Haleigh Poutre Almost Victim of Euthanasia, Now Making Good Progress

Life News ^ | September 4, 2006 | Steven Ertelt

[8mmMauser]

Boston, MA (LifeNews.com) -- Haleigh Poutre was the victim of child abuse and was nearly killed via euthanasia when Massachusetts officials gave up on her after she entered a coma. Now Poutre, once termed "brain dead" by doctors, continues to improve and is speaking a few words, her grandmother says.

Sandra Sudyka, the girl's biological grandmother, is no longer allowed to visit her granddaughter and now says she is ready to speak to the media about Poutre's condition.

She told The Republican newspaper that she last saw Poutre on July 18 but indicated she was "doing well."

"She was bright-eyed and smiling. She is always responsive to us," Sudyka explained.

Department of Social Services had asked Sudyka not to talk with reporters about Haleigh, but since they will no longer allow her and Haleigh's biological mother, Allison Avrett, to visit the 12 year-old, she said she's going to talk to the media.

"I decided since they broke the deal, I am going to talk. People should know how well she is doing," Sudyka told the newspaper.

"They don't want people to know how she is doing after they wanted to pull the plug," Sudyka said.

DSS spokeswoman Denise Monteiro declined an interview with The Republican but said that the visiting privileges have been suspended, not terminated.

Haleigh first began speaking in June, her grandmother told the newspaper.

"I was saying to her 'I love you,' and she was trying to say 'love' and it came out as a vibration...'ove,'" Sudyka said.

Sudyka, who is working with an attorney to adopt the girl, said she has said hello, responds to comments and questions, speaks nonverbally and is able to write her name. Haleigh can't walk and is confined to a wheelchair.

Avrett, Poutre's biological mother, lost custody of her daughter after physically abusing her. Poutre was put into a foster home where her adoptive parents also abused her. Her adopted mother committed suicide after abusing Poutre so much she had to be hospitalized.

DSS took Poutre into custody and when she appeared to slip into a coma, the agency asked the state Supreme Court for permission to take her life. That's when Poutre began responding.

Poutre has been receiving physical, speech and occupational therapy since January 26 at Franciscan Hospital for Children in Brighton.

Gov. Mitt Romney appointed a commission to look into how the state failed to properly handle the girl's case.

[sarasmom]

I do know that.
I researched the "Life Link" foundation over a decade ago.
HQd in my neighborhood,well prior to Terri Schiavo's ultimate execution, but interestingly enough,silently involved...
But I do not care to have bits and pieces of my "useless" dying flesh to be designated "community assets" by any government agency/NGOs while I still require them to function for my own personal survival.
Nor do I care to have my child's DNA mapped, and potentially "perfectly match" the requirements of a rich or politically influential individuals urgent "need" for an organ donor.
I could harbor mindless dreams that such a nightmare situation will never happen, but since I live in the real world, I know it already has, and will continue, untill we say NO!

[T'wit]

>> Your link doesn't work.

You're right. I always test them before hitting the "post" button, but who knows. I'll see if I can find another avenue.

[T'wit]

Hypokalemia following trauma

I think that fixes it. Check it for me, please? Some details, abbreviated:

Admission hypokalemia was more frequent in those with closed head injuries... and in those who suffered spinal cord injuries [Terri's bone scan showed both]. ... Hypokalemia occurred more frequently in younger patients... Glasgow Coma Scores (GCS) were significantly lower ... and Injury Severity Scores (ISS) were higher ... with admission hypokalemia. Additionally, hypokalemia was a positive predictor of ISS... Hypokalemic patients more likely needed a ventilator...

Terri Schiavo fit the trauma pattern in every one of the above categories, except I don't know her GCS or ISS scores. It's near certain she fit those too. I omitted the numbers because they are meaningless to a lay reader (medicos are invited to read the abstract posted).

The noose tightens.

[T'wit]

So he wanted his wife to die from an excruciatingly painful infection. So he stole her wedding rings. So he killed her cats. So he admitted all of it under oath. What's your point? I hope you aren't trying to show that he's a callous, greedy, mean, no-good SOB who's out campaigning for Death Cult Democrats. The trolls all along have taken his side and marched in his parade. You'd hurt their feelings.

[T'wit]

Couldn't get your citation to work but here's a link to same in a publication that picked it up:

Report: Spitzer would close hospitals

I'd agree with him if he were just going to cut property taxes and try to bring some sanity to the state budget. NY state spending is out of control. But what he's doing, actually, is cutting spending in one spot to waste it in a different boondoggle. He'll end up supporting the old boondoggles along with his new ones. We taxpayers are screwed again.

[floriduh voter]

God says, "All they that hate me love death." Proverbs 8:36

[8mmMauser]

The story of yesterday of the supposedly PVS woman who was conscious continues today as one more day of big story. This is an excerpt. Recommend reading the whole story...

CAMBRIDGE, September 8, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – More and more, ethicists and doctors are questioning the diagnosis of “persistent vegetative state,” and new research is opening the discussion. Researchers working at Cambridge University in England reported in a study published in the journal Science that a woman who was described as being in a “vegetative state” is showing signs of conscious awareness while remaining in the comatose condition.

