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 ...
Maybe Michael Schiavo got wind of this.
My aunt Wanda went into a vegetative state in 1962 giving birth to her second son. My uncle Bill did divorce her and get remarried... in 1984. He spent 20 years alone.
Michael Shiavo spent, what 2 years, before falling into bed with another woman.
Bill died in 2001, Wanda in 2002. Every single day he could, from 1962 to 2001, Bill visited Wanda in the Nursing Home and sat with her for uncounted hours. That is 39 years.
Michael first tried to kill Terri after 6 years.
Do I have some perspective on this? I think so.
Typically in a court of law hearsay statements are not admissable. Only three people aknowledged hearing this statement from Terri, Michael, who stood to profit from her death, his brother and sister-in-law.
There were as many hearsay statements that contradicted what Michael was saying, and they had maintained that from the beginning, Michael changed his story when money became available.
I have read the court documents, just as I have read the court documents for Dred Scott, Roe v. Wade, and Kelo. I see yet another judge classifing a group of citizens as second class, based upon the flimisiest of evidence. It is important to take into consideration the representation each side could afford. Michael spent money intended for his wife's rehabilitation on legal counsel. Her parents weren't so dishonest and had significantly inferior representation.
I fully believed God blessed your Uncle Bill in ways unknown to others for his devotion to Wanda and for his selflessness.
Bill was a very blessed man. His second wife and his kids were a great blessing to him in this world.
Well said.
WOW this just made my day!!!!! Good campaign material!
Yep, they'll be here fast enough!! Thankful that this miracle has happened to show us that just because a person can't speak or communicate, they ARE most often aware.
me neither!!
Ahhh, you thought.....wrongly.
Please, I know this is a hot topic for a lot of people. Read the court ruling on this. You'll be amazed at what Terri said according to most of her family.
-Traveler
Do those prejudiced court rulings talk about the statements from Terri's family that told about her responding to them? Her attempts at communication? Probably not, Terri wasn't brain dead and wasn't comatose. She was murdered by her husband and the state.
Yeah, some of us have read IT ALL and we are convinced that Terri should have been turned over to the people who loved her and wanted to care for her for the rest of her life. He obviously did not love her, having taken up with another woman and having had two children with her.
What about all of our military who are suffering brain injuries due to terrorist attacks in Iraq? Some of them have a life folks like you wouldn't consider worth living. Should the VA just start starving them to death???
I agree. I think we should keep every "body" alive, no matter what condition, until there's some kind of miracle drug that may help them. I'm with you, Buddy.
Death is inevitable, at times simply postponing it is cruel. There's a difference between allowing nature to run its course and actively causing death, such as by starvation.
And therein lies the rub....who makes that decision? In our Country we have laws, and in the Terri Schiavo case, all the laws were met and upheld at every level.
My Uncle Bill and my Aunt Liz were both on life support. Machines were beating their hearts and causing them to breathe.
As painful as it was, the choice was clear that they would be better off being removed from the machines. We ended life support for them.
My Aunt Wanda was in a vegetative state for 40 years. She was given food and water daily, but no machines kept her alive. To deny her food and water would have been to actively kill her.
Terri Shiavo was in the same situation as my Aunt Wanda, not in the same situation as Bill or Liz. She was not on life support. She was actively killed, not "allowed to die".
There is a huge difference and I have been up close and personal with both types of cases. One is allowing nature to take it's course, the other is killing someone by our actions.
How old was your Aunt Wanda when she fell into the VS? Do you think she would have wanted to live 40 years like that? WOULD YOU?
I'm sorry, I have to correct you on that. He tried to kill her by denying her medicine for a urinary tract infection in 1993: three years after her unexplained injury, not six. He did this right after she was awarded $700,000 for her care and therapy -- he would have inherited the money, had she died, -- and he did it knowing that refusing to give her the antibiotics would kill her. All of this he admitted in sworn testimony.
P.S. Michael was taking the law into his own hands. It was decidedly illegal for him to deny medicine to Terri. The doctor and the medical facility refused to go along with it.
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