What if There Is Something Going On in There? - (Terri Shiavo - erring to the side of caution)

New York Times Magazine ^ | 9/28/03 | CARL ZIMMER

[KosmicKitty]

Daniel Rios is 24 years old, with wavy black hair, a thick mustache and a glassy stare that seems to look both at you and through you. One day almost four years ago, while he was taking a shower, a blood vessel ruptured in his brain, and he collapsed on the bathroom floor. After emergency surgery, he lay in a coma for three weeks. When he finally opened his eyes, he could not speak or move his body; his head simply lolled. In the months that followed, the doctors monitoring him at the Center for Head Injuries at the J.F.K. Johnson Rehabilitation Institute in Edison, N.J., saw few signs that he had any meaningful mental life. Sometimes he looked as if he were crying. Other times his eyes would follow a mirror passed before his face. On his best days he was able to close his eyes on command. But those days were rare. For the most part he lay unresponsive, adrift in a neurological twilight.

One morning just over a year after his accident, Rios was taken to the Sloan Kettering Institute on Manhattan's East Side. There, in a dim room, a group of researchers placed a mask over his eyes, fixed headphones over his ears and guided his head into the bore of an M.R.I. machine. A 40-second loop of a recording made by Rios's sister Maria played through the headphones: she told him that she was there with him, that she loved him. As the sound entered his ears, the M.R.I. machine scanned his brain, mapping changes in activity. Several hours afterward, two researchers, Nicholas D. Schiff and Joy Hirsch, took a look at the images from the scan. They hadn't been sure what to expect -- Rios was among the first people in his condition to have his brain activity measured in this way -- but they certainly weren't expecting what they saw. ''We just stared at these images,'' recalls Schiff, an expert in consciousness disorders at Weill Medical College of Cornell University. ''There didn't seem to be anything missing.''

As the tape of his sister's voice played, several distinct clusters of neurons in Rios's brain had fired in a manner virtually identical to that of a healthy subject. Some clusters that became active were those known to help process spoken language, others to recall memories. Was Rios recognizing his sister's voice, remembering her? ''You couldn't tell the difference between these parts of his brain and the brain of one of my graduate students,'' says Hirsch, an expert in brain imaging at Columbia University. Even the visual centers of Rios's brain had come alive, despite the fact that his eyes were covered. It was as if his sister's words awakened his mind's eye.

[Gophack]

No one should judge someone's quality of life. It's not up to us to judge. She is not brain dead. She is able to breath on her own. She simply can not feed herself or communicate. Much like a newborn and many severely handicapped people--handicapped people who DO think and feel.

This whole case angers and saddens me. God bless Terri.

[tazman3]

Good Article PING!

[najida]

I think we are in agreement.

What I am saying is that whomever she is now, may not be like who she was before. But she still "is". She may be like a baby that dozes and recognizes family, she may be like a kid dreaming of ponies. She may come and go. I don't know.

And it isn't a bad thing. Just different. And no reason to starve her.

[KosmicKitty]

Over 20 years ago, I had a duel college major of Biology & Psychology with a focus on the human brain & the chemical aspect of the brain & behavior. While I ended up changing majors a few scant bio classes short of graduating in this field, the one thing that I learned was just how LITTLE is known about the human brain. There is NO way we can have any knowledge of what happens when someone enters a state like that which Terri is in. Heck, we don't even know everything that's going on inside our heads!

[Ragtime Cowgirl]

Thank you for the post and the ping, Steelerfan.

