Posted on 02/17/2005 1:28:18 PM PST by phenn
CLEARWATER, Fla. (Reuters) - The parents of a brain-damaged Florida woman at the center of a right-to-die battle said on Thursday they would ask a court to order new medical tests before she is allowed to die.
Robert Schindler, the father of Theresa "Terri" Schiavo, said the tests should be done because of a recent study that found patients with brain damage may be more aware of their surroundings than doctors previously thought.
(Excerpt) Read more at olympics.reuters.com ...
Because this ship is picking up steam and not just in this country. My guess is that in about ten years your quality of life will be decided by a committee, and whether or not you continue to live will be far beyond the choice of you or anyone in your family.
I hope you will listen to the analysis of the nuerologist that spent a lot of time with Terri during his examination.
You will come to the conclusion that Terri's life is NOT just a heartbeat.
Please at least bookmark from Post #15 to listen when you have the time. Please.
"And how should people determine your level of understanding?"
This is where we differ in opinion I think... where you say "people", I say "my wife". She's known me long enough to know what I think life is, regardless of how many people wave balloons around and say, "look, he's following the balloon"!
"I'll bet you're happy that someone else understood."
Yes, that someone else would be my mother. I love her very much for all she's done for me but I wouldn't want her to interfere with my wife's decision. A decision I hope she never has to make...
I've read those cases before. Each time I read them again, I get the shivers. Unbelievable at where this country is headed. Just unbelievable.
"Bones75 appears to me to be someone who doesn't know a whole lot about Terri. I don't think he/she should be treated like a troll."
I am not a troll.
All I know is, we have doctors on one side saying she is in a PVS, doctors on another side saying she is not, and I don't know which of the two is true. I am not convinced either way, so yes, I am admitting I don't know.
However, what a doctor hired by the parets says, or what a doctor hired by the husband says, has no crediblity to me, because those parties would have hired doctors to say what they want them to say. (It's evident by all the Schindlers' docs saying she's not PVS, all the Michael docs saying she is.. is that supposed to be coincidence?)
What has an objective doctor who has no vested interest in the case or personal agenda say? I haven't see or read anything about what a truly independant doctor has said.
I have to wonder though if Terri didn't die 14 years ago, and this is all a moot point anyway. I know that PVS patients can seem very responsive, though they really are not. But I am keeping an open mind about it.
Bones
"A year later, in April 2001, her death by dehydration was ordered to begin, and the day her feeding was stopped her brother and sister came by with a spoon and a cup of pudding, asking a nurse to try to feed her by mouth. The nurse refused and reported the request to others. When Schiavo found out he demanded that Bobby and Suzanne be removed from the list of approved visitors, and Greer rubberstamped his request"
Brother and sister tried to feed Terri in 2001 after feeding tube pulled.
I nearly died of dehydration...it was the worst horror of my life.
What condition could Terri have had in her early 20's, that would cause her such grievous brain damage, yet never recur despite all these subsequent years of physical neglect and abuse---and despite several attempted murders by dehydration?
What condition did she have? Only ONE person was witness to her "collapse," that night in 1990. Michael Schiavo.
The quote above was cut from this page: http://www.tilrc.org/docs/1203schiavo.htm
Worth reading.
I believe that a PET scan would show actual brain activity... one of the things that can be measured is blood flow within the brain, in specific areas which are known to have specific functions.
would've had to have been present when you suspiciously had the oxygen cut off from your brain
purposely denied you therapeutic medical rehabilitation for years after she received a large court settlement for your case
allied herself with an attorney connected with the euthanasia movement to further her goal
stated after the fact she just *knew* that you would want to die (in contradiction to the first-hand knowledge of your friends and family of your Catholic belief in the sanctity of life)
took up with another man and began a new life, including producing two illigitimate children
denied you the most fundamental decency in allowing your family to visit you, reducing them to beggars to even see you
ordered nurses to deny you basic hygiene and lifesaving medication for infections many times
completely abrogated any protective or productive efforts to behave as a true guardian
whose only goal was to see you dead ... even though she could've have divorced you, and allowed your loving family to care for you
I could list dozens of other incidents of Michael Schiavo's cruel, inhumane and cold-hearted behavior treatment of his "wife." Would your wife do this to you? I pray not, but at the end of our lives, our only hope is the love and the will of our loved ones to fight for us, if necessary. Doctors are overburdened, indifferent many times, and are rarely going to fight for us ... our trusted families need to do that, if it's necessary.