The study, led by Dr. Adrian Owen at the Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit at Cambridge, compared neurological responses to verbal stimuli in the comatose patient with those of conscious volunteers. It showed that the patient’s brain responded to commands in the same brain centres and in the same way normally associated with consciousness such as language and planning regions.

“If you put her scans together with the other 12 volunteers tested you cannot tell which is the patient’s,” Owen told The New York Times.

“Vegetative” Patient Shows Conscious Awareness... Confirmed beyond any doubt she was consciously aware of herself and her surroundings

8mm

Terri's Legacy List

(Original Ohioan from Florida's ping list, update to September 7.)



Terri on the road to recovery before the second stage began.

[8mmMauser]

That goes for the snuffbots, too.

[T'wit]

>> I was involved in the National Organ Transplant Act. I single-­handedly held up the movement toward creating markets in organs.

You single-handedly sentenced people to die, Caplan. Did you not learn anything from Prohibition? If you shut down markets for goods that are in demand, you succeed only in driving up the prices and turning the business over to the unscrupulous, the lawless and to organized crime.

We see all the predictable bad effects of government suppression in the market for human organs. The high prices of organs are what produced those surgical teams at the big hospitals. The high prices tempt less-than-scrupulous docs and bioethics committees to cut up living patients for their organs. They ALMOST killed Haleigh Poutre, to take one example among many we have studied here. Isn't it sad enough that this child was abused, burnt with cigarettes, starved and beaten nearly to death? Your "ethics" invited bureaucrats to murder her after all that.

[8mmMauser]

The media cannot help but cover the woman was supposedly PVS but regained consciousness, so we see with the MSM still an attempt to disconnect the case from its obvious link to Terri's Legacy.

Advanced brain scanning uncovered startling signs of awareness in a woman in a vegetative state, British scientists reported Thursday — a finding that complicates one of medicine's ethical minefields.

The work is sure to elicit pleas from families desperate to know if loved ones deemed beyond medical help have brain activity that doctors don't suspect. ''Can he or she hear and understand me?'' is a universal question.

Snip

Those who don't improve after a longer period are classified as in a ''persistent vegetative state,'' such as the late Terri Schiavo, who became a subject of political controversy over the question of taking such patients off life support. An autopsy showed she had irreversible brain damage.

Vegetative Patients May Have Awareness

8mm

[T'wit]

>> God says, "All they that hate me love death." Proverbs 8:36

Amen to that!

[8mmMauser]

This is from ABC. ABC is just full of tips and ideas. Interesting little "Friends of Pontius Pilate" paragraphs just above the topic in the link...

...............

CAN PATIENTS IN A VEGETATIVE STATE STILL HEAR? The case of Terri Schiavo has reignited the debate about what is going on in the mind of a person who is in a persistent vegetative state. Unlike people in comas, people in PVS are thought to be essentially oblivious to the outside world with no hope of awakening.

But now provocative research in the journal Science suggests that the brain may still be able to respond to the human voice. Doctors in Belgium scanned the brain of a female patient in PVS while asking her to do things like imagine she was playing tennis.

Her brain responses matched the patterns of normal people's brains when they were asked to imagine the same thing, suggesting the PVS patient may be "conscious" on some level. A related editorial points out though that this patient is likely not typical and that it's important not to generalize this finding to all patients in vegetative states.

Can You 'Wash' Away Your Sins?

8mm

[T'wit]

>> An autopsy showed [Terri Schiavo] had irreversible brain damage.

But this patient will recover? Are there any PVS patients out there who do not suffer from severe, probably irreversible brain damage? I swear, every time reporters depart from factual reporting and inject their bias into their stories, they turn into babbling morons.

[T'wit]

>> The researchers said it was as if they were trying to behave morally in an effort to get physically clean.

"Out, damned spot! Out, I say!" -- Lady Macbeth.

Our doughty social scientists are about 400 years behind the times :-)

[8mmMauser]

Not just that, but today dozens of outlets are using the same cut and paste from the MSM Used Mantras Discount House. This one is repeated over and over as a refreshing new idea...

Those who don't improve after a longer period are classified as in a "persistent vegetative state," such as the late Terri Schiavo, who became a subject of political controversy over the question of taking such patients off life support. An autopsy showed she had irreversible brain damage.

Just one example...

8mm

[8mmMauser]

"Out, damned spot! Out, I say!" -- Lady Macbeth.

I remember that. She was talking to her naughty dog who marked her floor.

[8mmMauser]

I wonder if Pontius Pilate really felt a lot cleaner once he washed his hands well.

[T'wit]

Oops, didn't see your Pontius Pilate ref or I wouldn't have had to bring up Lady Macbeth :-) The point remains that if there are any bigger ninnies than reporters on the march, it is social scientists.

[8mmMauser]

That simply ratifies the point. It is biblical and Shakespearian, so fundamental.

[syriacus]

Thanks for all the pings and links. I hope that rehabbing "PVS" patients becomes the "new rage", replacing the "old rage" of starving them.

The scientific breakthroughs come from the doctors who value the lives of their patients.

Doctors who kill contribute little, if nothing, to humanity.