Posted on 03/26/2005 4:40:38 AM PST by tessalu
PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (AP) -- Jennifer Johnson, barefoot and in her pajamas, ran to her grandfather's bedside once a hospice worker said his death was moments away.
She got there - one minute too late.
Johnson said the chaos outside the hospice where Terri Schiavo is dying kept her from saying goodbye. When Johnson arrived, a police officer demanded identification; she had none. And after a hospice employee cleared her, another officer halted her for a search with a metal detector.
The delays lasted three to four minutes - the last of her grandfather's life.
"It's a terrible, extra obstacle to put in front of a family. ... Everything is about Schiavo," Johnson said. "It's all about her and in my family's case, it cost us dearly."
Woodside Hospice has 70 patients besides Schiavo, whose parents are desperately trying to have her feeding tube reconnected. Dozens of protesters have arrived from across the nation since the tube was removed March 18, and at least 15 have been arrested, prompting a police barricade around the facility and unprecedented security.
Family members visiting patients must pass through a police checkpoint to park, then show identification outside the door before another security screening inside. They also must walk by scores of signs decrying Schiavo's "crucifixion," "torture," and "starvation," plus navigate around hordes of media who have been camped outside.
"To have to maneuver through all of this and have a hostile environment outside when all they want is peace and quiet and to enjoy those few days they have left with a loved one is a horror," said Dr. Morton Getz, executive director of Douglas Gardens Hospice in Miami.
Getz said many people with a family member in a hospice have to make the same excruciating decision that courts have made for Schiavo.
"It's causing a lot of grief and questions in their own mind on whether they did the right thing," he said. "It's unconscionable to have a family member to be near the end stages of life and to get there, you have to walk through signs that say, 'Murderer.'"
Most protesters direct their signs and their chants against the courts and Michael Schiavo, Terri's husband, who insists she would not want to be kept alive artificially.
But walking through a hostile environment can only add stress to what's already an emotionally draining situation.
"It probably has the same psychological effect on the residents' families as it does on someone who is walking into an abortion clinic and facing signs and aggressive behavior," said Elizabeth Foley, a Florida International University law professor who specializes in bioethics.
Over the past few days, as Schiavo's parents' attempts to have their daughter's feeding tube reinserted repeatedly failed, signs outside the hospice have grown more desperate. Doctors have said Schiavo would probably die within a week or two of the feeding tube being removed.
Messages compare Michael Schiavo to Scott Peterson, convicted of killing his wife and unborn child in California, and John Evander Couey, who allegedly murdered a 9-year-old girl in Homosassa.
One woman in a wheelchair regularly moves up and down sidewalks in front of the hospice yelling in a megaphone, "We're disabled, not disposable!" and "Terri is a person, not a vegetable!"
Relatives of hospice residents say the clamor - intended to rattle Michael Schiavo - rattles their patience.
"It's a real pain in the neck," said Bill Douglass, whose mother-in-law is a resident. He said the only consolation is that she is "oblivious" to the outside scene.
Police and hospice officials say they are trying to minimize the intrusion on hospice residents and their families, and that the security measures are meant to protect the privacy and safety of all residents, not just Schiavo.
But Johnson, 24, said her 73-year-old grandfather, Thomas Bone, was restricted from moving freely around the hospice grounds during his final days. He died just hours after Terri Schiavo's feeding tube was removed and protests intensified.
"They've taken away hospice's greatest quality, that it is peaceful and serene and quiet and calming - and it's not fair," Johnson said
Yep...When the Moral Majority disbanded and other Religious Right activist groups quieted down and got out of the newspapers, the GOP took off.
This may erase all gains and give Hillary & Co. control of the nation.
If Terri's death is to mean anything, getting a more powerful, more conservative Republican majority would be a great memorial.
Right On!
That's not going to happen. The Schindlers are already laying the blame at Jeb Bush's feet, and I think we can expect many of the people on the Terri threads to follow suit.
It's ugly, it's irrational, but it's also predictable.
