Posted on 03/28/2005 6:41:56 PM PST by Former Military Chick
PINELLAS PARK - 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 surrounding the hospice where Terri Schiavo lies 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 metal-detecting search.
The delays lasted three to four minutes - the last minutes 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 in addition to Schiavo, whose parents have been desperately trying to have her feeding tube reinserted. Dozens of protesters have arrived from around the nation since the tube was removed March 18; at least 22 have been arrested, prompting a police barricade around the facility and unprecedented security measures.
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 the facility.
"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. "And unfortunately, that is the price you have to pay in a free society."
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. Messages compare Michael Schiavo to the likes of Scott Peterson, convicted of killing his wife and unborn child in California, and John Evander Couey, who has been arrested on charges of kidnapping and murdering a 9-year-old girl in Homosassa.
I will answer, as well as I can, your questions posed in post #53....I have worked in nursing homes for many, many years, and have asked primarily to work with the Alzheimers patients, as I just have a real love for them, and great sympathy for the families dealing with their Alzheimers love one(my own mother died at home, with Alzheimers, so I just really do feel a connection with these particular patients and their families)....
Most of the Alzheimers patients in the early stages, are well able to feed themselves, and we escort these patients to the dining room, where they are served a tray, they sit at small tables of 4 where they are able to converse with the other patients...those who seem to be more in middle stages of Alzheimers, can eat, but are not able to do it for themselves...so we have to feed them...usually there are four Alzheimers patients to a table, with a nurse or an aide caring for two patients at once, feeding one, then the other...most of these patients will eat and drink, but only with direct assistance...
Those Alzheimers patients in later or last stages are the most difficult to feed...many of them are on pureed food, simply because they resist completely if you try to feed them regular food...but they do seem to be more willing to eat pureed food...
And in the very last stages, we do make all attempts to feed them, but we NEVER force them to eat...forcing them, would probably result in aspirate pneumonia...so they brought to the dining room, if they can be, and offered food...if they refuse to eat anything at any one meal, attempts are made at the next meal, and the meal after that, and so on...they are encouraged to eat, for three meals a day, and often encouraged to take the twice daily offered snacks...they may refuse to eat one or two meals, and then will willingly eat the third meal of the day...there is great variance...
All the Alzheimers patients have a special chart provided in the dining room...and every patient is charted on for every meal...whether they ate anything, how much they ate of everything on their tray, whether they refused to eat, what they refused to eat...it is all charted and kept track off...they are also weighed at least once a week...
Strict attention is paid to their weight gain, their weight loss, and their food and fluid intake...
When a patient continuously refuses to eat, the family is informed...any change in weight(allowing for normal variance) is noted, and the family is informed of this...
All families are made aware of having a feeding tube put in...My own personal experience has been, that most families, that have an Alzheimers patient in the last stages, who refuses to eat or drink, rarely request the feeding tube...there are some who do request the feeding tube, and their Alzheimers love one has one put in, and they receive their nutrition this way...I have never seen a feeding tube removed once it was put in...
Hope this provides some small answers to your post...
but of course what you see on TV magnifys what is happening.....the majority of America by 70% or so agrees that the husband should decide.....just watching cable or FR or blogs, you'd think the world is coming to an end....it isn't except for poor Terri
In the previous post you talk of polls and then you talk of principles.Which one do you go by? It can't be both. POlls are irrelevant in this case. Just like they would have been irrelevant in the 60's in the south regarding civil rights for black minorities.
A moral choice had to be made by the government as to whether what was going on in the south was going against the constitution, just like now,is the executon of Terri SChiavo against the constitution.
Finally! Somebody else who's familiar with Alzheimer's disease. For those of you who aren't familiar with the disease, please take note of the next to the last paragraph in this article which contains a quote from a spokesman for the Alzheimer's Association.
Wednesday October 13 1:14 AM ET
By BRENDA C. COLEMAN AP Medical Writer
FEEDING TUBES HARM
The authors found no evidence to support the reasons usually given for using the tubes: preventing early death from malnutrition, averting lung infections caused by inhaling food, and relieving suffering.
CHICAGO (AP) - In a study that could have broad implications for millions of Americans, researchers reported today that feeding tubes for mentally incapacitated patients may instead cause problems they are meant to prevent, including lung infections and early death.
The study may prove important for the more than 4 million Americans who have Alzheimer's disease and those who care for them. The illness, the leading cause of dementia, is expected to become more widespread as the U.S. population ages.
Unlike feeding tubes, careful hand-feeding lets demented patients live as long as other nursing home patients, the authors concluded.
That runs contrary to some nursing home practices and Medicare reimbursement guidelines for demented patients, Alzheimer's advocates say.
``The widespread practice of tube feeding should be carefully reconsidered, and we believe that for severely demented patients, the practice should be discouraged,'' wrote the study's lead author, Dr. Thomas Finucane, an associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University.
The authors reviewed more than six dozen medical studies about feeding tubes published over the past 33 years. Their findings appear in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.
Feeding tubes, typically inserted through the nose or abdomen, are used in roughly 10 percent of dementia patients in nursing homes nationwide, though the practice varies widely, said Dr. Colleen Christmas, a co-author.
The authors found no evidence to support the reasons usually given for using the tubes: preventing early death from malnutrition, averting lung infections caused by inhaling food, and relieving suffering.
