Posted on 06/19/2005 6:04:50 PM PDT by wagglebee
Dr. William Hammesfahr, nominated for a Nobel Prize for his work in Medicine, has been recognized by agents for Medicare, the federal government, and others for new approaches to helping the brain injured.
Dr. Hammesfahr has been identified in helping patients with chronic brain injuries from many causes actually leave long term disability, and return to work.
Dr. Hammesfahr was identified the first physician to restore deficits caused by stroke.
Dr. Hammesfahr has released the following statement in response to the autopsy report on Terri Schindler Schiavo:
We have seen a lot on the autopsy of Terri Schindler Schiavo in recent days, that I feel needs to be addressed. To ignore these comments will allow future 'Terri Schiavo's' to die needlessly after the wishes of clinicians and family are ignored.
Considering that there were so many physicians and therapists who were willing to step forward to treat Terri Schiavo, from university based practitioners to those in private practice, it clearly shows that the mainstream medical community across the board, those involved in treating patients, knew that they could help Terri.
The record must be set straight. As we noted in the press, there was no heart attack, or evident reason for this to have happened (and certainly not of Terri's making).
Unlike the constant drumbeat from the husband, his attorneys, and his doctors, the brain tissue was not dissolved, with a head of just spinal fluid. In fact, large areas were "relatively preserved."
The purpose of the therapies offered by so many, from major universities, brain injury centers, and from private practice physicians, is to improve and restore quality of life, and function, which the mainstream medical community clearly tried to get to her.
I have had a chance to look at Dr. Nelson's analysis of the brain tissue, and essentially, as a clinician, these are my thoughts.
The autopsy results confirmed my opinion and Dr. Maxfield's opinions, that the frontal areas of the brains, the areas that deal with awareness and cognition were relatively intact. To use Dr. Nelson's words, "relatively preserved." In fact, the relay areas from the frontal and front temporal regions of the brain, to the spinal cord and the brain stem, by way of the basal ganglia, were preserved, thus the evident responses which she was able to express to her family and to the clinicians seeing her or viewing her videotape. The Spect scan confirmed these areas were functional and not scar tissue, and that was apparently also confirmed on Dr. Nelson's review of the slides. Dr. Maxfield's estimates of retained brain weight were apparently accurate, although there may have been some loss of brain weight due to the last two weeks of dehydration.
Dr. Maxfield and myself both emphasized that she was a woman trapped in her body, similar to a child with cerebral palsy, and that was born out by the autopsy, showing greater injury in the motor and visual centers of the brain. Obviously, the pathologists comments that she could not see were not borne out by reality, and thus his assessment must represent sampling error. The videotapes clearly showed her seeing, and even Dr. Cranfoed, for the husband, commented to her that, when she could see the balloon, she could follow it with her eyes as per his request.
That she could not swallow was obviously not borne out by the reality that she was swallowing her saliva, about 1.5 liters per day of liquid, and the clinical swallowing tests done by Dr. Young and Dr. Carpenter. Thus, there appears to be some limitations to the clinical accuracy of an autopsy in evaluating function.
With respect to the issue of trauma, that certainly does not appear to be answered adequately. Some of the types of trauma that are suspected were not adequately evaluated in this assessment. Interestingly, both myself and at least one neurologist for the husband testified to the presence of neck injuries. The issue of a forensic evaluation for trauma, is highly specialized. Hence the wish of the family to have observers which was refused by the examiner.
Ultimately, based on the clinical evidence and the autopsy results, an aware woman was killed.
s/Dr. W. Hammesfahr
[Dr. Hammesfahr was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology in 1999. The Nomination was for work started in 1994. In 2000, this work resulted in approval for the first patent in history granted for the treatment of neurological diseases including coma, stroke, brain injury, cerebral palsy, hypoxic injuries and other neurovascular disorders with medications that restore blood flow to the brain. It was extended to treat successfully disabilities including ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, Tourette's and Autism as well as behaviorally and emotionally disturbed children, seizures and severe migraines.]
Which the autopsy does not support.
Can an autopsy tell whether someone suffered cardiac arrest, which is the heart stops beating? I think not.
It CAN detect a heart attack, which none of her attending physicians ever said she had.
How many times does this need to be repeated? Her attending physicians, who cared for her in the early hours after her collapse, said she had cardiac arrest, severely low potassium (3.7 is low enough to make you 2x more likely to have cardiac arrest (which is not a heart attack) hers was a 2.0, she was malnourished and low in calcium.
Now I don't know, and neither do the doctors, of anything that makes an otherwise healthy young woman malnourished and so low in potassium that they suffered cardiac arrest except bulimia.
But again, an autopsy is not able to detect that someone suffered cardiac arrest. But attending physicians, and the ambulance staff on hand, all said that's what happened.
I hope the post I just scrolled past upthread referring to different levels of blindness sees your point. They are missing the fact that that part of her brain was g-o-n-e. This was not some opthalmological phenomenon that corrective lenses could address in "an otherwise healthy young woman" as the prattling goes.
So are you saying that as long as someone said something in a courtroom that it is golden? Either you believe Michael or you don't believe Michael it is really that simple. The fact that things were stated in a court room does not make them always the truth. You may believe that Michael truly wanted to do what was best for Terri others believe that he did not. Nothing that happened in the courtroom really sheds any light on the truth behind the entire sad story. The truth is really only known by Michael, and you and I and even the judge are only guessing what we think is the truth. So don't delude yourself into thinking that you know things you really don't know and claim them to be "truths".
