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Will the Pope's statement help save Terri Schiavo?
Are people in "vegetative" states really hopeless?
Listen Wednesday night, 4/7/04 at 10 PM EST and hear about the recent international meeting in Rome to discuss developments in the treatment and ethics of the "vegetative" state. See link below for the official English translation of the Pope's March 20 statement which has been called a "stunner" by ethicists! - Nancy Valko, RN.

Listen on http://www.highway2health.net
Wednesday - April 5, 2004 10.00 ET (GMT-5)

About the Host
Nancy Valko has been a Registered Nurse for 35 years, working mainly in oncology, home health/hospice, hemodialysis and several kinds of ICUs, including trauma and is currently a full-time nurse in an ICU. Ms. Valko has covered the Terri Schiavo case for Wisconsin NPR, written for publications both religious and secular, produced medical news analysis articles for the National Catholic Register and is a Spokesperson for the National Association of Pro-life Nurses (http://www.nursesforlife.org, is president of Missouri Nurses for Life and a contributing editor for Voices, the magazine of Women for Faith and Family (http://www.wf-f.org)

Full Text of Pope's Address in English
http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/2004/march/documents/hf_jp-ii_spe_20040320_congress-fiamc_en.html

Will listen out for it tonight. Thanks for the heads up!

As an aside to the Pope's statement, I was discussing this with my mom last night. I was a little astounded to discover that she still thinks of Terri as comatose. Even though I have e-mailed her the pictures (from FL engineer's remarks), she still doesn't have a good understanding of what Terri's state is from the newspaper and TV accounts.

She didn't know what PVS is all about. She didn't know that they have wake and sleep cycles. She didn't know that it's misdiagnosed 43% of the time. This is my mom. She knows how passionate I am about Terri, and she knows I'm more informed than she is, but there's still so much she doesn't understand. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that because she gets her information for the most part through the local newspaper (Gainesville Sun) and cable TV, that she is very much like her counterparts, which is the elderly in Florida. Until we can dispel some of the myths about Terri, and how what Terri endures is different than the dying process, I think we have a hard way to go.

We have to keep getting the truth about PVS out there. We need to keep writing letters to the editor, our lawmakers, etc., and somehow educate them about the distinctions between the terminally ill and PVS patients.

Talking with my mom last night helped me to see that there is still a whole segment of the population that could be informed, but isn't informed properly yet.