Posted on 03/29/2005 9:45:05 PM PST by flixxx
On 03/04/1986, I was the victim of a BRUTAL ASSAULT, leaving me partially blind, and needing various surgeries, e.g. repairs of my orbit floor, deviated nasal septum, rotator cuff, and MCL/LCL/ACL reconstruction. I was like Humpty Dumpty!
I was having EXTREME pain below my injured eye, in the sinus cavity. My eye surgeon ordered X-rays, CAT scans and an MRI. From those and the radiologist's diagnosis of them, my eye surgeon concluded that there was nothing remarkable enough to go in and do surgery. He said he would not do surgery because there was no reason to go in.
I kept INSISTING that I don't know WHAT is wrong, but that SOMETHING was VERY wrong and that it is EXTREMELY painful. When I continued to DEMAND that he go in, he finally told me that against his better judgment, he would go ahead and do the surgery, but that the scans just DIDN'T call for it.
As I came out of anesthesia, he told me that it was the WORST blowout fracture he had EVER seen and that it was really WAS necessary to go in. There were very small pieces of mica-like chips of the broken orbit floor which were GOUGING into my sinus tissue...and hence, the HORRIBLE pain.
The point of my story is that even with THREE different types of diagnostic tools, the pre-surgery diagnosic "FACTS" were TOTALLY WRONG.
Am I missing something? The parents couldn't get food in the room how can they feed her?
okay, I said it...Please don't ever make me say it again. I feel badly enough already.
that's gotta hurt... :)
I'm not up on html. My post was meant to be ironic, sarcastic. I agree with you.
You'll never know my pain.
DK
In that case, Dr. CBB has a challenge for you. He is offering $100,000 to your $25,000 if you can read CT 100 scans with as much as 60% accuracy.
I don't care if she is so braindead that she voted for Clinton/Gore/Kerry, give her some water and Jello. Oh wait, she might choke to death.
Thanks T'wit
A better clip may be:
I've watched a steady stream of neurologists, bioethicists, and neurologist/bioethicists from Columbia, Cornell, and NYU interviewed all week on Fox and CNN and MSNBC. They all said about the same thing, that Terri's CT scan was "the worst they'd ever seen"or "as bad as they've ever seen."
Here's the problem with these experts: THEY DON'T INTERPRET CT SCANS OF THE BRAIN. RADIOLOGISTS DO.
*Oh*
You see, a neurologist will look at the CT of the brain of one of his patients, but this is entirely different from interpreting CT's of the brain de novo, for a living, every day, without knowing the diagnosis and most times without a good history. In addition, whereas I heard Dr. Crandon say he's "seen" a thousand brain CT's... well I've interpreted over 10,000 brain CT's. There's a big difference.
When I look at a CT of the brain every case is a new mystery about a patient Idon't know. I must look at the images, come to a conclusion, dictate my findings and report a conclusion. This becomes a part of the official legal record for which I am liable. I bill Medicare for a CT interpretation and am paid for this service.
Neurologists do not do this. They don't go on the record, alone, in written legal documents stating their impressions about CT's of the brain. The neurologist doesn't get sued for making a mistake on an opinion of a CT of the brain THE RADIOLOGIST DOES.
A neurologist has no where near this type of practical experience. And their cases are skewed according to where they practice and what their specialty is. Now, some of my best friends and some of the smartest docs I eve4r met are neurologists, but that doesn't change my observation that most neurologists I've met, in my experience, show an incomplete grasp of the nuances involved in image interpretation.
I have seen several neurologists -- in the printed media and on television -- put up a Representative CT of the brain of a normal 25 year old female and contrast this with Terri Schiavo's CT. This is a totally spurious comparison. No one is disputing that Terri Schiavo does not have the CT of a 25 year old female.
