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How many of you would want to remain in such a devestated state? Do you really see it as being better than moving on?

I would also ask how many of you have every had a family member languish in long term care for years in a vegetative state and kept artificially alive against the patient’s and family’s expressed wishes for end of life care and dying by very slow degrees over many years?

Believe me when I say it’s not pretty seeing someone kept alive by a feeding tube.

My mother-in-law was in poor health for many years. She often expressed to me and my husband how much pain she was in and how tired she was and how much she just “wanted to go home” and be with her mother and father and brothers in heaven with God.

She was already in a nursing home after having suffered some small strokes and was too disabled to be cared for at home, when she pretty much refused to eat any more although at the time she was still very lucid, aware of her surroundings and verbally communicative. The nursing home doctor said we should put her on a feeding tube and she and we disagreed. We tried to convince her to eat but it was a battle. But she was a very strong willed woman and knew that her time on this Earth was coming near its end. But when she suffered a massive stroke and was no longer able to communicate or feed herself; at first we were presented with the option of whether or not to put her on a feeding tube and we said no. But the doctors then recanted that it was our or her choice citing that it would be cruel and unethical not to do so and cited their legal and ethical responsibly. (She did not have Advanced Directives and we only had a limited power of attorney and only over financial matters).

So they put her on a feeding tube anyway without consulting her family.

And she stayed in a vegetative state for the next four years without any hope for recovering higher brain function or awareness; at first not getting any better but then not getting any worse. But as weeks and months went by, and her and our finances where exhausted, she went on Medicaid. That meant we, her family, had no choice what nursing home she was placed in – i.e. if she had to be transferred from the nursing home to a hospital because of infections from the feeding tube or bed sores or pneumonia (which happened many times) and was in the hospital for more than three days, she would loose her bed at the nursing facility she had come from and was placed in the first facility that had the first available bed. We, her family had no say where she was placed unless we could pony up the full cost of advanced nursing care at a facility of our choosing. We often paid out of pocket, the cost of the nursing home care that she was not using because she was in a hospital just to keep the bed available in a nursing home we approved of. But we could only do so much and it pretty much bankrupted us.

Some of the “facilities” she was placed in over the four years she was in a vegetative state were better than others – some were adequate and some where “Hell Holes”.

Although she was totally unresponsive, I still visited with her several times a week, often doing her soiled laundry myself because the nursing home was not doing a very good job. I would visit at random times on random days and I’m sure I was a real thorn in the side of the administration of several nursing homes as I was a tireless advocate for her care. Although she was still technically “alive” in that her brain still functioned on a basic rudimentary level as to keep her respiration and heartbeat and basic organ functions still going, we saw no spark of life left in her and the only thing keeping her body alive was the feeding tube, a catheter and some very basic care like keeping her clean and turning her as to prevent bed sores.

One day we got a phone call from the last nursing facility that her heart had stopped and since we did manage to get a DNR order in place, she was not resuscitated and died. We were sad at her passing but relived as we believed that the person we knew and loved had left this mortal plane many years earlier.

As she spent the last few years of her so called “life” drawn up in a ridged fetal position, when her body was transferred to a funeral home for burial, the mortician told us there was no way to lay her out in a coffin with out literally breaking her bones and joints in order to do so.

And thankfully this was the very last indignity she ever had to suffer.

I am defiantly pro-life and erring on the side of life, but just because recent advances in medical science can keep a body alive, I believe that it isn’t always the ethical, moral and responsible thing to do so.

I would also ask how many of you have every had a family member languish in long term care for years in a vegetative state and kept artificially alive against the patient’s and family’s expressed wishes for end of life care and dying by very slow degrees over many years?

What are you talking about? Since when is food and water "artificial life support"? There is NO EVIDENCE that Lauren has ever expressed a desire to be killed and your contention that she is dying in "slow degrees" is FALSE.

>>I am defiantly pro-life and erring on the side of life, but...

Couldn't help but notice your post. You should learn more about the plight of Lauren Richardson before such comments.

First, yes, we have been in that predicament, for twenty six years with a child many would say was PVS, and yet he lead a happy loving life, severely retarded and no way would we give him up. We are pro-life with no buts.

Second, Lauren is not that bad off. Check my Terri Dailies link above and watch the video. She has a loving father, and a team who want to kill her.

I understand what you went through, as we have too, and we never wanted our doctors to keep our son alive through bizarre new technology just to keep some cells alive. We would never allow doctors to snuff our son either. Lauren is alive and has potential! Let Lauren Live!

8mm

Many years ago my dad had cancer, and toward the end my mom pulled him out of the hospital (or hospice, or whatever it was) and brought him home to be with his family. I guess in some people's eyes she'd be a murderer, because if he'd stayed in the hospice they'd have forced a tube down his throat and given him "life" for just a bit longer.

At some point it's just time to let go. You have people who believe in God and Christ and the eternal realm, yet they'll fight tooth and nail to keep souls from returning home. I don't understand it.

Maybe this girl's mother just wants to let her go back to God.