Posted on 10/20/2003 10:11:33 PM PDT by Auntie Mame
Last Wednesday, my wife's feeding tube was removed. For over 6 years, I have struggled with the Schindlers in court. On Wednesday, I joined them in grief. I understand what the Schindlers are going through at this time. I feel the same loss.
For years after this happened to Terri, I tried desperately to find a cure for her. I went from one doctor to another. Almost all of them told me there was no possibility she would recover. Any doctor that gave me a glimmer of hope that some new treatment or therapy would work was given free reign with Terri. I would do anything to make her well.
I took Terri to California. I stayed with her while doctors performed an experimental procedure to implant electrodes in her brain to stimulate its function. I spent months working with her - hopeful of a cure. Months later, the doctors told me the electrodes were not working.
I took Terri to Mediplex, in Bradenton, Florida, which is a residential rehabilitation facility that specializes in brain injuries. She spent months there in intensive physical, speech, and occupational therapy and testing.
Finally, the doctors and therapist told me and the Schindlers they could do nothing more for her. I hired a private duty aide 8 hours a day to take Terri on outings to parks and museums trying to stimulate her - looking for any sign of life, any flicker of hope. There was none - ever.
Over the years, I had three swallowing tests performed on Terri in the hope that some of the therapies would allow her to be weaned off the feeding tube. The test all showed no change, and I was advised she could not swallow food. Even now, the nursing home staff says that sometimes Terri gags and chokes on the moisture from the swabs they use to moisten her lips.
The reports you heard from nursing home aides that Terri was responsive years ago are not true. I would give anything if they were. Those aides cared for Terri during the time that I was desperately seeking a cure for her. I was so frustrated that I could not help Terri. I am sure that I was sometimes unkind to the aides - even shouted at them. This was not because I wanted Terri dead, but because I desperately wanted her alive. I blamed myself because I could not bring her back.
It seemed to me, during that time, that the aides never did enough for Terri. Some days they did not put her makeup on. I would storm into the nursing home insisting that they do so. I knew Terri always wanted to look her best. Sometimes, the aides did not get her dressed and sitting up until late in the morning. They did not always get her hair combed. They sometimes failed to give her vitamins and medications on time. At each of those failures, I became enraged and lashed out. I felt so helpless. Each small infraction reminded me how powerless I was to really help Terri. I admit that I yelled at the aides and I am now deeply sorry for that behavior. Much like the Schindlers now, I stubbornly resisted and suggestion that Terri was in a persistent vegetative state and would never get better.
I never wanted Terri to die. I still don't. After more than seven years of desperately searching for a cure for Terri, the death of my own mother helped me realize that I was fooling myself. More important, I was hiding behind my hope, and selfishly ignoring Terri's wishes. I wanted my wife to be with me so much that I denied her true condition.
Terri told me on several occasions before this happened that she would not want to live in her current condition. If we had been older, I am sure she would have signed a living will making it clear that she did not to be kept alive on tubes and machines. She never had the chance.
That left me to carry out her wishes. It has been hard. In fact, it is the hardest thing I have ever done. In the end, I did what I believe Terri would have wanted me to do.
Some people do not agree with the decisions the court made to remove Terri's feeding tube. I struggle to accept it myself. But I know in my heart that it is right, and it is what Terri wants. There is no longer any realistic hope of Terri's recovery. Perhaps there never was, but I had to try - just as the Schindlers have tried. The reality is that Terri left us 13 years ago, and none of us can bring her back.
Terri's parents and family may visit with her as much as they choose in the days to come. I, and my friends and relatives, will be there as well to spend time with Terri, as we all grieve. Please pray for us all.
I guess the film I saw showing her respond to her parents wasn't true either...
I quit loving her long ago. I love someone else now. She's in the way. She's on my nerves. She's gotta go.
I seriously doubt Michael ever loved anyone but himself.
The part about him getting doctors to put electrodes in her brain is very strange. I have to wonder if this made her condition worse.
...because then he would lose the ability to inherit the remaining cash in her medical care fund when she dies... That also seems to be why he's in such a rush to finish her off, before her care uses up all the cash he stands to inherit.
(The fund was at one time over a million dollars.)
I just visited the Holocaust Museum - there are authenic photos and films there of people like Michael Schiavo, his paramour and his future mother-in-law! They should be exposed for what they are and inhumane is the least. Paraphrasing the words of General Eisenhower quoted on the wall there "beasts!"
exactly!
My very first babysitting job (when I was 10 in '76) was taking care of a beautiful 8-yr-old girl, Stacy. I think she had MD. My job was to keep sitting her up on the couch and wipe the drool from her mouth. When I had to feed her, it took a long time, and a lot came back out. Her mother adored her. Stacy's precious little life did more for me than I could have imagined. Through her, I learned patience and compassion. These are virtues that many today (especially those in power) have rejected.
The 'ghouls' you refer to are a group of human beings who have actively used the internet to find out all they can about this situation before making the assumption that there should be an investigation of Michael Schiavo, and that Terri should not be put to death just yet.
The investigation so far has turned up quite a few 'links' between the JUDGE, and the owners/board of directors of the HOSPICE she was put in.
There is medical information available that Michael is trying to suppress that indicates that Terri's sudden and for no apparent reason heart attack at an early age, may have been the result of someone trying to strangle her to death.
Have you put any time or effort into finding out the facts in this case?
OK. I suppose you have personally investigated the whole story, and you presently have the documentation proving that he spent (NOT ANY OF HIS OWN) but TERRI's MONEY on TERRI for her therapy, and did not spend it on LAWYERS to help him have her killed.
Please, show it to us so we all can be enlightened.
BUMP
Forced sterilization in Germany was the forerunner of the systematic killing of the mentally ill and the handicapped. In October 1939, Hitler himself initiated a decree which empowered physicians to grant a "mercy death" to "patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment of their state of health." The intent of the socalled "euthanasia" program, however, was not to relieve the suffering of the chronically ill. The Nazi regime used the term as a euphemism: its aim was to exterminate the mentally ill and the handicapped, thus "cleansing" the "Aryan" race of persons considered genetically defective and a financial burden to society.
The idea of killing the incurably ill was posed well before 1939. In the 1920s, debate on this issue centered on a book coauthored by Alfred Hoche, a noted psychiatrist, and Karl Binding, a prominent scholar of criminal law. They argued that economic savings justified the killing of "useless lives" ("idiots" and "congenitally crippled"). Economic deprivation during World War I provided the context for this idea. During the war, patients in asylums had ranked low on the list for rationing of food and medical supplies, and as a result, many died from starvation or disease. More generally, the war undermined the value attached to individual life and, combined with Germany's humiliating defeat, led many nationalists to consider ways to regenerate the nation as a whole at the expense of individual rights.
In 1935 Hitler stated privately that "in the event of war, [he] would take up the question of euthanasia and enforce it" because "such a problem would be more easily solved" during wartime. War would provide both a cover for killing and a pretext--hospital beds and medical personnel would be freed up for the war effort. The upheaval of war and the diminished value of human life during wartime would also, Hitler believed, mute expected opposition. To make the connection to the war explicit, Hitler's decree was backdated to September 1, 1939, the day Germany invaded Poland.
http://www.us-israel.org/jsource/Holocaust/disabled.html
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