Posted on 08/31/2011 4:46:55 PM PDT by wagglebee
LifeNews.com Note: Bobby Schindler is the brother of Terri Schiavo and he and his family now work for Terri’s Life & Hope Network to help disabled and incapacitated patients like her. The anniversary of the death of his father, Robert Schindler, was earlier this week.
The passing of both Terri and my father is what helps inspire my family and the work we do at Terri’s Life & Hope Network to continue fighting for our most vulnerable every day.
My father was a man of incredible strength, and loved his family so much that he essentially gave up his life for Terri, doing everything he could possibly do to try and care of her. He would have done the same for any one of us. With so much attention on Terri’s case, my dad showed the world, with remarkable strength, what it means to love without condition.
What I admired most about my dad was that even following Terri’s horrific death, he had the fortitude to keep fighting for others, dedicating the remainder of his life to help fight for the lives of others, not wanting any family to have to experience what his family experienced with Terri.
As you know, Terri’s Life & Hope Network’s mission, first and foremost, is to provide resources and support to those with cognitive disabilities, the elderly and countless others that are facing life threatening situations due to the threat of not receiving adequate health care and medical treatment. In the six years since we began advocating for others we have been involved in several hundreds of cases.
Specifically, this year we have either supported or have been directly involved in close to a hundred situations with families who needed help to protect a loved one from the threat of an inhumane death by the actions of others.
For example, we just had a case where a daughter was advocating for her mother. The mother was doing very well, living on her own, but dealing with some dementia. Sadly, the daughter’s, sister placed their mother in a nursing home and because of this, her mother began to deteriorate. The daughter, who contacted us, feared that her sister was taking the steps to end her mother’s life in order to make claim of her mother’s estate. After several conversations we were able to use our resources to recommend an attorney for the daughter so she can take the necessary steps to take over the care of her mother, so she would be out of harm’s way.
These situations of our elderly, cognitively disabled, those suffering from Alzheimer’s and others in similar situations where life is constantly at risk of being taken prematurely is only becoming more frequent.
The horror stories we hear reveals just how prevalent imposed death has become in our society. This is why we believe education is so valuable. Educating our youth, our future attorneys and medical professionals, our clergy and even the average person on this threat facing our vulnerable is vitally important.
In fact, since Terri’s Life & Hope Network has been established in 2006, we have spoken in 44 states, over 150 cities, at 29 universities, colleges, and Medical Schools and in 9 countries abroad, which includes addressing members of Parliament in Canada and Australia.
Clearly this is an issue that is only going to get worse. Because of the Terri’s horrible experience, we are fortunate to be put in the position to help others. With God’s graces, we will continue to do that.
Thread by NYer.
September 28, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Joseph Maraachli, who at only barely one year old drew a groundswell of support when an Ontario hospital refused a simple procedure that would allow him to die at home, has passed away.
Baby Joseph, who suffered from a severe but undiagnosed neurological disorder, lived for more than five months after he was flown to Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center in Missouri for a tracheostomy and brought home.
Alex Schadenburg of the Canada-based Euthanasia Prevention Coalition said Wednesday morning that Baby Joseph died at home surrounded by his family.
“Joseph Maraachli lived a life that changed Canada,” said Schadenburg, whose intervention was pivotal to obtaining the tracheostomy. “My thoughts and prayers are with the Maraachli family.”
Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life wrote on Facebook this morning that his organization is “grateful to all who helped to give him and his family more time and joy together.”
Thank God for baby Joseph!
Thread by Sun.
Republican Bob Turner won handily over the Democratic candidate in a district that no a Republican has won since 1923. His opponent's vote in favor of same-sex "marriage" in the New York legislature played an important role in the Republican's victory. Every significant GOP candidate for president is pro-life; snip
Social conservatives make up a significant percentage of the Tea Party movement snip
With 33 Senate seats up for grabs in 2012, the Democrats will have to defend 23 while the Republicans must defend only 10, snip
When Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) called on conservatives to declare a "truce" on social issues and "agree to disagree," he clearly "shot himself in the foot" and ended his presidential prospects.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
Thread by me.
Justice Baker ruled last week that the 52-year-old patient known publicly only as M should not be allowed to starve to death because her life still contained some positive elements.
Her family had argued that M’s daily routine was too limited for her to want to continue living.
“She cannot enjoy a drink, a cup of tea or anything. She has got no pleasures in life,” M’s sister told the court. “Just a daily routine of being taken out of bed, put in a chair and put back in bed. Shower, doubly incontinent. It is just awful. It’s not life. It’s existence. And I know she would not want that.”
But Justice Baker said that he accepted the witness of caretakers testifying that M, who is not fully alert but still conscious, should be allowed to live and continue treatment. “M does have positive experiences and … although her life is extremely restricted, it is not without pleasures, albeit small ones,” he stated.
The family’s lawyer, Yogi Amin, told the press that the family’s ordeal caring for M has been “extremely heartbreaking” and criticized the judge for ruling M should be given food and water.
