Posted on 09/16/2006 8:44:44 AM PDT by Jawn33
Perhaps the last word should go to Pat Flores, the mother of George Melendez, the 31-year-old coma patient who reassured his parents that he wasn't in pain after taking Ambien, as zolpidem is known in the US. He was starved of oxygen when his car overturned and he landed face down in a garden pond near his home in Houston, Texas, in 1998. "The doctors said he was clinically dead - one said he was a vegetable," says Pat. "After three weeks he suffered multi-organ failure and they said his body would ultimately succumb. They said he would never regain consciousness."
He survived and four years later, while visiting a clinic, Pat gave him a sleeping pill because his constant moaning was keeping her and her husband, Del, awake in their shared hotel room. "After 10 to 15 minutes I noticed there was no sound and I looked over," she recalls. "Instead of finding him asleep, there he was, wide awake, looking at his surroundings. I said, 'George', and he said, 'What?' We sat up for two hours asking him questions and he answered all of them. His improvements have continued and we talk every day. He has a terrific sense of humour and he carries on running jokes from the day before.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
I like that analogy!
The case is in the court of history now. This time there will be a jury -- we are all empaneled. This time we will get to look at all of the suppressed evidence and testimony, and listen to the rest of the arguments. This time the umpire won't get away with dirty calls.
Read it here: http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/trialctorder02-00.pdf
very few such people who made such statements in such circumstances did so with the intention that such statements in and of themselves could have been used...
Then I guess such people would be intelligent enough to have a living will written out so there would be no chance of anyone misinterpreting what they said, don't you agree?
... to cause them to be fatally dehydrated over a period of almost two weeks.
Does unplugging a heart-lung machine seem quicker to you? Would that make it easier for you?
-Traveler
We were most definitely RIGHT.
And of course this article doesn't refer to Terry Schindler. She was NOT in a coma, as we have repeated ad nauseum. She was severely mentally handicapped, and may have been FAR LESS so if her creep of a husband had permitted her rehabilitation (which for most brain injured patients takes years).
I agree wholeheartedly. When a judge ignores case law and precedence and goes off into never-never land, much like the 9th Circus Court does, then it's a given the judge is an idiot and the ruling will be overturned in short order. However as this case progressed through the courts, both state and federal, it was minutely reviewed by higher courts at each step. Both the decisions, case law, and precedence cited in the decisions rendered where very straight forward.
-Traveler
Turns out you are so right. All the rationalizations and justifications in the world can't answer the question, What if she were alive today and given this drug?
That'a just the point. She wasn't being kept alive by extraordinary means like a heart machine. She was taken off "food."
Where is the source for this, I wasn't able to find it in that discussion.
-Traveler
Let me quote your rude comment in #36: "...as I said before, few if any people here actually read all the court document involved in this case because it doesn't fit their perceived notion of how they "feel" it should have ended."
We had read the testimony. You hadn't. Maybe you were the one with a preconceived notion of how you "feel" it should have ended?
Find it yourself. I recommend the ONION.
Thus, she was murdered. Had Michael Schiavo starved her cats to death, instead of having them "put to sleep", he would have been charged with a crime.
The problem is, if liberals don't have any problems with murdering babies, then why would we expect them to have problems murdering brain damaged people? They've already moved the bard of acceptable in their minds to take into account "quality of life"...if they determine the quality of your life is lower than their bar they will have no compunctions about killing you. In this area liberals are similar to muslims...they are part of a culture of death.
What a fascinating story. Thanks for posting it.
So, in other words, you don't know if it's true or not. But you "feel" it's true because it fits your preconceived notion of the facts, right?
If anyother FReeper happens to know the source of this, would you please let me know. TIA
-Traveler
Then I guess such people would be intelligent enough to have a living will written out so there would be no chance of anyone misinterpreting what they said, don't you agree?
Anyone who in the 1980's advocated that people fill out living wills to prevent their casual remarks from being misinterpreted would have been dismissed as a paranoid lunatic. How can you blame Terri for failing to do something absolutely nobody would have deemed necessary?
... to cause them to be fatally dehydrated over a period of almost two weeks.
Does unplugging a heart-lung machine seem quicker to you? Would that make it easier for you?
When docs unplug a ventilator, do they stuff a pillow over the patient's face to ensure the patient doesn't start breathing naturally? Even when docs are 99% sure the patient isn't going to start breathing naturally, they still allow the patient to do so. In some cases, much to their surprise, the patient in fact does.
That Terri failed her swallowing tests meant that the probability of successful oral feeding/hydration was not sufficient to justify the risks she might face therefrom, when other methods of feeding/hydration were available. Even if nobody expected that attempted oral feeding/hydration would succeed, refusing to allow it is akin to stuffing a pillow over a ventilator patient's face because he's not expected to start breathing on his own.
Indeed, I've been trying to figure out any scenario in which attempted oral feeding/hydration would have harmed Terri in any way (unless being fed successfully would be considered 'harm'). If Terri was sufficiently concious that she could feel any distress that such attempts at feeding would cause, they would pale in comparison to the pain of dehydration she would certainly feel in their absense. And if Terri fatally choked during the feeding attempts, she'd be no more dead than if she simply languished without water for two weeks. If Michael was afraid that Terri's choking during attempted feeding might be blamed on him, or afraid of the cost of such attempts, he could make the parents responsible for selecting, hiring, and paying for a doctor administering them.
So what basis was there for Michael's absolute outright denial of so much as an ice chip?
Still unable to accect reality after all this time!
If the Home Plate Umpire calls "strike" on a pitch that rolls along the ground before a motionless batter, the call could be appealed to Bud Selig himself but the pitch would still be a strike.
Early on, Terri's parents received some pretty bad legal help. I don't think any reasonable person may deny that. The appeals courts in this country are not designed to remedy any problems that a party may incur because of poor legal advice. There are generally some good reasons for this (the system doesn't want to encourage people to hire bad lawyers for the purpose of getting do-overs) but at times it can result in severe injustices.
Had Terri's parents happened to appoint better counsel to represent her interests, she might still be alive today. I see no reason, however, why Terri should have been bound by the mistakes made by a lawyer over whose appointment she had no control.
Sigh! Here we go again... When we can't come up with a cogent argument, resort to the Nazi line...
So, at the age of 27, you want your loved ones to suffer along with you...give up their lives to take care of you? You couldn't possibly be that selfish. We're talking about a Vegetative State here. I'm not talking mental illness, I'm talking about being hooked up to a machine for life. That's what you said about your Aunt, right?
That's the truth.
Her parents wanted the monetary judgements from the courts. That is the truth.
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