What I'm saying is that Terri Schiavo's CT could be the brain of an eighty or ninety year old person who is not in a vegetative state. THOSE are the CT scans we should be showing next to Schiavo's, because in THAT case you would see similar atrophy and a brain much closer to Schiavo's.
http://codeblueblog.blogs.com/codeblueblog/
This is a very sad time. A court agreed to a hearing, when Terri is a heartbeat from death. She may not survive the night, much less the outcome.
This is about a week too late. The hearing should have been convened immediately if they were serious. They aren't.
DK
Sure they do. Especially Michael Schiavo. If Terri dies, he inherits her estate. He could make millions on book and movie rights to her life story. I've seen at least one news story that he's already negotiating a megabuck deal.
If he had just let her go instead of killing her, he would have lost those rights and the money.
So in your in opinion it's proper to have decisions made for her by a man who's interests lie with his girlfriend and the 2 kids he's had by her, and to starve her to death?
"Cranford is the assistant chief of neurology at the Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis as well as a faculty member at the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics."
Enough said..This is all the credential I need to see.
"Who is the "respected neurologist" to whom you refer?
Certainly not the notorious euthanasia champion Dr. Ronald Cranford! This is a man who most certainly has a horse in this race, and cannot possibly give an unbiased diagnosis or evaluation."
He is up to his ears in "biomedical ethics." Translation--Euthanasia salesman.
No one, no one, with "ethicist" in his title is to be trusted with a hot stove. "Bioethicists" should be driven off with garlic, wooden stakes and a shotgun.
"Left: CT scan of a normal 25 year old; Right, Terri Schiavo's most recent scan."
Medical records can be tampered with..We do not know this is her scan..A second and third opinion from neutral experts have not been done. And, anyway, we constantly learn new things about the brain that we did not know before..For example, we used to think that once injured, brain cells would never be rejuvenated..Now, we know that is not true. How do we know that we, being confined to a bed in a dark room for 15 years, being denied any kind of therapy even the brushing of our teeth, would not have our body organs, even our brains, suffer damage? We know that our bones lose their calcium and our muscles atrophy when we are immobile..Why not severe losses in every organ? Terri Schiavo has proved the past 12 days to be exceptional strong considering the confinement forced upon her by her loving husband.
No one, no one, with "ethicist" in his title is to be trusted with a hot stove. "Bioethicists" should be driven off with garlic, wooden stakes and a shotgun.
Thats the first thing to make me laugh in a while.
Thanks.
DK
That's what I thought. Anoxic anoxia does that. They don't know why, but sometimes after several months that happens i.e., atrophy of the white matter (holoencephalopathy). Clearly this is not hydranencephalopathy, but its not good whatever it is. Furthermore, it appears that significant edema is present, as the cortex is swollen completely to the surface of the skull, and the frontal cortex embolus certainly can't be any good either. One can clearly see the thalmic implant in the scan also. Based on that scan, and MRI would be pointless, and attempting to remove the thalmic implant could kill her outright (as all surgery has statistical probabilities of fatality).
The lights may be on, but nobody's home.
I really feel sorry for Michael. Nobody has any idea what he went through with her in the years before she had her cardiac infarction and went into a coma. Only people who've actually lived and had to deal with somebody who had an eating disorder can understand what that entails. Karen Carpenter killed herself the same way. Bulemia is bad enough, but anorexic patients over time destroy muscle tissue, and the affect on heart tissue is absolutely devastating.
If prior to having a cardiac infarction, she was diagnosed with terminal heart pathology, her anorexia would've precluded her from being considered to be a viable organ receipiant. The transplant team review board would have refused to put her on the UNOS waiting list on the basis of a contraindictory psychological condition.
The thick white outline is not her skull, it the cerebral cortex. The skull is clearly visible as the thin white line that circumnavigates the brain. This is most evident in #16. The gap between the skull and the cerebral cortex is composed of the of venous sinus of dura mater and subarachnoid space. I don't think the arachnoid menenge is going to show up on a CT scan.
The nurse that was on record also testified that her notes would be gone the next day, after recording her observations. How convenient.
I saw that interview and this doctor was persuasive and reasonable. But his input is just one piece of the puzzle.
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