“The law has been clarified and, going forward, in all such cases of patients who are in a minimally conscious state, the High Court does now have the power to decide on whether it is in that patient’s best interests for treatment to continue, or whether the patient should be allowed to die naturally, with dignity,” said Amin.
Alex Schadenburg of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition lamented that the decision whether M ought to be subjected to an excruciating death by dehydration came to rest on the “quality of life” she was deemed to have.
“All forms of euthanasia reduce the value of certain human beings and deny equality and dignity to every human being,” wrote Schadenburg on his blog.
The leader notes that the UK has routinely dehydrated to death individuals who were not dying but deemed to be in a Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) ever since a 1993 court ruling. This case is different, he notes, because M is clearly conscious - but the case was still too close for comfort.
“We applaud the decision by Justice Baker, while recognizing that until the Bland decision is redefined, that other cognitively disabled people, such as ‘M’ will intentionally die by dehydration, even though they would not be otherwise dying,” he said.
Thread by NYer.
PHOENIX, AZ, October 4, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Midnight contraction pains signaled to Melanie Pritchard that labor was beginning. If all went well, her baby would have a birth date on July 28th, 2010. Melanie phoned her mother to say that her husband Doug was taking her to the hospital.
That phone call was the last event that Melanie remembers, the beginning of a 3-day dramatic ordeal that nearly took her life and the life of her unborn child.
Pritchard, aged 34, is a nationally renowned Catholic defender of the unborn and a speaker on modesty and chastity. Her work with Arizona’s pro-life and pro-family organizations has been described as “legendary.”
She and her husband Doug reached the hospital in the dark early hours of the morning. Labor was progressing steadily and normally. She requested an epidural to help cope with the pain. As the sun rose, contractions began to increase and the doctor broke her waters.
Then the unthinkable happened.
At the brink of death
Melanie indicated to her husband that she felt like something was wrong. She told Doug that she felt like passing out. The nurses repositioned her in an attempt to determine the cause of her lightheadedness even though her vital signs did not indicate that anything was amiss.
Suddenly, Melanie slumped to her side convulsing mildly. Her heart rate and blood pressure flatlined. To Doug’s horror he also saw his unborn child’s heart rate plummet precipitously. As Melanie’s face and skin turned blue, Doug realized that her heart had stopped beating.
A team of doctors and nurses rushed Melanie to the operating room in an attempt to save the baby’s life with a cesarean section.
Doug hastily made some anguished phone calls to family and friends beseeching them for prayers for Melanie and the baby. A friend of the Pritchard family, Mark Henry from Catholic Online, heard of Melanie’s plight and sent out the word to Catholic media groups that a young mother needed divine assistance in the battle for her life.
Immaculate Heart Radio, St. Joseph Communications, LifeSiteNews, and many other media outlets responded to the plea, immediately sending out the prayer request through internet or radio.
“Very quickly news of Melanie’s critical condition spread like a digital wildfire with ‘prayer for Melanie’ requests now going viral online. The pray-it-forward juggernaught to save Melanie had begun in earnest,” said Henry.
“People were literally coming out of the woodwork to pray for her, even if they didn’t know her,” said Kari Holt, Melanie’s sister.
People who had not entered a church for years found themselves compelled to go in and pray for the young mother in need.
“It burst forth through Catholic radio, across parishes, and into convents, rectories, seminaries, and schools; it lit up Facebook, Twitter…it found its way to people like me, those who had never heard of Melanie before then,” says Catholic apologist Patrick Madrid in the forward to Melanie’s book about her near death experience.
Within a 15-hour period, an estimated 150,000 people were praying for Melanie. Melanie was the number one Googled person in Arizona, her home state, that day. She was top 10 on Twitter worldwide.
Zero percent chance of survival
The successful cesarean operation brought into the world a healthy girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. Doug named her Gabriella, or Ella for short. Melanie had now been clinically dead for 10 minutes. She was given CPR and shocked 4 times with a defibrillator before the medical team managed to resuscitate her.
The doctors told Doug that Melanie had suffered an amniotic fluid embolism. Amniotic fluid had escaped from her womb, traveled into her bloodstream, and caused a cardiac arrest when it reached her heart. She also suffered massive internal bleeding from the cesarean operation, losing five liters of blood. The doctors also worried about possible neurologic injury because she had been without oxygen for so long.
With her catastrophic hemorrhaging, three back-to-back emergency major surgeries, heart and lung failure, and possible brain damage, the odds were overwhelmingly stacked against Melanie.
The doctors gave her a zero percent chance of survival.
Doug was told to say “goodbye” to the love of his life.
“I love you. I will always love you. Brady and Ella [son and newborn daughter] are beautiful and love you. If you have any fight left, then fight … Promise me that you will follow your guardian angel wherever he leads you. Where he leads you will be where God needs you.”
Meanwhile, from around the world believers in the power of prayer stormed heaven for a miracle.