On the contrary, tube-fed patients typically died within a year, got higher rates of lung infections and became so agitated that they required restraint or sedation, studies showed.
Researchers, however, found little data that directly compared tube-feeding to hand-feeding.
Experts on dementia who were not involved in the review praised it as an important contribution toward overturning misconceptions.
``The benefit of this article is that it's starting to really question this almost knee-jerk response: `The person's not eating, therefore we must institute tube-feeding,''' said Dr. Robert McCann, chief of medicine at Highland Hospital, an affiliate of the University of Rochester in Rochester, N.Y.
He supported the conclusion that hand-feeding is a better alternative than feeding tubes, even if it is more time-consuming.
Advanced dementia is a terminal illness that robs people of mental abilities such as the memory of how to chew and swallow, and some suggest it is better to let such a patient go without food or water.
``Our position is that it is ethically permissible at any point, but particularly in the advanced stages of dementia, to withdraw or withhold artificial food and hydration,'' said Stephen McConnell of the Alzheimer's Association. He said the policy dates back eight or nine years.
A nursing home industry spokesman said doctors, not administrators, decide who gets a feeding tube. Also, it is often requested by a patient's family, said Tom Burke, a spokesman for the American Health Care Association, which represents 11,000 nursing homes nationwide.
With nearly 5 million sufferer's of Alzheimer's disease in the U.S., what are the odds that someone else's loved one, in the same hospice with Terri, is also dying of hunger & thirst? All these protesters have done is heap burning coals on the heads of people who are only trying to do what is right & loving & merciful for their family member. To be made to walk the gauntlet of people who would call them murderers is the height of inhumanity.
I doubt there will ever be another trial in America again, where a family attempts to save an incapacitated loved one from being starved and dehydrated to death, after what has happened in this case.
We have all "learned" from the Schiavo case that no matter how much publicity you get, no matter how much reasonable doubt there is, no matter how many appeals you make, and no matter how many supporters you have, that no one, not the governor, congress, the president, or the pope can do a thing to help you.
Most people won't even bother trying to put up a fight after this.
The elderly are declared terminally ill (some whether true or not) and moved to the hospice to die.
There are complaints about this hospice, that mice run quite freely.
The people in the hospice (in general) are those whose families basically have given up on them anyway. Why would they be concerned?
What am I missing?
Bingo.
Does that mean it might make them think twice before starving a loved one to death, if that loved one never gave anyone permission to do it?
And how much do you pay in tax on your tea today?
That is not the point. Laws were enacted according to their constitution,they were legal but immoral. The courts were enforcing legal but immoral laws and the world found them guilty.
Please consider this: what standing will the US have in the world now to condemn the execution of innocent political dissenters.
Somebody even suggested that this would make it difficult to condemn beheadingd as cruel and unusual punishment compared to starvation and dehydration.
WHAT?? Ok, so because the other folks don't have scumbag husband, the way Terri has, the suffering that Terri has to endure should "spread around a bit" so that everyone can have a little of it???
That's a really bad arguement, Dave...
I go by principles of course.....I mentioned polls cause someone mentioned that he didn't think the people of Florida supported Jeb.......well polls can show a direction and the majority thinks he has done all he can do..in fact, the Pres approval ratings have gone down 7% in a short time and some speculate it was after this whole fiasco with getting the feds involved.....right or wrong, the people don't think he should have.......that is life outside of cable, FR, the blogs etc
Go look at the way the polls were asked -- words like "persisent vegetative state", "brain dead", "on life support" etc. are being used in the press to push their point of view. On Fox this a.m. Brent from the Media Research Center showed that the MSM/old media was not presenting that there may be another side to the story -- one that may show her to be disabled but not brain dead.
And as hard as is to be believed, I believe that this one judge has incorrectly but consistenly sided with the husband in the face of evidence of very probable abuse of this poor woman and he needs to be removed from the case.
What happened with the courts response to the Federal government's insistence that the Federal Courts review the case surprised me. They decided not to. I think the Feds (executive/legislative branches) went as far as they could have; I don't believe they could have done much more and don't fault President Bush for his stand on this. On the other hand, his brother will bear responsibility for not acting when clear evidence showed the need for an exhaustive investigation into the case from the start (possible complicity by MS in her original accident) to the present (actions by MS in prohibiting rehab, or even quality time in daylight and outdoors).
It is not, check the facts. The law was amended in 1998 to declare food and water by tube a medical treatment.
ping
don't be an alarmist schmelvin.....again, that talk sounds like liberalism and pessimism......this case was ruled on by the law whether you like it or not.....and cases like this go on all the time.......I will admit these are extroidinary circumstances,,but cases will still be heard and if anything, maybe more written instruction and living wills well be attested.....
Judge Greer has faced down the Governor and defied Congress, surely he, with the hospice management, can figure out how to maintain a critical function of the hospice...family access.
I didn't know there was any question this was being done. Much of the anger is that it is being brought to the public's attention.
This hospice is not just taking in Terminally ill patients and allowing them to die a graceful death with care and kindliness.
They have had 150 plus patients MIS-diagnosed as terminally ill, and put them in the hospice with minimal care, and allowed them to 'die naturally' too.
The Dept of Health and Human Services is claiming $14million in scammed Medicare funds must be returned by the Hospice.
It is a deathcamp for profit, and they have been trying to get a precendence so they can expand their 'clientele'.
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