemed to make this case another Schiavo affair, which of course it wasn't. I simply urged caution in blindly accepting what was being said by only one side as gospel.
I was completely unaware of the substance of the court order which seems to have addressed almost every concern here, except the guardianship issue. I was not aware of the ordered doctor reviews, the order for nutrition, the fact that the order itself was actually written by Mullinax' attorney, the fact that Mae was receiving some food and water (ice), and the fact that all parties hugged at the end of the signing of the agreement.
I felt from the beginning that some information appeared to be missing, and a search for the whole story was not out of line. It is certainly no secret that Mullinax conducted a lot of interviews, and in so doing failed to mention these obviously important facts.
I am not smarter than Mullinax and likely most Freepers. Raw emotions, IMO, ruled from the beginning, emotions still high after the death of Terri. If you go back and read some of the very early posts on the various threads you will see that judgments were quickly made concerning Gaddy, the judge and the hospice. Everything Ken said was gospel, and everything else was irrelevant. My first reaction was similar to most. But I know WND, and I know its agenda, and begin to ask questions to see if my first reaction was valid. It was not. I feared some of the same extreme reaction that I saw in the Schiavo case resurfacing once again. I rejected defacing of American flags, desecration of crucifixes, death threats, unconstitutional federal intervention, Nazi death camp pictures with the usual Hitler comparisons.
So, I guess my answer is that I would have done pretty much what I did do, but perhaps less visibly. There is little doubt that as some have opined, Free Republic has changed. The Schiavo and Magouirk cases have sharply divided Freepers, far more than the usual combative issues like Libertarianism, creationism, drugs and taxes. And since we here at FR are a microcosm of the rest of the conservative county, I hope it does not portend a long lasting rift that will have negative electoral impacts. The left will certainly try and drive a wedge.
My apologies to anyone offended by my remarks or questions. I have nothing but the greatest respect for those who will spend their resources saving lives. But at the same time you must recognize those who might disagree with some methods. We are not Godless Satans who have lost our souls forever as we have been characterized.
And for those who work for better hospice care, Bravo. For those who would work to see state laws changed to better reflect hospice conditions, living wills, guardianship rules, advances in technology, distinguishing between life support and feeding mechanisms, etc., I applaud you, as these are the things that will bring real reform to an obviously abused system of elder care.
Yes, EC all too frequent and hard to discover the truth when it happens. I've had two similiar experience with my family and my own experience of death knocking on the door. I nearly died a few yrs ago because of over medication during a "simple" pre-surgery test. After I recovered, the doctors kept trying to tell me it didn't happen and it was all in my mind! Excuse me! I was there, in my mind...they weren't. That's another story and I won't go there now. It's just away to coverup their mistakes.
thanks for the link; I'll read it
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