Posted on 10/10/2006 4:04:27 PM PDT by wagglebee
GRESHAM, Oregon October 10, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A young boy, who had previously been diagnosed as being in a “permanent vegetative state,” has awakened from a 22 month-long coma and is breathing on his own.
Devon Rivers collapsed in a seizure during a phys-ed class in 2004 and his condition was never explained, though some doctors suggested it was caused by an unknown viral infection. Doctors agreed, however, that he had little hope of recovery.
His mother, Carla Rivers, visited him regularly and, in addition to physical therapy by his paediatric nursing home to keep his limbs supple, she talked to him in the belief that coma patients can retain their hearing and some understanding.
"For two years the doctors said there was no hope," said Carla Rivers. "Everything that happens in Devon's life is a gain. There's no losses."
Despite the doctors’ gloomy prognosis, eleven year-old Devon is now being prepared for occupational therapy to help him re-learn motor skills and is able to play with his siblings. Doctors cannot explain the reason either for his unexpected awakening or for his steady recovery.
In August of this year his mother, Carla Rivers, noticed that he began turning his head to follow movement; instead of a blank stare, he was reacting to his environment. Days later Devon was breathing without a respirator.
Carla Rivers said, “Devon may make a full recovery or what we see today may be what we get…God's plan is greater than ours. There's nothing we can do to force it any sooner or hold it back,” she said.
Coma patients and others with severe cognitive disabilities have been labelled “hopeless” only to recover frequently enough that some doctors and ethicists are questioning the accuracy of the diagnosis of “persistent vegetative state” (PVS).
The diagnosis is ambiguous in that symptoms of patients can vary greatly and still be called “vegetative.” A 1996 study published in the British Medical Journal showed that 43% of patients diagnosed with PVS do not qualify for the diagnosis.
In 2003, Kate Adamson, a former coma patient who had been diagnosed PVS, appeared on the television talk show the O'Reilly Factor. She said that, like Terri Schiavo, the hospital had removed her feeding tube that was only reinserted after eight days when her lawyer-husband threatened to sue the hospital.
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Diagnosis of Persistent Vegetative State Questioned as Former Patient Speaks Out
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2003/nov/03111207.html
Yet, there they are -- scum. Here's the words by which that degenerative condition of humanity -- that of falling to the level of scum -- can be diagnosed:
Don't speak to me about the coldness of Michael. We don't know what he was feeling.We don't know what Micheal was feeling? And why should we care? May any man *feel* a murderous or even just uncaring sustained feeling towards his spouse, and thereby be permitted to compel her demise?
Yet that is not what makes your remarks that of human scum. What makes those remarks those of scum is that you *feel* for Micheal, but NOT for Terri. Not one feeling do you allow her!
And that, graf008, is scum.
We should care because many of us have written directives that direct our loved ones to do EXACTLY what Michael Schiavo did if we are in the same condition as Terri. That makes us not scum - that doesn't make our families scum - and that certainly doesn't deserve the constant attacks from people who are not involved in that situation.
When you face a loved one in that situation, you tell me how you feel. For your Googling fun, where Cruzan's parents scum?
The countdown begins......;D
I suggest that you put your own spouse or children at terrifying moral hazard to have such a "will". It is a death contract, nothing less.
And logic and survivor sense both compel me to reject completely your claim that I or anyone else have no interest in what you and your family so contract. There are illegal contracts, illegal compacts made between consenting adults, as well there should be. Gambling, contracts for kidnaps, etc, etc. Death contracts -- contracts to murder, or to assist suicide, or even to take a pound of flesh for some monetary value have when society is most sane been illegal. The Florida Hospice Industry, the Florida Bar, Greer, Felos, and all families such as yours who bring us into a era where such contracts are considered actionable under law -- they put us all at risk.
One Freeper, as best I can tell, gone already under those new terms of "life ceasement" -- JudyB1932. Her family acted under best regard of this new social order you speak of. Even my own grandmother, a similar way to Terri -- drugged and withheld water, as best I have heard. I am afraid to ask the full details -- maybe the situtaion was she did get water. Her own loving granddaughters, at the bedside. A big family we are -- she has close to a hundred of descendants already. Yet at her last -- and ravaged by altzheimer's -- not a death without a push into the pit, instead of a pull out of it.
This is my last response to you. I've had a family member beg to have life sustaining treatment stop. We have that right to deny medical treatment to ourselves. No moral dilemnia, this doesn't degrade us more as humans - beyond what the artificial means of extending our life does.
To me the culprit is the artificial extension of life at a point when I am no longer able to ever return to a state of consciousness where I can see my family. That articifial extension is immoral.
Food and water are neither artificial, nor immoral. Depriving anyone, even a lowly animal, of food and water is extremely immoral.
Terri Schiavo BUMP!
Perhaps you missed the coroner stating that Terri was basically healthy, with a strong heart, and would have lived ten more years or longer. Had her husband not put her to death, that is.
What is the life expectency for a female in Florida?
That depends on how much money can be made off her death.
That's not how it works. The diagnosis is based on present responsiveness, not on future prospects. (The patient's long-term prognosis not even mentioned in the American Academy of Neurology protocol for a PVS diagnosis.) Diagnosis is done by repeated examinations supported by EEG and imaging. Nowadays the imaging is almost always done by MRI or PET scans. [CTs aren't good enough.] Michael Schiavo never permitted Terri to be so tested.
Huh? Did you have a particular species in mind?
Such as his denying Terri ANY therapy or rehabilitation from 1992 on? Is that what your written directive calls for -- 13 years of medical neglect followed by your execution?
BTTT!!!!
If a free person speaks and says -- "No more water, no more food, no more medicine, no more life-support for me -- now!", we might try to cajole a positive response, but without too much delay, we should follow those currently expressed wishes. If the person is a criminal, a prisoner, even a vital witness -- we force him or her to be sustained.
But we pay NO heed to another person's word -- even a spouse or parent -- that a person wants to die. We can't give away what is not ours to give. Nor do we assist a suicide -- suicide differs from refusal of a medicine, or food, or water, because each those individual acts of refusal can be undone later if the mind is changed -- an act that causes a death directly can not be undone. Nor do we pay any heed to a prior contract -- a "living will", whatever to assume that what a person said when in the full sense of health that he would not want to live uner "those" conditions. For no one knows what will be in their mind when that condition (G-d forbid) happens. Ask those who have been through it! People who have come through PVS, through coma, through permanent severe impairments come in many many cases to deny their pre-wishes made when healthy and hardy, and instead come to choose to continue to want to live. Just look at Stephen Hawkings, or Chris Reed -- the will to live is primal.
Yet the Culture of Death would prefer to euthanize them all.
Yes, if only they could pull the plug on all of them before they wake up. I guess these stories will change the way they act, they'll have to move faster. /end major sarcasm
What a wonderful thing for this boy and his family. I wonder how many more are sacrificed by these 'poor diagnoses'?
No therapy? So the thalamic stimulator implant didn't occur? How about her admission to the Mediplex Rehabilitation Center that specialized in rehabilitation or therapy? Finally, didn't she receive rehabilitation at the Sable Palms Skilled Care Facility?
I disagree. Any extension on life beyond what was allowed in biblical times is due to man's progress. At some point, we can refuse that artifical extension of life that was not available throughout history and die in peace - not artifically surviving due to medical advances.
Perhaps you've not heard of Haleigh Poutre? What about Terry Wallis? Louis Viljoen? Donald Herbert? Google their names.
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