my mother also had a brain aneurysm. First they told us to prepare for her death. Then they told us she would be severely disabled. Then they talked to us like she wasn't there.
My mother made a 99% recovery.
I don't expect Terri to make a 99% recovery, or even a 25% recovery. It's been too long. But I do know that doctors sometimes don't know what the hell they are talking about. They don't know what is INSIDE someone's head.
I have a son on the autistic spectrum. When he was seven, a pediatric neurologist heard him make jokes, discourse about the solar system and solar fusion, and then the good doctor told me my son was just repeating stuff by rote; no original thoughts; and when he reached fourth grade he would hit a wall and stop progressing intellectually. My son is now sixteen and he has his difficulties, but he is both brilliant and original.
The whole PVS thing is garbage. A brain-damaged person can laugh, cry, groan, flinch, focus, even utter isolated words, and it is all reflex, no awareness. There is no way the brain-damaged person with intermittant awareness and inconsistant responses could ever prove anything to these know-it-alls.
When my son was 2 weeks old, I knew something was wrong. Took the doctors two years to see it. So when Terri's parents look at her and see response, I'm going to trust them and not the doctors.
"They" will tell you lots of things. "You" can tell them they're crazy and go ahead doing what you know is right. People need to know this.