[nurseinaz]

Imagine you are lying in a bed or sitting in a chair. You can't tell anyone when you hurt or when you want to shift your hips or turn over. You are unable to indicate you need to defecate or void. Maybe you have a catheter to drain your bladder, or maybe you are in a diaper and urinate and defecate on yourself like a baby. Your either have bed sores or are at high risk of getting them. Your arms and possibly your legs are contracted because the muscles have long since dwindled to nothing. Those limbs will always be that way because they have just not been used for too, too long. Everyone seems to be concerned over the pain Terri may suffer from starvation, but no one seems to be concerned about those daily aches and pains that we all get when we are not allowed to move around. Terri is a prisoner in her own body and it is way past time to parole her. The chances of rehab working for anyone after 13 years is slim to none. Regardless of Terri's husbands motives, this woman should no longer be tortured. This is not being alive, this is existing. I don't understand how her family can feel this is better than being allowed a natural, dignifed life and to spend eternity in heaven with Christ in a perfect body.

[nurseinaz]

Just saw a typo.

a natural, dignified death

[MrsEmmaPeel]

I guess the thing that I don't understand (and probably never will) and have not succeeded in getting a liberal explain to me is: When a convicted murdered is about to be executed and injected with a lethal coctail of chemicals the left will scream: "inhumane!" Yet, this same left has no problem allowing the slow tortuous death of woman whose only crime was getting ill. Whether Terri has a "right to die" or not -- I don't get how anybody can sanction that type of death through slow starvation.

[Pegita]

>>it is way past time to parole her.<<

You are absolutely right ... and that's what the State of Florida did ..

"In his hand is the life of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind." Job 12:10 ~ God's thoughts on the subject ~ I'll let Him handle the situation.

[MrsEmmaPeel]

If in doubt, choose life. Miracles can happen.

[supercat]

Imagine you are lying in a bed or sitting in a chair.

Your husband visits you and gloats about how glad he's going to be when he can kill you off and marry his new squeeze--oh, and thanks for that trust fund. Didn't it buy a lovely diamond? Yeah, I know that's illegal, but guess what--I'm your guardian, I control the books, and with you dead nobody's going to be asking questions.

I can certainly imagine someone wanting to be rescued alive from that situation.

[PleaseNoMore]

I can imagine all of the things that you have mentioned. I can also imagine having an intense desire to live and not being able to communicate that desire. As for your assertion that her chances of rehab are slim to none, well, let me invite you to my house this Thanksgiving. My brain damaged nephew will be here eating turkey and all the trimmings with us. He will be feeding himself. Oh, did I mention that he was one time in a persistant vegetative state? did I also mention that therapy was withheld from him for years because his father said that it was "too painful"? Did I mention that there was no hope given for him to ever speak again? Well, he just said "mama" last month for the first time in 18 years. No, it wasn't an in depth conversation but it was a start. Are you a mom? Can you imagine hearing your child say "mama" after 18 years of grunts and moans?You say there is no hope. I disagree. God is still on the throne and there is still life in Terri's body. Those two things combined equal great hope.

[mtbrandon49]

nurseinaz
Since Oct 22, 2003

How ya Doin Troll!

[nmh]

Thank goodness you are not in a position of authority! It reminds me of Hitler and his views on the disabled playing god.

I personally know of folks who you would see as canidates for death. One is my Grandmother. She is 100 years old. She is in and out of Altzheimers. She just got over double pneumia and off the liquid diet and on solid food. For awhile there it was ify. When it was ify we relied on her living will for her wishes - no heroic efforts to sustain her. For awhile while ill she was NOT eating at all and the feeding tube issue came up. We declined because it was her wish NOT to be on that. They were getting ready to give her morphine. but we noticed even at 100 years old and ill she still wanted to live! So we declined again.

Slowly she got better. She's now walking around after being bed ridden. She's doing her social stuff again and eating solid food. If you EVER ask her, do you still want to live? She'll look at you like your crazy and say OF COURSE! She is a VERY strong willed woman.

Does she fear death? Absolutely not. She loves her children, their families and her grandchildren. She lives because she loves. Someday when she does go t heaven I have no doubt there will be alot of celebrating going on. Her husband will be rejoicing.