This obstinate rejection of rational and fact-based discussion is a reason so many smart posters have left or aren't around as much.
Your efforts are truly appreciated.
Did you even read the autopsy?
It CAN detect a heart attack, which none of her attending physicians ever said she had.
I never said she did.
Her attending physicians, who cared for her in the early hours after her collapse, said she had cardiac arrest, severely low potassium (3.7 is low enough to make you 2x more likely to have cardiac arrest (which is not a heart attack) hers was a 2.0, she was malnourished and low in calcium.
I suggest you actually read the autopsy.
Now I don't know, and neither do the doctors, of anything that makes an otherwise healthy young woman malnourished and so low in potassium that they suffered cardiac arrest except bulimia.
Again, I suggest you read the autopsy. One of the reasons Thogmartin left the cause of death open is because he said that bulimia didn't look likely. He could find no definative cause for her collapse.
Bone scan: The Schindler atty admitted the bone scan had been available to them and did not even try to say it was kept secret: http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/trialctorder11-02-scan.pdf
The Schindler's spokesperson, atty Pat Anderson, and others (family and Hammesfahr) began saying things like, "We know she did not have a Heart attack as we were lead to believe." Hammesfahr and the siblings repeat this misleading statement to this day, with him embellishing it further, though as a physician, he knows she did indeed have a cardiac arrest, and that there is a difference between the two. You don't need cardiac enzymes to diagnose cardiac arrest - you see it in progress - as they did. They defibbed her >7 times. "Cardiac arrest" is written all over her chart.
You repeatedly make statements that you can't prove. Show me the study to support your referenced statment.
So you think all those doctors and neurologists and nurses and EMG's are lying? Okey doke then. We have nothing further to discuss.
A conspiracy that broad is something I don't buy into.
As are yours.
How do you connect the above with the outcome of Terri being killed? None of what you mentioned had any bearing on the court order to kill Terri. Are you saying that Terri's parents conspired to get Michael to ask judge Greer to kill Terri? Makes no sense.
I need a study now to prove my point? LOL
How about letters to the editor in lots of newspapers? How about people in my neighborhood, women my age, who were seeing ultrasounds of their to be born grandchildren who were deciding, it's not a blob. But who have seen the antics outside that hospice by the radical right and Randall Terry and are disgusted.
How about people on this very forum who say the exact same thing?
There have been newspaper articles covering this very topic.
but the jury awarded MS and Terri millions of dollars in the lawsuit against the doctors who hadn't diagnosed her low potassium levels and then they reduced the $$ because of Terri's responsibility in causing her cardiac arrest.
And:
Now I don't know, and neither do the doctors, of anything that makes an otherwise healthy young woman malnourished and so low in potassium that they suffered cardiac arrest except bulimia.
There's no proof of any kind of bulimia. The autopsy calls that diagnosis into question.
No, but it's a nice place to start for reference instead of making it up as you go.
Either you believe Michael or you don't believe Michael it is really that simple.
No, because others like medical personnel and even the Schindlers' statements enter into the equation. The examination done at the time of her collapse looked for signs of foul play, for example and found none. That does not conclusively exclude it, but it does exclude many of the allegations that have been made.
The fact that things were stated in a court room does not make them always the truth.
No kidding. That's why it is tested under cross-examination and competing witnesses, etc.
Again, ignoring the state of the documented record in favor of speculation is not the better path to take.
Nothing that happened in the courtroom really sheds any light on the truth behind the entire sad story.
Whatever floats your boat. Just don't expect most to take you seriously.
The truth is really only known by Michael, and you and I and even the judge are only guessing what we think is the truth. So don't delude yourself into thinking that you know things you really don't know and claim them to be "truths".
You're obsessed with the idea that "the truth (hint hint!) is only known by Michael". I don't think you'll find where I claimed to know anything that you are alluding to except irrefutable facts so stop with leaping to wild conclusions.
Yes.
There have been newspaper articles covering this very topic.
And all Freepers know how honest the press is.
Cardiac arrest wasn't in my statement and then you linked my statement and it WAS in there? Whew.
And there's no proof it wasn't bulimia. Doctors have come to no other diagnosis possible why an otherwise healthy woman would have the things wrong with her (malnourished and low potassium, extreme weight loss, stopped having her periods, etc.) except bulimia.
But we have been round and round this. It's not a bulimia lie. A lawsuit was won based on what you call a lie. LOL
It's too nice a day to argue with someone who has mistated what I said and what the records say. I'm headed to my pool to enjoy the day.
It is. Read the actual autopsy.
It's too nice a day to argue with someone who has mistated what I said and what the records say. I'm headed to my pool to enjoy the day.
Cute. If you can't prove a statement, flee the scene. I didn't misstate, you did. You just didn't expect to be called on it.
Ok thanks for that link. If the Shindlers lied on TV then that would not be right. I did not see the TV show - but will take your word for it.
Great explanation.
They just do not care to hear what we are saying and therefore have the "blank look".
It really is not hard if they would just quit defending the killing and look at what is happening to society with the laws being written and their purpose. And, look at what it allowed the court to do - kill a non-dying woman against the wishes of part of the family.
Of course, we too have to look at "why" they are on the otherside. And, it could be that they know full well what we are talking about and, instead of agreeing, want what Felos and the euthanasists are promoting.
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