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Now, what's the court supposed to do?

Are you serious? The husband, the sister and brother in law all claim to have heard it and that's good enough for a life and death decision? Hearsay like that, accepted by any judge should be grounds for their removal. If she told these people, if it was so important, why wasn't it written down?

We revert back to erring on the side of life. That's what a judge is supposed to do.

I have never seen a discussion of something I have seen in hospitals and seen with elderly relatives that has alarmed me.

Now when you go in, they ask you to sign "advance directives". Most people don't give it much thought, they are sick and check the things they are given to expect or ordinary.

My mother signed a DNR order,,she did not want to be put on "machines". Now there is a good reason not to do so.. Ventilators are used for brief periods when people have overwhelming pneumonia. It gives them time to respond to antibiotics and live. Nobody tells them that.

At her last hospitalization, about two days into it, she was 84, I noticed she was not being given her heart meds, no meds. I went down to see what was up and was told, "she signed a DNR order". Now she was elderly and frail and had early dementia and had a respiratory arrest when she came in the ER but had recovered and had seemed alert and fine and asking when lunch was. She was enjoying life at home with her cat and her TV and visits from children, etc. She was not asking to die.

I pointed out this and everyone glared at me, gave her meds and she got better. She died later, a few days later, of an unexpected pulmonary embolism probably brought about by two days of no heart meds and lying in bed.

But the point is, the hospital, a Catholic Hospital I might add, was erring on the side of assuming she came there to die just because she didn't want artificial proloonging of life when things were hopeless.

This alarms me and continues to do so. I wonder how many old people die because everyone assumes they are ready to when they really aren't.

How about they listen to what the estranged husband said to one of his girlfriends.

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Regarding that alleged conversation [that Terri supposedly said she would want to die in such a situation] -- Cindy Shook said that Michael Schiavo said:

"How the hell should I know, we never spoke about this, we were young."

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:yzE5tNjKsYMJ:ottawa.indymedia.org/en/2005/02/628.shtml+schiavo+how+the+hell+should+i+know&hl=en