"......." 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."
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 spouse or child, for a DOG if they weren't naturally rejecting life sustaining nourishment?
If you're truly interested in this case, get informed about all the facts, details and nuances of this long-standing case, for its results will impact all of us. If a human being who is disabled can be purposely starved to death, something we aren't even allowed to do to a death row criminal, all of our lives can be in jeopardy. Wills, living wills and last wishes can be very subjective and subject to multiple interpretations, physical symptoms can be misleading, doctors can be indifferent and loved ones overcome with emotion.
All we can count on in the end, if there is a medical uncertainty, is the fortitude, and pro-active presence and persistence of our loved ones, to remain focused and knowledgeable in determining what's happening to the best of their ability, being mindful of our wishes. My last wishes are NOT to be starved and dehydrated to death, if I'm not naturally rejecting sustenance.
God Bless Terri and her family .. fight, Terri, fight!!
ping
That's what I thought, and that's why I said you shouldn't be treated like one.
I understand your hesitance to take the words of one side's doctors over the words of the other side's doctors. They all agree that Terri is conscious, has voluntary action, has cognitive behavior, and has an ability to communicate and interact purposefully with her environment.
What they don't agree on is her prognosis for recovery, and the defintion of persistent vegetative state (PVS.) I've read the defintion that the medical community accepts, and it's consistent with Florida's legal defintion. I wish I could remember more detail about the medical organizations so I could share my sources on that. Maybe someone else can help out there.
Florida Statute defines PVS. 765.101 (12) http://www.flsenate.gov/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=Ch0765/ch0765.htm
"Persistent vegetative state" means a permanent and irreversible condition of unconsciousness in which there is:
(a) The absence of voluntary action or cognitive behavior of any kind.(b) An inability to communicate or interact purposefully with the environment.
One of the doctors hired by Michael testified that Terri would fit his own personal definition of PVS, which differs from Florida Law and every other accepted source, and includes patients who are aware and communicative. That's where the rumor about Terri's diagnosis of PVS comes from. When he examined Terri, he told her she was doing "good." After the examination, he told others in the room that she had done real well. When he got on the witness stand, he admitted that she was responsive and aware.
Watch these video that I got from http://www.raven1.net/terrivids.htm and see what you think. She's obviously severely disabled, but is she comatose, brain dead or PVS?
Terri watching a balloon - http://www.multistalkervictims.org/other/video/terri-balloon.rmm
Terri's alert eyes - http://www.multistalkervictims.org/other/video/terri-big_eyes.rmm
Terri responds to cold - http://www.multistalkervictims.org/other/video/terri-hows_that_cold.rmm
Terri responds to her mom - http://www.multistalkervictims.org/other/video/terri-mum.rmm
Terri responds to music - http://www.multistalkervictims.org/other/video/terri-music.rmm
Terri responds to touch - http://www.multistalkervictims.org/other/video/terri-swab.rmm
She reminds me of some of the kids my son used to tutor in high school. When I would see them, I couldn't understand them. My son had to translate their grunts for me. They'd make happy grunts to indicate he'd gotten it right. A couple times he got it wrong, and they made unhappy grunts, while he guessed until he got it right. Then they'd be happy again. Some of their learning was at the level of a two year old, and some was at an 8th grade level, depending on the subject. One of them didn't know the first three letters of the alphabet, but he knew who Abe Lincoln was. One part of the brain was damaged, another part was perfectly intact. Every one of those kids was as aware as Terri. Some had feeding tubes, some didn't. None of them was brain dead, and neither is Terri.