But, but, but, I just read an article yesterday that the throngs of protesters that were expected didn't turn out. The orange fencing that was put up was all for naught.
So because people see others protesting the starving of a helpless woman, they are doing to vote democrat???? Give me a break.
Now Terri's disturbing the peace. Shameful.
I have to feel sorry for the gal about her grandfather, but she must've known about the crowds and security there if she'd visited in the past week. She could just as easily gotten a flat, every red light in town, or had the flu that day.
"I would've been FURIOUS if her last days were disturbed in any way by idiots yelling in megaphones or protesters outside."
You expect others to stand quite while a woman is slowly killed? Your statement speaks for itself.
BTW, I'm getting sick of liberals trying to equate this with protests outside an abortion clinic, this is about Terri and we can't let them hijack this issue and turn it into something else.
Besides, it's important that the people see what this death by starvation and dehydration really is. It's not peaceful, it's not painless, it is barbaric. It is NOT the same as taking a person off a ventilator or heart pump or whatever mechanical device. It is STARVATION.
Just think of all the diets you've ever gone on, why do they fail? Because you don't like that feeling of hunger and you are still eating 3 meals a day and drinking all the water you want. Try removing both for a couple of days and see what that feel like.
This is not the country which I served for 23+ years. We used to have Freedom. Today, we must bow to the will of an overbearing government without any compassion. Why must an innocent woman die a slow and painful death when convicted capital criminals are given years prior to their ultimate demise?
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Then maybe the director of the hospice should tell Michael that Terri has to be moved because of her adverse affects on others. Or maybe the doctors there should just give her an injection to speed the process along and then the protesters will go home. We certainly can't have people inconvenienced by one dying woman, can we????
Let's stop calling this place a hospice, which it is not. More accurately, it's a Roach Motel for the Disabled. And even more accurately, it's the Greer and Felos Roach Motel.
They have a LONG record of admitting patients who were NOT terminal (that is, not until they were admitted.)
At the time that Terri Schiavo was unlawfully entered into the Hospice of Florida Suncoast Inc. the federal government was actively trying to recover nearly $15 million paid to the corporation in a fraudulent Medicare payments because patients certified as terminally ill were not in fact terminally ill and ineligible to be admitted to the Hospice under Medicare.
You can read all about it at:
http://www.theempirejournal.com/0311051_schiavo_attorney_felos_n.htm
Mrs. Don-o
Not to keep the protesters away from Terri, to keep the protesters away from the other patients at Woodside-- for the sake of the other families.
No, and why can't you understand what I said? Don't you think the other 70 patients and their families DESERVE some peace and quiet during their last days?
If the protesters want to yell and scream, they can certainly do so - just NOT at a place where people DESERVE some peace before they die.
Just a continuous rant about Terri.
You people are as evil as the ones you vilify and demonize with your hate filled remarks day after day. Christ wasn't about revenge. You are Christians? Highly doubtful. You are false christians, full of self righteious wrath and most of all, HATE.
Stand back and listen to yourselves, you are like a lynch mob, all you need are some torches, a horse and a rope. Kill the judge you chant, good christians that you are, kill the governor if he doesn't break the law for you. Kill MS, you know exactly what kind of person he is so you have the right to kill him, yes?
These people who have loved ones in this hospice are worthy of compassion, I am sure Christ would have compassion for them and does. And to blame the hospice for this whole situation is ludicrous.
No matter how awful you look and how terrible your actions you justify them. You are like liberals now aren't you? Taking your point of view and no others, and to hell with what affect you have on others, even the poor families of the patients in this hospice.Why are Terri's parents worthy of your compassion but the parents and children of the patients in this hospice are not? Shame on you , shame on you all.
A most excellent post and I applaud you for saying it. And better than those of us who tried to say it ever could.
I have been thinking for several days now that if this is the face of Christianity, then Christianity has changed so much that I no longer recognize it.
Thank you for writing that and saying what so many of us are thinking.
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