She is athe real mccoy when it comes to being a Christian - belief wise and knowledge wise. She knows it is NOT up to her to take her life. It is up to God. He will do that when He deems so and not before. She knows she is to do the best she can in this life till it is time for her to go to heaven. It's called being obedient to God and letting His will prevail.

I am thrilled that she is here. Even at 100 years old. My daughter loves her too! She's only four and so fortunate to KNOW her Great Grandmother. She is just as delighted to see her and all her other grandchildren and their babies. I'm one of 13 grandchildren. Of those 13 grandchildren we have about 40 children between us. Oh, forgot to say my grandmother had four children. She is VERY blessed and so are we. We wouldn't even consider murdering her because she was too old.

[mtbrandon49]

Imagine your in a nice warm sack of water. You can't tell anyone you want to live. Then some @sshole comes and rips you apart and sucks whats left of you out of that nice warm womb. Sound familiar TROLL!

[Moonman62]

You are unable to indicate you need to defecate or void. Maybe you have a catheter to drain your bladder, or maybe you are in a diaper and urinate and defecate on yourself like a baby.

Your argument isn't much different from letting an infant starve to death, so that it doesn't have to endure the pains of life. I'm sure Terri's real family is aware of her situation. It's clear that they love her and want her to live.

[FR_addict]

You just described Stephen Hawkings, not Terri. Terri smiles and communicates. She is brain damaged so hopefully she is not as aware of her terrible condition as Stephen Hawkings.

Terri does not seem to be in much pain, except when they try to starve her or will not treat infections she gets.

Her quality of life is not our quality of life, but her family is willling and able to take care of her. She will not endure unnecessary suffering under their care, unlike the care she received under her husband's guardianship and he has proved by his adultery that he is her husband in name only.

[Velveeta]

A Christmas Miracle?
Woman Out of ‘Vegetative State’ After 16 Years

Patti White Bull awoke after 16 years in a vegetative state. (ABCNEWS.com)
By Shawna Vogel

A L B U Q U E R Q U E, N.M., Dec. 29 — For 16 years, life for Patti White Bull had been very much the same — not much of a life at all, her body locked in a coma-like state, fed by a tube.

But on Christmas Day this year, she was miraculously awake, writing a letter to her mother, dressing herself and walking with support. “Absolutely extraordinary,” is how one medical expert described the 42-year-old New Mexico woman’s sudden awakening after more than a decade and a half.
And today, like many other Americans in this holiday season, White Bull headed to a shopping mall, according to her doctor, Elliot Marcus.
It was her first request.

Unconscious Since Childbirth
“It really is quite amazing,” says Gregory O’Shanick, national medical director for the Brain Injury Association. “In general, people don’t spontaneously emerge from a minimally conscious state. It’s a gradual process. It’s not like a light switch going on.”
But that seems to be exactly what has happened to White Bull, a mother of four who lost consciousness during the birth of her youngest child. For the past 10 years, she has been in a nursing home in “total care.”
Her ex-husband Mark White Bull, who divorced her three years after she lost consciousness, planned to visit her today with their children, now 25, 19, 17 and 16.

Not Exactly ‘Comatose’
She can’t be described as awakening from 16 years in a coma, says one expert. Most patients spend no more than a month in a true coma, according to Ronald Cranford, neurologist and medical ethicist at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis. After that, they go into a vegetative state, in which their eyes are open but they remain unconscious.
Patients can then emerge from this vegetative state to minimal consciousness, in which they are still not awake but can have what Randy Chestnut, a neurologist at Oregon Health Sciences University, calls “some very basic meaningful interactions with their environment.”

Suddenly, She Spoke
Just where White Bull was on the spectrum of consciousness before her Christmastime awakening, we are not yet clear. Marcus says her eyes were open, but she was unresponsive. Then, White Bull suddenly told an aide who was adjusting her covers, “Don’t do that.”
“This is extraordinary, but not out of the realm of possibility,” Chestnut says. He suggested she may have had some kind of brain-stem blockage that kept stimulation from getting to her brain until that very moment.
Cranford suggests White Bull may have been interacting with people in subtle ways that nobody was noticing: “Maybe on Christmas Day, people noticed more than they ever had before, and that made it seem like a dramatic recovery.”
He has investigated a number of cases of “late recovery” and found that most of them don’t pan out: “The longest well-documented recovery from a coma, is two and a half years.”
Nevertheless, he says he believes cases like this should be investigated to determine just exactly what happened and to help doctors treat other people in similar states.

