Posted on 01/24/2005 7:11:46 PM PST by eartotheground
What amazes me about this case is that Teri Schiavo is not being kept alive using artificial means, I.E. a respirator. She is being condemned to suffering a horrific death, (although her husband's lawyer and the courts disagree with the amount of suffering she will endure). We all need food and water to survive, so I guess we all are being kept alive "artificially". What have we become as a society when this case has gotten to this point? Is there no decency or humanity left in our legal system? Teri is simply another victim being denied her right to life. In my opinion this is what happens when abortion becomes a "mainstream" part of life. Unfortunately our society will continue to erode, and Teri Schialvo's battle will be in vain. God bless her and her family. It is a sad day indeed.
Has Gov. Bush really thrown in the towel?
Terri ping! This is an idea, open for discussion.
If anyone would like to be added to or removed from my Terri ping list, please let me know here or by Freepmail.
You gotta' be kidding; no one has worked harder than Jeb Bush to save this woman's life. How many other governors would've put their political necks out for someone like Terri?
When I listened to him speak, to me he sounded like they thought that Terri's law would be good enough. Since it wasn't, a more broad law would have to be crafted. I think he's willing to do his share if there is a huge outcry to the legislature to fix this horrific situation. Please call or write all members of the Florida Senate and House. If we bombard them again, they will act! Luckily, Jim King is no longer Senate President anymore, so it may work if we pull together.
While we're at it, calling the US Legislature would be a good idea, too. If Terri dies this way, it's coming to a state near you. All of us will be impacted, just like we deal with the consequences of Roe v. Wade every day.
IIRC, a Virginia governor did the same for Hugh Finn, but it didn't help that time either.
Wasn't Finn totally unconscious / brain dead? I don't know that these two cases are that comparable. Clearly this lady from those videos has brain activity and has a consciousness.
If any person is refused oral food and hydration, as well as gastrostomic food and hydration and all other forms as well, that person will die.
Perhaps if Michael were to allow someone to make a bona fide attempt at oral food and hydration, I might feel somewhat differently about this case, but since he has openly refused to allow any such efforts to be made, I have no words to express my feelings for that [bleep]-[bleep]ed [bleep]er [bleep]ing [bleep]-of-a-[bleep] [bleep] of [bleep].
Perhaps someone needs to file criminal charges against Michael on the basis that there is no legal basis for his refusal to allow oral feeding and hydration. That might be a Hail Mary, staking hopes upon the fact that she would be able to receive such, but it would seem as good a shot as any, especially since if Terri can receive oral feeding and hydration all excuse for trying to kill her vanishes.
It's been pulled twice. The last time I believe she was without food and water for seven days. Her organs were shutting down. The Florida passed Terri's law and the tube was re-inserted.
As far as swallowing food, the feeding tube is more for the convenience of the nursing staff. More than likely she could take food by mouth. She does not drool, but swallows her own saliva. Her husband banned her brother from visiting her for a period of time because he was caught feeding her pudding.
When in the last 1,900 years has anyone survived even a month without water?
If Michael were to allow bona fide efforts to feed and hydrate Terri orally, she might very well survive. But Michael has for many years forbidden all such efforts.
One proposal I suggested before, and perhaps should again: lock both Michael and Terri in separate rooms without food and water. If Michael outlasts Terri, he wins. If Terri outlasts Michael, then her parents get to take care of her.
If you want, be nice and offer Michael the option to concede if any any point during this contest he decides he wouldn't mind letting Terri live with her parents.
They don't want to even get near it, Eagles6!
I live about 10 blocks from the hospital where Terri lives, and Holy-Hell will break loose if they try to kill her again!
Activism will get a new meaning!
There IS hell-to-pay, and there are many collectors out here...............FRegards
To be honest, I'd have to go back and check, and it's late so I won't tonight, but unless I have him mixed up with another case (which I could because I am totally wiped right now) Finn recuperated to the point that he could direct his own wheelchair, and many other things. I'll check back with you tomorrow, alright? Or else someone else can google Hugh Finn and find the details and post it to this thread. MarMema used to have a whole bunch of these cases in her profile page, but I haven't checked there lately.
MarMema, do you remember the details of Hugh Finn? My brain is getting fuzzy tonight. (Better not say that too loud. Next thing you know, Felos will come after me!)
You bet your beans it will!
