You're not going to win with these people. They cling on to these wild ideas that she doesn't have PVS , when in fact she does. They continuosly bring up the CT scan , EEG, and need for MRI or PET yet can't explain how any of these scans would change outcome. They call the husband an abuser without any evidence except hearsay from websites. They state all she needs is the right thearapy and she will talk and feed herself. I've tried to have a debate with them but it's impossible.
"You're not going to win with these people."
Actually, that's not my goal. My goal is to try to speak to those people who understand that the truth is not going to be found in news stories, nor is it going to be found on blogs or advocacy sites.
The truth is very difficult to find in this case. So many claims and counter claims have been made, many of them by people who have no connection at all to Terri Schiavo. At this point, it's all emotion, not truth.
Thanks for posting. Your perspective as a physician is worth hearing.
Ronald Cranford, MD who is such an expert in this field, and diagnosed Terri as PVS also diagnosed Robert Wendland, a California man as PVS.
Wendland could scoot around un aided in a motorized wheelchair, bowl a 175, write the letter R, answer yes or no questions, and identify and hand to a therapist different colored blocks, as well as other tasks.
Cranford described Mr. Wendland as a "trained animal", and stated he should have his feeding tube removed so Wendland's wife could "move on with her life".
With Dr. Cranford's liberal standard for handing out a PVS diagnosis in the case of Robert Wendland, are you still sure it is factual that Terri Schiavo is PVS?
Please see post #27, which quotes "Dr. CBB" on exactly how a new scan could change outcome.
As for Michael's possible abuse, there is a lot of admissible evidence in sworn testimony and medical records. For one, Terri's 1991 bone scan reporting severe trauma. For another, on admission to Humana after her "incident" in 1990, Terri was hypoxic and her labs showed lactic acidosis. There was no apparent medical reason for this; no drugs or alcohol in her system; she was 26, healthy and of normal weight. She has never had a heart attack. According to Michael, whose story changed half a dozen times, she got up in the middle of the night and mysterously collapsed.
Lactic acidosis is consistent with Terri fighting frantically for her life while she's being choked to death by a husband twice her size. (So is the bone scan.) Even if there are other possibilities, strangulation cannot be ruled out.
See my Post 99.
Frankly, msuMD, stating a diagnosis as "fact" when I have no access to a patient's medical record and when I have never examined that patient myself would certainly qualify as a "wild idea" when I went to medical school.
The Neurology literature stresses the unreliability of the diagnosis and yet you, without access to the medical record or or the patient state that diagnosis as a "fact"?
If the PET Scan showed metabolic activity in the frontal and parietal lobes, would that change your diagnosis?
If the PET Scan showed no metabolic activity in the frontal and parietal lobes, would that not give some degree of comfort to parents that are tortured with the belief that their daughter is not brain dead?
A full Year 2005 de novo state-of-the-art neurology workup with independent review from nationally recognized neutral neurologists would have alleviated to some degree the agony of the parents who now believe that their daughter was misdiagnosed.
What has been accomplished by the denial of that work up other than fueling the debate, for decades to come, as to the accuracy of this particular PVS diagnosis?
You're missing the point here, bub. No one expects Terri to fully recover, talk, or feed herself. What we find absolutely reprehensible is the act of executing her death by depriving her of fluid hydration and nutrition. To that end, calling such a natural and peaceful death is just is a crockload of manure.