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.
When people have relatives dying in there, I don't think they are thinking of the sciavo case. I don't blame them for the circus being problematic for them. The protestors are not doing anything there that is going to help their cause or terri's cause.
I agree that the comparison to the Holocaust are so meaningless as to demean the Holocaust itself. Something that must never happen.
As to the pro lifers who have gathered there, their cause is a just one but they have harmed the movement considerably.
Positions have been softening on abortion, in no small part due to technology which permits people to actually see the unborn put their hands over their ears when the doctors clap their hands near the mother's tummy.
But people are very angry that their loved ones in that hospice haven't been able to be taken out in wheelchairs around the grounds, can't sleep because of the bullhorns.
Randall Terry is not a compassionate face to put on this movement and he has harmed it with his tactics and ugly, hate filled rhetoric.
Whether one thinks that Terri is PVS or not, and should have the feeding tube removed or not, there are other people involved and whose lives are equally important in that hospice. And to set back the pro life movement is going to deny life to those who I think the movement was actually making an impact on...the moderates, pro abortion crowd and even some democrats.
Sorry. You're wrong. The protesters are responsible for the harm done to this innocent bystander - no one else.
Is it your wish to have the moderator remove this thread?
Just curious?
When I clicked into the search function I used the exact title of the article, it did not show up, then I said any word and a few showed up but none had the title of the article about the other families which was the reason of my posting, showing what the other family member's of other patients are going through?
There need be no mystery.
She could say.
Look what this reporter is trying to do. She'playing on the righteous indignation of those of us who have had hospice experience and pitting us against those supporters of Terri Schiavo who are there to provide support. Do you really think she cares about the feelings of the families of the other patients in the facility? I'd bet not. She's dividing and conquering. Stirring the pot.
Terri S.'s plight is a higher order problem. The protesters object at the imposition of an "end of life" circumstance upon Terri S. She's being starved to death at the hospice facility. Serenity would be unjust.
The most Bizarro World post, on any thread today!
But the protestors and Randall Terry did make the decision to use bullhorns which have kept people awake at night. That is not the face of compassionate conservatism or Christianity that helps the pro life movement at all.
It's class overreach and it's unfortunate because the movement was making strides among people who I know in the past were staunchly pro choice.
I may have been mistaken about criteria - I went by that I've dealt with a few, and they all told me 6 months. In fact, I know someone who was refused entry because they were not in the 6 month window.
But I am pretty sure Felos was still on the board when Terri was admitted. I wish I could find the reference, but I read his official leavetaking was a few months after he said it was.
If this is true, the fact that he was on the board, Terri was admitted, and then he left, is even more suspicious to my eyes. And I really think Felos' history does indicate this is his "calling" - a "right to die" attorney.
Former Military Chick- I would never ever ever call you a deragatory name like a Nazi. I understand you feel a certain way, I could argue with you all day about it. But I know you aren't a bad person.
I just have to say that Nazi Germany was a process. It was a ten year span. The mass Euthanasia programs started out with one specific incident to blur the lines between right and wrong. In fact Hitler had Euthanasia movies produced to get the general people desentisitised to death. And if you look at abortion, well we have abortion on demand in this country. How did so many people become desentised to abortion? And even some in the pro abortion movement criticise Roe versus Wade because it imposed abortion too fast, and that they should have slowly gotten people used to the idea so that there was no pro life movement.
History repeats itself.
Dang it..what a cruddy story. I feel bad for her, I wish she could have said goodbye to her grandfather. I understand the precautions, but not letting her in is ridiculous. All of the aptients and patients families should be treated the same.
Judge Greer is.
The protesters weren't blocking anyone's way.
"Family members visiting patients must pass through a police checkpoint to park, then show identification outside the door before another security screening inside."
The police, ordered by the judge to make sure that nobody gets through without incredible scrunity, to make sure that nobody sneaks a drop of water in for her, are the ones who caused the problems.
If you were in a "persistent vegetative state" you wouldn't even be aware what was going on in front of the building, would you?
No, the reason I wouldn't want any family member of mine in that place is because there are too many dirty dealings going on there. And, especially because the hospice's board of directors has far too many members who are also affiliated with the euthanasia movement like George Felos (who wrote a fruit-loopy book on the subject) and Mary Labyak (who's also on the board of directors of the right-to-die organization "Partnership For Caring").
That place isn't a hospice, it's a crime scene. I would not want any employee there going anywhere near someone I loved, and I also would not want that hospice getting a single dime from me. I have boycotted other business for far lesser offences than what that establishment is doing to Terri.
Would you starve your mother to dead?
A feeding tube is not the same thing as a respirator.
That's out of line, pal. Take that back to the thread it came from.
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