See #15. Our fight isn't over. As of this morning:

---

Contact these most helpful people, please, and let them know that Michael Schiavo is calling the shots re. Terri, preventing her family from seeing her or getting medical updates, acting as media contact (ghoul!) and the hospital is following his orders:

Bob Marshall:           bob.marshall@trincomm.org

Speaker Johnny Byrd:     speakerbyrd@myfloridahouse.com

Sen. Jim Sebesta:             sebesta.jim.web@flsenate.gov

Senator Daniel Webster:  drawdy.ann.so9@flsenate.gov  (Senator Webster’s email is to his aide)

 

Senator Tom Lee:             lee.tom.web@flsenate.gov

~~~

jeb@myflorida.com

jeb.bush@myflorida.com

[MainFrame65]

Nearly as evil as Michael Shiavo's so far unsuccessful attempts to murder his wife has been his largely successful quest to deprive her of contact and stimulation from her loving, caring family. He has imprisoned and tortured her in a private, internal solitary confinement, and he deserves a special kind of hell for what he has done to her.

[NYer]

I feel that we have no choice than to err to the side of life because none of us really know what she would have preferred or what she really understands at this point.

One of the FL state legislators who lobbied for passage of Terri's Law, spoke of her grandmother. The doctors told the family that granny was in a 'vegetative state'and would never recover. They recommended disconnecting the feeding tube. The family agreed. Ten days later, they changed their minds and had the tube reinserted. Three years later, granny 'woke up' from her vegetative state and shared so many stories with the legislator.

OR ... how about this true story?

Mother wakes up after 16 year coma

by Tim Cornwell
THE dramatic revival of a mother of four after 16 years in a catatonic state has left US medical experts groping for an explanation.
Patti White Bull, 42, a New Mexican woman who fell into a coma during childbirth, sat up dressed herself and asked to go to the mall this Christmas, according to her family and nursing staff.
“I’ve never seen anything like this” said Elliot Marcus an anaesthesiologist and long term care specialist who has monitored her condition at an Albuquerque nursing home. “I can’t come up with a medical explanation.”
Mrs White Bull’s first words in more than 16 years, spoken while staff at the Las Palomas Nursing and Rehabilitation Centre were arranging her bed, were “Don’t do that” Marcus told the local Albuquerque Journal newspaper.
Mrs White Bull fell into a semi vegetative state after complications during a caesarean section when her son Mark, now 16, was born.
A blood clot lodged in her lung, she stopped breathing and her heart stopped beating.
While she was resuscitated she apparently suffered brain damage from lack of oxygen, and for the next 16 years lay in bed fed through a tube.
Mrs White Bull has begun to swallow solid food, including chicken and pizza and her speech is clear but limited while her hands have also loosened.
A brain stem blockage was offered as one reason for the recovery.
Another view was she had been interacting for some time in ways that people had not noticed .

[NYer]

I also, am asking Blessed Mother Theresa, who was pro-life above all, to pray and petition He whose side she is now at for this special boon.

Excellent! Blessed Mother Teresa needs a 2nd miracle, to be canonized. Terri's feeding tube was removed on the feast day of her name sake - St. Teresa of Avila.

I have asked St. Maximilian Kolbe's help. He exchanged his life for that of another prisoner in Auschwitz and was placed in the Starvation Chamber, where he died. He must have great sympathy for what Terri has endured.

[KosmicKitty]

Nearly as evil as Michael Shiavo's so far unsuccessful attempts to murder his wife has been his largely successful quest to deprive her of contact and stimulation from her loving, caring family.

What has gotten me the most agiatated about this whole thing is how absolutely and totally mean the husband is!! I might even believe that he thinks he's doing what she would have wanted (okay, it would be a big stretch to really believe that), but to keep her from her family & her religious providers is just beyond incomprehensible!! If he really loved his wife and really wanted what was best for her, how could he do this!!

Trying to look at this whole situation objectively, there's no way someone could say keeping Terri and her family apart is doing "what Terri would have wanted". No sir, that one act casts no doubt of guilt on all of the husband's behavior for me!!

[reflecting]

Thanks, great read! Bump

[walford]

Given that you're new, I need to warn you about the trolls who will pop in. Definition:

http://www.hyperdictionary.com/dictionary/troll

Ill informed, they jump in and feign ignorance and try to slow down the discussion by making it necessary to have to explain what has been gone over again and again. I have a standard reply:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1003808/posts?page=42#42