As for Terri's chances of recovery, I don't think you'll find two people who can agree on how much she could recover. I think her chance of recovering enough to be independent are extremely low. I do think she can recover her abilities of speech and eating. She was eating for awhile (I think it was a couple years) after her collapse. Michael had the feeding tube put in, for reasons we can only speculate on. She was also saying a few words. I'm not sure if she still does, but if she doesn't, I would attribute that to the sensory depravation she's been subjected to. I don't know for sure that she can improve beyond her current condition, but I don't think that should be a prerequisite. And Florida Law agrees with me. She's already above the minimum requirement of cognition in their eyes.
I believe that several of the doctors (like 10) that are willing to testify on behalf of the Schindlers were not sought out by them, but they saw videos of Terri, and said that in their professional opinions, those videos showed evidence of someone who is not PVS. I believe their testimony was not included as evidence during the trial. IOW, they may have been as independent as you're going to get. Every person is going to have somewhat of their own agenda playing into it, including you and I. I want Terri to be able to have every chance of receiving therapy before she is deemed hopeless, particularly in the light that her family is willing to care for her.
I will agree that it would be nice for there to be independent doctors who would examine Terri now with the latest technology available. I'd like for them to give her speech therapy which may improve her swallowing ability as well as her speech. Those muscles need to be retaught how to work again in sync, much like my muscles in my leg and foot needed it when I broke my ankle a few years ago.
I had it out with radio host Mark Larson this morning. He had a call in for question "do you think it is right for Michael to have more test for Terri?" He called her PVS with tubes who lays in bed not able to hold up her arms. I called him and challenged him about Terri's wishes, if she wished her husband to have a girlfriend and 2 kids ..he started down the path that Terri probably would want her husband to carry on a new life, and I asked him to stop referring to her as terminal, I said she is no more terminal than you or I, he asked me how did I know that. Anyhow he ended up hanging up on me because he didnt want the public to know about the girlfriend and the illigitimates when I had brought that up. Floriduh voter says he is buddies with Greer.
I wonder what would have happened if you'd phrased your attack on Michael in the form of a question: Do you think a married man should be allowed to pledge himself to another woman and call himself father to her children by him without forfeiting all rights and authority as husband to his wife?
I think if the question is phrased in that way, most people would suggest that a man should not be so allowed. Given that Michael has done the things listen, then, that should imply that he should forfeit all rights and authority as husband to Terri.
Goodnight prayer for Terri!
"I'll just use WIFE"
Bingo! I'm a man, not a lesbian... married to the same woman for 18 years.
"In order for your potential circumstances to be analagous to Terri's situation, YOUR WIFE..."
You obviously have followed this case closely what with all the information you listed. I wasn't trying to put my inevidable demise in the same category as Terri as far as how she got to her present state. I was only pointing out that if I were in that condition, I'd want my wife to kill me. I understand this guy Michael's actions are outrageous to some and not so to others. I'm merely commenting that if I state my desires now, my wife's actions shouldn't be anybody's business but ours.
"If you're truly interested in this case..."
Honestly, I'm not. I'm interested by the issue, not the particulars of her case. Obviously if the husband is not sincere, her case is an outrage and I understand the outcry. In life or death matters it would seem rational to err on the side of caution and not order Terri's death. I can only assume that the judge has reviewed all the facts and found the husband's claim credible? I don't know, but I'm not going to fret over it.
To say that her husband is not sincere would be putting it mildly. Ergo you should understand the outcry.
Michael Schiavo has over the years made quite a number of statements which contradict each other. Unfortunately, Judge Greer finds his statements credible despite all this, and judicial findings that witnesses and evidence are, or are not credible, are not subject to appellate review.
It is obvious to anyone who examines even the undisputed facts of the case that Michael Schiavo is a liar. The list of things one would have to believe in order to believe Michael to be a truth-teller would be truly astounding; anyone who could believe all those things would certainly be entitled to admission at Miliways.
"It is obvious to anyone who examines even the undisputed facts of the case that Michael Schiavo is a liar."
It is obvious that's not the case since the judge has said she can be killed. There's at least two sides to every story and the judge picked the one you disagree with. I wasn't in on any of the courtroom hearings and I'm not up to researching the entirety of the case. I'm sure it fills volumes that I will never care enough to read about. But, if you're certain she wants to live like that then good luck, I hope your efforts make a difference.
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