Posted on 03/19/2005 4:30:22 PM PST by ambrose
SCHIAVO Q&A
By Palm Beach Post Staff and Wire Reports
Saturday, March 19, 2005
Terri Schiavo's case has mixed emotion and medical science into a sometimes incomprehensible blend. Here, according to medical experts, are answers to common questions:
Q: What happened to Schiavo?
A: On Feb. 25, 1990, at age 27, she suffered cardiac arrest as a result of a potassium imbalance. Court-appointed doctors have found her to be severely brain-damaged because oxygen was cut off from her brain. The doctors say she is in a persistent vegetative state that offers no hope of recovery.
Q: What is a persistent vegetative state, and how does it differ from a coma?
A: A coma is a profound or deep state of unconsciousness. The patient is alive but unable to react or respond to things going on around around her. People have awakened from comas and gone on with their lives. In a coma, the patient looks asleep and is unresponsive.
A persistent vegetative state, which sometimes follows a coma, is a condition in which someone has lost awareness of the world around her but remains in a sleep-wake cycle. The individual loses the higher cerebral powers of the brain, but the functions of the brain stem, such as respiration (breathing) and blood circulation, remain relatively intact. In this state, the patient may look as if he or she is awake.
Q: But why does Schiavo look like she's smiling?
A: Her parents say she is aware of what's going on around her and reacts to her surroundings and to people who talk to her. But experts say it is extremely common for someone in a persistent vegetative state to look alert, as if she knows what's going on. Medical experts say Schiavo exhibits extremely primitive reflexes, nothing more. For example, she might turn or jerk in response to a loud noise. These are primitive functions directed by the small part of the brain that is still intact.
Spontaneous movements may happen and the eyes may open in a response to external stimuli, but the patient does not speak or obey commands. Patients in a vegetative state may appear somewhat normal. They may occasionally grimace, cry or laugh. The court has found that Schiavo does not consistently respond to stimuli. Doctors say her actions are reflexes, not a consciously directed effort by the brain's cortex.
Q:What will happen to her now that the tube has been removed?
A: There's no way to tell for sure what will happen, but the kidneys might be the first to react. In such cases, urine output decreases and patients begin to stop secreting fluids. The mouth begins to look dry and the eyes appear sunken. Patients will look thinner because the body tissues have lost fluid. The heart rate gradually goes up and blood pressure goes down. That leads to breathing changes that culminate in the rest of the body shutting down. Depending on how strong she is, she might take two to three weeks to die.
Q: Will she feel any pain?
A: In a vegetative state, medical experts believe the higher cortical functions — those brain functions that allow us to experience the world around us — have been suspended. The patient is, in effect, unconscious. It would be difficult to know if she experienced any discomfort, doctors say, because no one can talk with her. Because the more primitive functions remain, the body would try to maintain life, so there may be some grimacing or other apparent reaction to what's happening. If she seems uncomfortable, doctors can give medicines to relieve pain and relax her. Doctors say she should not experience pain as we experience it. Usually, there are no signs of a change except a gentle and quiet transition from breathing to non-breathing. Doctors who have witnessed the procedure in other patients call it a dignified death.
Q: What if the feeding tube is reinserted?
A: If it's replaced within the first few days — as it has been done before with Schiavo — a patient can recover from dehydration. If the tube is replaced after two or three weeks, she likely would still die. Replacing the tube doesn't always lead to recovery.
Let's put it this way: If you were in a PVS, you wouldn't care whether or not someone killed you. If you weren't, you would.
Would you agree with my deduction that Schiavo, Felos, and Greer are all well aware that Terri is not only not PVS, but is sufficiently "not PVS" that there's a real likelihood than an independent examination of an undrugged Terri would prove they were deliberately sandbagging her condition?
That depends on what efforts are taken to ensure it's accuracy. If you diagnose someone as PVS, predicting they'll never recover, and then shoot in the head with a twelve gauge, there's a pretty strong likelihood your prediction will be correct. In you diagnose someone as PVS without attempting therapy, but then therapy is given, there's a much stronger likelihood the prediction will be wrong.
PVS is a difficult diagnosis because someone who's cognitive 1% of the time and seemingly-vegetative 99% of the time is not PVS. The notion that a single 45-minute exam is sufficient to judge someone PVS is absurd, especially if there's any possibility the subject was sedated by someone who wanted a PVS diagnosis.
In fact, an absolutely solid PVS diagnosis is fundamentally impossible because it would mean that there exists no type of stimulus that would produce any type of cognitive response. Given the wide range of possible stimuli and responses, there is no plausible way to test them all. So what a PVS diagnosis usually means is that a doctor has given up looking.
I'm well aware of that.
Read the following, particularly the complete report of Dr. William Hammesfahr.
Terri Schindler Schiavo and the Cardiac Arrest/Heart Attack Lies
I wouldn't let that man fix my car - nor would anyone else I've talked to. Don't get me started on the nonsense he's spewed.
Suffice it to say his comments under oath were at least more careful.
Bravo Sierra, and you don't even bother to ping the person you accuse of lying.
Don't recall accusation of lying, bub.
Provide a link to the particular post then.
And BTW, thanks for calling my attention to that one. I was in grave error ... it was Trantulas who kept insisting that Terri is brain dead and thus would not recognize pain. My apologies to TT ... and my thanks to you BigSky. [Slinks away with tail firmly between the proverbial legs and face plenty red now ...]
You've had a long day, this particular person you've now cited (Trantula), doesn't exist.
I think he meant it might as well be lying unless one is sure she can't feel pain.
It upsets me so badly because my position has been the opposite - we should never assume that. It's what spurred my discussion with supercat - I get upset at those who don't want her sedated.
My goodness, I've been dehydrate just a part of what she will be - I can't bear to think of her feeling even that much pain.
And I must freepmail 3 people a day telling them she isn't brain dead.
Yes, that will be the reason for the push for lethal injections already now available in the state of Oregon. What a pandora's box your thinking has opened.
Only difference is, those people want to be euthanized. Kervorkian is allowing people to have a peaceful death, he's not forcing people to have a peaceful death.
OK. Apology accepted.
But you owe me, buster. You made me use 4 exclamation points and get upset. I hate that. lol
Sheesh.
I'm ready to go back to the immigration threads where things are relatively peaceful.
(Thank you for defending my honor, BigSky)
You're welcome.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1364628/posts?page=145#145 ... gone already?
Uh, that would be the following; #145 was my lashing out at it: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1364628/posts?page=125#125
I do indeed owe you, big time!
I took care of both my mom and dad at home, until they died...mom and dad wished for no measures to be taken to prolong them...they were extremely adamant about this...
It was difficult as you say, to watch them as they went through the dying process...dad had cancer, and ate very little in his last days, tho he drank considerably more than he ate...
Mom died in the last stage of Alzheimers...I offered her food and drink 6 times a day...sometimes she would take it, more often she would refuse it, ,and I never forced her...
There were pressures put on me, by dads doc at the time, and moms visiting nurse at the time, to have them put on tube feedings...but my parents greatly feared this, and had made me know, long before they were ill, that they wished no tube to feed them...I had to make the doc and nurse understand, that by inserting a feeding tube, they were actually assaulting my parents, who want no such tube...
Yes, tube feeding would have prolonged both my mom and my dad...but it would have prolonged their suffering....dad was in extreme pain physically, and mom had several problems other then her Alzheimers....they lived long happy lives, and wished that I, their daughter, would respect their own wishes for their dying process...
And I did respect it...but as you say, it was difficult...its never easy watching a parent die...
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