Posted on 07/09/2006 7:59:40 PM PDT by churchillbuff
The case of Terry Wallis, an Arkansas man who suddenly woke up from a 19-year long coma, has raised new questions about the death of Terri Schiavo, who died last year after a court ordered her feeding tube to be disconnected.
Wallis fell into his coma in 1984 after a serious car accident. At the time he was 19.
According to LifeSiteNews.com, the doctors who have studied the Wallis case have published their initial conclusions in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The report explains that during the car accident Walls’ nerve connections in his brain were severed, putting him in a minimally conscious state and rendering him a quadriplegic. A young husband with a newborn child, Wallis was considered a hopeless case, especially considering that his family could not pay the $120,000 needed to consult a neurologist about any possibility of recovery. However in 2003, during one of the regular visits of his mother, who had regularly visited him at the Rehabilitation Centre in Mountain View, Arkansas, he made what seemed a sudden recovery, and spoke “mom”, his first word in 19 years.
Imaging expert Henning Voss and neurologist Nicholas Schiff of the Weil Medical College at the University of Cornell believe Wallis’ brain “rewired itself” and slowly re-grew the nerve connections that were devastated as a result of his accident.
Doctors at Wallis’ rehabilitation center believe the recovery is due in part to visits by his family, which could have acted as a kind of mental therapy for his recovery.
“He now seems exactly like his old self,” says Jerry Wallis, Terry’s father. Over the 19 years of Terry’s coma, both Jerry and his mother Angilee had doubts at some time or another about whether or not it was better for Terry to be alive. However, now both are glad they never caved into those doubts. Since then they have seen their son make strides in his recovery with the ambition of walking for his daughter. “He very often tells us how glad he is to be alive,” says Terry’s father.
LifeSiteNews.com noted that the Wallis case stands in stark opposition to the case of Terri Schindler-Schiavo, who received no therapy from her philandering husband after her 1990 collapse. She was instead dehydrated to death by court order in March 2005. Although some doctors claim that Terri Schiavo could not have made Terry Wallis’ recovery since she was in a persistent vegetative state (PVS), witnesses such as former nurse Carla Iyer maintained that with therapy, Schiavo, who said words like, “mommy, help me”, could have indeed recovered over time.
In a BBC interview Dr. Ralf Clauss, a scientist in nuclear medicine and one of the drug researchers, stated that, “For every damaged area of the brain, there is a dormant area, which seems to be a sort of protective mechanism. The damaged tissue is dead, there’s nothing you can do,” he explained. “But it’s the dormant areas which ‘wake up’.”
Am I following you here? Your wife will use her revolver to put you out of "your misery". So she's willing to risk spending the rest of her life in prison? C'mon!
Bishop Lynch (St. Petersburg, FL) took an anti-life stance in this case.
To add insult to injury, Michael Schiavo and Jody Centonze were married in a Catholic Church, once he won his case to have Terry, his wife, starved to death.
My, my. What to think.
I would toss it up to a bad priest. There are bad people in every profession.
???
Investigate all the people the public (taxpayers) supports and decide which of them should be put to death. The amount of money saved would be astronomical..BUT...would the government find ways to use it...or put it right back in the pockets of those who earned it?
BTW, I am not proposing this as an answer.
I seem to remember reading that Michael Schiavo and his ghoulish attorney had her placed on the "public tit" while they were still wrangling over the trust fund.
However, the Schindler family members wanted to bring her home and care for her at their own expense, IIRC. Not to mention that there were offers pouring in from all over the place from people who wanted to donate time, money, and therapy expertise. So, if she had been allowed to go home and live with her family, she would most likely then have been OFF the "public tit."
FYI, there were several "experts" (such as neurologists, therapists, etc.) who were convinced that she could have made at least a partial recovery. Her brain was damaged, but it was NOT "lunchmeat." Sheesh.
I hear you, and I'm not crazy about being taxed to pay for other people's medical care either... as a matter of fact, after my taxes get paid, I can't afford ANY medical care, for either my cats or me.
But in the Schiavo case, letting her live would have had the practical upside of getting her off the "public tit." And I'm sure there could have been found a couple of thousand people who were willing to donate even $5.00 per month toward Terri's upkeep (I would have scraped up the money to donate a few bucks per month for the rest of her life).
As far as I know, none of the experts who believed that she could have made a partial recovery, changed their opinion after the autopsy. FWIW, from what I read, the autopsy was not conclusive about what her actual function was.
And it's just plain hyperbole to claim that large parts of her brain were either no longer there or just liquefied. Atrophied, probably, but not "liquefied."
>> A major portion of Terri's cerebal cortex had disintegrated
See post 94 by Polybius.
Being a Catholic priest is not a "profession".
Being a Catholic priest is not a "profession".
Oh goodness. You knew what I meant. I have been Catholic since birth.
Being a Catholic priest is not a "profession".
Oh goodness. You knew what I meant. I have been Catholic since birth.
If you'd been starved and dehydrated to death for two weeks I would betcha you'd be "unrecogizable" too!
What do you think two weeks of starvation does to the brain? Let me starve and dehydate you for two weeks and let's see what you look like.
What that "relative preservation" means is that some networking in Terri's brain was intact. She had some cortical function. No one can say how much, but some.
Diagnosis of mental status must be done clinically, i.e., by testing the living patient. Even then, diagnosis has a high error rate and can be controversial. You cannot diagnose PVS, MCS or Locked in Syndrome at all post mortem.
By my scientific survey, 100% of the liberal reporters in America got it wrong reporting Terri's autopsy :-)
That sounds a lot like "Oh, well. What are you gonna do?" Obviously the Pope chose to do nothing. The Catholic Church does not benefit from shielding bad priests, IMO.
Thank you churchillbuff.
"A major portion of Terri's cerebal cortex had disintegrated. There was empty space were most of her Cerebellum used to be. X-rays of her brain showed this."
Sorry, Charlie, top neurologists and neuroradiologists explain that there is often not a correlation between how "bad" a brain scan looks and the clinical state of the person. People with scans just like Terri's have had a remarkable degree of awareness and function. She was murdered.
Jeb Bush knew, or should have known, the whole background of this case. The public had access to a lot of information, and the actual facts, by themselves, created a legitimate suspicion that something was not on the up-and-up here.
Jeb Bush should have seen this and used his executive position as the Governor of Florida to intervene. What cause matters more than someone's life?
And I agree...the legislature would not have impeached him. BUT, if they did, he would survive, knowing what he did what was right.
Frankly, I doubt any of them have lost a moment's sleep: Schiavo, Greer, Centonze, Bush, Bishop Lynch, the Grim Reaper Felos, and all who took a role in ending Terri's life
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