I even tried to forstall it by posting this:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1004572/posts?page=45#45

Then there is the long review of the particulars:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1003606/posts?page=41#41

I apologize for wasting everyone else's time with this - just trying to avoid going over covered ground ad infinitum, ad nauseum.

[TASMANIANRED]

I read a book a quite a while ago, and have been searching for the title and can't find it.

A young woman in the Northeast had a brain event, I think it was an aneuyrsm.
She was presumed to be in a persistent vegetative state for years. Her family essentially abandoned her so no one was in trying to stimulate her. The nursing home was doing the typical flip and suck minimalist care.

She woke up, was fully awake and concious and nobody noticed, she was awake for about 6 years. Finally during a routine state ordered eval somebody noticed.

Ended up she typed a book on a laptop with a pencil in her mouth. She detailed the brutality and insensitivity of her nursing home care.

When I was precepting new nurses in ICU one of my demands was you always speak kindly and treat respectfully everyone, coma or not. You do not know the impact you are having on people. They may know your every word and touch.

[Miss Marple]

My mother had three brain surgeries in the space of 6 months for a meningioma. After the third surgery, she underwent brain swelling and lay in a drug-induced coma for 30 days. She remembers hearing conversations during that time (some of which were dirty jokes told by the nurses and trust me, my mother wouldn't make up dirty jokes) and was aggravated at some of the staff for being slow to care for her.

She has recovered except for a balance problem which has left her unable to walk. Otherwise, she is sharp as a tack.

Because of this experience she had, and because of research like this, I believe that people with these problems should be cared for with love and patience, diligently looking to call them back to consciousness.

May Blessed Theresa intervene in Teri's case, to the joy of all who value life.

[TASMANIANRED]

Good Job. After working 20+ years in just about every area of nursing, I know the human mind and the body are still largely a sacred mystery. I have seen people live though things that had 99% probablity of death. I've seen people die in 4 days from a stumped toe.

The medical profession's job is to care, tend and nurture within the limits of human knowledge. They are not all knowing and any pretense of this is just arrogance.

[helen crump]

I loved the article you posted.
Here is a copy of the letter I sent to all the senators in Florida earlier this week. I don't kid myself into thinking it made a difference to them but it made me feel better to send it:

I have just learned that the Florida senate plans to meet in the morning about Terri Schiavo. If you believe there is any chance that extensive physical, speech, and occupational therapy could help this woman please vote to have her feeding tube replaced and do whatever possible to get her the help she needs. I've only recently become aware of this case. Eight years ago after my son's birth we were told to put him in an institution because he would never walk, talk, play or smile. We brought him home from the hospital and started therapy immediately. He is now is the second grade and just made the Principal's honor roll. He does all the things we were told he wouldn't and so much more. I know that not every case turns out like ours but I do know that doctors can be wrong and that therapy can make a huge difference.
Thank you

[AFPhys]

Amen!

and, thank you for the additional data many can use regarding your experience and your mother's.

[spoiler2]

"everything which they are saying now will be weapons turned against them."

Liberals never accept the blame for anything, especially their own words proven wrong, even played back to them from a tape...

I too, thank the Lord for the miracle, of just overcoming the obstacle of the Florida courts!

[shhrubbery!]

This is an INCREDIBLE article. Am copying and saving -- it will be valuable. Thanks for posting!

[shhrubbery!]

This is a picture of Patti White Bull, the woman who "woke up" after 16 years in a vegetative state.

From your post:

Mrs White Bull fell into a semi vegetative state after complications during a caesarean section when her son Mark, now 16, was born.

A blood clot lodged in her lung, she stopped breathing and her heart stopped beating.

While she was resuscitated she apparently suffered brain damage from lack of oxygen, and for the next 16 years lay in bed fed through a tube.

Mother wakes up after 16 years in vegetative state

[Gophack]

I wasn't disagreeing with you. I just happened to click on your post to put in my two cents!