Accolades for Attendants
Marcus is as amazed as anyone at his patient’s recovery, especially in that she is up and around already. Most people who awaken from vegetative states are physically disabled as well as mentally challenged.
He says the staff at Las Palomas Nursing Home in Albuquerque is to thank for White Bull’s remarkable mobility; they were constantly exercising her legs.
White Bull is currently undergoing intensive speech and physical therapy. Neurological tests are in the works.
While experts cannot yet explain her recovery, family members say they consider it a Christmastime miracle from God.
ABCNEWS medical journalists Sarah Adler and Mary Harris contributed to this report, as did the Associated Press.

http://abcnews.go.com/sections/living/DailyNews/miraclewoman991229.html

[Warren_Piece]

Imagine you are lying in a bed or sitting in a chair... Maybe you have a catheter to drain your bladder, or maybe you are in a diaper and urinate and defecate on yourself like a baby. Your either have bed sores or are at high risk of getting them. Your arms and possibly your legs are contracted because the muscles have long since dwindled to nothing. Those limbs will always be that way because they have just not been used for too, too long..is a prisoner in her own body... The chances of rehab working for anyone after 13 years is slim to none. Regardless of Terri's husbands motives, this woman should no longer be tortured. This is not being alive, this is existing.

You just described my brother, who was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy about 15 years ago. Thanks to some engineering genius on my dad's part, and the miracle of the internet, my brother has become a world-renown musician. Oh well, better he should die and decrease the surplus population. When are you coming over to kill him?

[FITZ]

Terri is a prisoner in her own body

We're all prisoners in our own bodies. Some of us might like to jump hurdles like they do in the Olympics ---- but we just can't. It's all relative. You have no way of know what Terri thinks or how she feels. She's not bothering your life, she's not hurting you ---- there is no reason she can't be allowed to live until her soul makes it's decision to leave.

[Saundra Duffy]

Well, then, maybe you'd be willing to put a gun to her head and pull the trigger. Oh, but quoting from the Bible which apparently you believe in: "Thou shalt not kill." I understand that you are compassionate toward her "suffering" here on earth and you think she'd be better off dead. But still there's that tricky little Biblical perspective about killing people. Nice try, though.

[Xenalyte]

Read up or take your uninformed ass elsewhere.

[Paul L. Hepperla]

We should NOT base personhood upon functionality. You have described some of the functions of a person but she is still a person and protected by the rights of a person. So is a person, still in the womb.

Who are you to determine what being "alive" means?

Certainly, many who use your argument can, will, and have extended it to include the mentally handicapped, physically handicapped, elderly, and those incapacitated.

Finally, natural death is not starving to death. Why not turn over Terry to her parents? What could be so bad about Terri living? What scares her "husband" and you so much about allowing this woman to live?

[deziner]

I don't understand how her family can feel this is better than being allowed a natural, dignifed life and to spend eternity in heaven with Christ in a perfect body.

God can take this woman any time He chooses to. He doesn't need man to do it for Him. If He wanted her now He would have taken her. As long as Terri is on earth, God has a purpose for her being here. Even when her tubes were taken out and she was without food or fluids, she survived - God does not need men to keep her alive either. He has however moved our government officials to accomplish His purposes. That is what government is for according to Romans 13 - he established it. God has an appointed time for Terri's death - just as He does for us all. It obviously isn't now.

[CDHart]

My boss is an RN, and she said that in her opinion the movements that Terri was making were involuntary. I didn't see them, so I can't say. But you are right about the consequences of being unable to move for any period of time. I guess the best thing to do is pray for Terri, and hope what is being done is in her best interest.

Carolyn

[tertiary01]

Here we go again assigning someone's values to someone elses's life. This is called Utilitarianism, practiced to perfection by the Nazis but still alive and well around the world. Life is precious, if as your title suggests you are a nurse, you have surely seen the survival instinct and the will to live in action. Face it, we can always be dead but we are only alive for a short time and need to take advantage of it on any terms.
Anyway,I don't think Terri's existence is so bad and Liberals should think it is fairly utopian. All her needs are taken care of, although maybe in not as timely a manner as some would like. And isn't this what the Liberals would like for the rest of use to have----cradle to grave assistance from the state?