I'm sure Terri would rather be out and about than stuck in a hospice. Unfortunately, Michael forbids it. He has forbid any effort to be made to rehabilitate Terri, because he doesn't want her to get better. He has openly stated his desire and intention to marry another woman as soon as Terri is dead. To suggest that a person who has so renounced his wedding vows should have life-and-death over a woman he claims as his "wife" is to make a mockery of marriage.
Well, he was a reporter for a Louisville TV station, so I am familiar with who he is - and that's what I seem to remember.
= = = = = = =
" Yes, it is true that when people are actively dying from terminal disease, they often refuse food and water. The disease makes the food and water repulsive to them. In such circumstances, it is medically inappropriate to force food and water into a person who is actively rejecting it. Indeed, doing so could cause suffering.
But this isn't what is happening to Terri. She isn't dying of cancer. Her body isn't shutting down as part of the natural dying process. Indeed, she is not dying at all--unless her food and water is taken away.
".........A conscious [cognitively disabled] person would feel it just as you or I would. They will go into seizures. Their skin cracks, their tongue cracks, their lips crack. They may have nosebleeds because of the drying of the mucus membranes, and heaving and vomiting might ensue because of the drying out of the stomach lining. They feel the pangs of hunger and thirst. Imagine going one day without a glass of water! Death by dehydration takes ten to fourteen days. It is an extremely agonizing death.
" " ........... After seven to nine days [from commencing dehydration] they begin to lose all fluids in the body, a lot of fluids in the body. And their blood pressure starts to go down. When their blood pressure goes down, their heart rate goes up. . . . Their respiration may increase and then . . . the blood is shunted to the central part of the body from the periphery of the body. So, that usually two to three days prior to death, sometimes four days, the hands and the feet become extremely cold.
They become mottled. That is you look at the hands and they have a bluish appearance. And the mouth dries a great deal, and the eyes dry a great deal and other parts of the body become mottled. And that is because the blood is now so low in the system it's shunted to the heart and other visceral organs and away from the periphery of the body . . ."
"MOST OF THE TIME, we never know for sure what a starved or dehydrated person experiences. But in at least one case--that of a young woman who had her tube feeding stopped for eight days and lived to tell the tale--we have direct evidence of the agony that forced dehydration may cause.
At age 33, Kate Adamson collapsed from a devastating and incapacitating stroke. She was utterly unresponsive and was diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Because of a bowel obstruction she developed, her nourishment was stopped so that doctors could perform surgery.
Adamson eventually recovered sufficiently to author "Kate's Journey: Triumph Over Adversity," in which she tells the terrifying tale. Rather than being unconscious with no chance of recovery as her doctors believed, she was actually awake and aware but unable to move any part of her body voluntarily. (This is known as a "locked-in state.") When she appeared recently on "The O'Reilly Factor," host Bill O'Reilly asked Adamson about the dehydration experience:
O'REILLY: When they took the feeding tube out, what went through your mind?
ADAMSON: When the feeding tube was turned off for eight days, I thought I was going insane. I was screaming out in my mind, "Don't you know I need to eat?" And even up until that point, I had been having a bagful of Ensure as my nourishment that was going through the feeding tube. At that point, it sounded pretty good. I just wanted something. The fact that I had nothing, the hunger pains overrode every thought I had.
O'REILLY: So you were feeling pain when they removed your tube?
ADAMSON: Yes. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. To say that--especially when Michael [Schiavo] on national TV mentioned last week that it's a pretty painless thing to have the feeding tube removed--it is the exact opposite. It was sheer torture, Bill.
O'REILLY: It's just amazing.
ADAMSON: Sheer torture . . .
= = = = = =
Her very existence is and has been controlled by her husband-in-name-only and his mistress. Once he got the money, she was disposable. She is not on life support, she is not dying from any terminal disease. Her murder would be a direct result of the intentional starvation and dehydration by the removal of the feeding tube .. which is her only source of nourishment since her guardian has denied her even the basic mercy of swallowing therapy.
Would you choose this death for yourself, for a parent, for a child, for a dog if they weren't naturally rejecting life sustaining nourishment?
The unspeakable evil of Judge Greer, Michael Schiavo and George Felos will NEVER BE FORGOTTEN. God says: "justice is Mine" ... and so it is and shall be.
If the only way she can get to that "better place" is by being starved to death, then it would seem that God is denying her that better place, wouldn't it? Otherwise, why wouldn't He simply call her home?
I would just add that this issue is not a simple one that affords pat answers; I can sympathize with your emotions on this one. But if we are going to err on one side, wouldn't prudence suggest that we err on the side of life?
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