Posted on 09/26/2017 11:54:04 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer
Years of suffering - and months of struggling with the decision to end it - had brought them here: To a bright white living room where three of their children lay side by side by side, waiting to die.
Les and Celeste Chappell loved the children, of course, and the thought of letting them go was excruciating, but holding on was just as painful.
The children - Christopher, 20; Elizabeth, 19; and James, 15 - had been ravaged by a ruthless neurological disorder that, over the years, had stolen their ability to see and to swallow, to move and to remember. Life support was only prolonging the inevitable.
So one Thursday in July, at their home in Springville, Utah, their parents braced themselves for what would become a long weekend of death.
Three hospital beds were set up in the living room with the cathedral ceilings and high-reaching windows that let in the streaming sun.
The three children were made comfortable with morphine and lorazepam, a sedative used to control seizures, and their parents started to pray.
The obituary was a single notice, cataloging all three deaths.
“Christopher, Elizabeth, and James were born to Lester and Celeste Chappell of Springville,” it read. “Each had for many years courageously fought a degenerative neurological condition, juvenile Batten disease.”
(Excerpt) Read more at sacbee.com ...
All three died at the same time?
Where’s the homicide detectives?
Likely bad genetics. His and her DNAs were a bad match.
All three were on life support.
They stopped the life support on the shells of their children...sadly have another with the disease.
Did you read the article?
Sometimes I wonder about hospice and whether or not it hastens death, not just make it more comfortable.
Thank you for posting this article which certainly provides very grounding perspective. How soul-wrenching for these parents. I can scarcely imagine their pain of seeing three of their beautiful children die following such degeneration.
The unplugged life support. Just how long would you support keeping a shell of a human being alive through artificial means?
The compassion is overwhelming.
[They stopped the life support on the shells of their children...sadly have another with the disease.]
A Fourth? Wow.
Wonder if they had genetic screening after the other kids.
“Did you read the article?”
I did.
As tragic the illness is the description of what transpired looks to me to be euthanasia.
What was the quality of life the three were denied?
Heart breaking. May God bless and sustain these poor parents.
I don’t see euthanasia, there. Perhaps I’m mistaken ... but it looks like they stopped taking extraordinary measures to prolong life. They provided pain relief until the children died (rather quickly).
The disease shut down their bodies. They were only alive because of the machines used to keep them that way.
May Almighty God welcome Christopher, Elizabeth, and James into His Mercy with open arms. No more tears; no more pain.
The anguish for Mr. And Mrs Chappell must have been unimaginable. May the Holy Ghost comfort them and lead them to a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ.
Oh for God’s sake read the story.
sometimes, “conservative by principal” means being a judgmental ass with no concept of the suffering the children and the parents were going through.”
Theoretically I suppose we could keep everyone alive forever if we plugged them into machines. Is that the end goal MeganC?
When all else fails,read the article before posting nonsense..
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Wonder not. Hospice does not kill people. Hospice ups the level of care that a person receives. Not all people die on hospice. Some recover and live many years longer
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