Doctors say that what happened in the next 24 hours defies medical explanation. Melanie suddenly began to breathe on her own. She was weaned off all medications except those for pain. And then, to the astonishment of all, she began to talk.
Melanie cried when Doug helped her to hold newborn Ella for the first time, just 48 hours after the cesarean birth. And to the wonder of all, Melanie was discharged from the hospital just 6 days after the ordeal had begun.
The greatest miracle of all
Though there was still a long road of recovery before her, leaving the hospital alive was an astonishing accomplishment for the woman for whom doctors had said there was no hope.
For Melanie, however, her survival is not even the most astonishing part of the story. “When I woke up from death I thought to myself that the miracle of my survival was huge, but when I heard about the amount of people who prayed for me, I thought ‘that was the greatest miracle,’” Melanie told LifeSiteNew.com in an interview.
“It is one thing for this miracle to happen to myself, but then to hear how it affected so many people, that is the greatest miracle.”
Working in a ministry that helps to lead wandering hearts back to God, Melanie found it ironic that the time when she turned the most hearts to God—inspiring thousands to lift a prayer to heaven—she did not speak a single word; she was silent and completely unconscious.
“When I was young, I used to have this little wish with the Lord. I would say ‘Lord, can you make me like St. Peter?’ Can you give me a little of what you gave to him on Pentecost so that what I say or do might convert 3000 people a day?”
Melanie believes that God answered her “little wish” in his own way with the incredible drama of her untimely death and medically inexplicable revival.
“I honestly think that this moment wasn’t for me. I have always said, ‘use me Lord, in whatever way you want, anytime you want.’”
“That 24-hour period was for family, for friends, for people who were exposed to this story. The Lord used me to open their eyes, to help them to understand that they need to rely and trust in him, and him alone.”
“It was for God to show how mighty he is.”
Finding joy in suffering
In the days and months that followed her return home, Melanie’s body was wracked with pain. She suffered various infections. She was mentally paralyzed by a constant fear of death.
The difficult recovery process was a true test of her and Doug’s commitment to one another in marriage, she says. As an advocate for marriage as a “free, total, faithful, and fruitful kind of love,” she says that everything she and her husband knew about marriage with a “head-knowledge” suddenly made sense to them in the realm of the “heart.”
“Everything we were teaching about God’s plan for a joy-filled marriage really came true.”
“Even in the midst of this suffering, Doug and I still found joy. We discovered you can still find joy in your marriage, even in the depths of this kind of suffering.”
“The ‘sacrificial love’ and the ‘gift-of-self’ that we had been teaching about were really coming alive in our marriage.”
Melanie credits her and Doug’s premarital chastity as a school of training that prepared them to “survive” the difficult road to recovery, explaining that chastity is about becoming an “apprentice in self-mastery.” She said it takes “sacrifice, suffering, and much conditioning.”
As an example, she says that during her recovery, she never worried about Doug “running to the computer to look at pornography” or “cheating” on her because he had “already become an artist himself in self-mastery”.
She said that in the midst of the pain and suffering experienced during the recovery, they could still “live out” their marriage and see the beauty of it.
“Our God is a God of Miracles”
The experience has been a journey of self-discovery for Melanie, who says she sees how she has gone from being a strong independent woman, to a woman who now allows herself to be weak and vulnerable. She says that she has learned to let down her guard and allow others to serve her and take care of her.
She is also convinced that she has more to share with the world than ever before now that she has come to see why God allowed her to go through this experience and how she must relate it to her speaking ministry to young people.
“God has the power to make all things new, in a heart beat.”
“Our God is the God of miracles.”
“He can take their eyes that have seen pornography, their sexuality that has been broken and given away in pieces, their broken and abused hearts and make all these things new.”
“He can make people whole and complete in an instant because that is how powerful he is.”
Melanie believes that young people are compelled by her story because it gives them “insight” into the “power of God” and what he is capable of doing in someone’s life in a 24-hour period.
“If he can wake me from the dead, he can make your eyes brand new, he can make your heart complete, he can change lives in a heartbeat if we are just a little open to walk under his direction.”
Melanie has described her physical and emotional journey in detail in her book, “The Day I Died: Finding Hope in Suffering.” It is available from Vitae Press and through her website.
Thread by me.
Legalized assisted suicide costs us the presence of good people, who had they been given emotional support to help them not commit suicide in their time of health extremis, would be so glad to be alive. I have written frequently of my last hospice patient, Bob, who had been suicidal for 2 1/2 years after his Lou Gehrig’s disease diagnosis. He told me he would have gone to Kevorkian if his family had cooperated. But they wouldn’t and so he didn’t–and to his delighted surprise, he ended his life so very glad to be alive to the last breath. He would have been cheated out of all that happiness by the false compassion of assisted suicide–and the beauty part for the doctor-prescribed-death crowd is that no one would have ever known.
The same point is made in a letter to the editor published in the Boston Globe today by a cancer survivor, reacting to an opinion column in favor of a legalization proposal in Massachusetts. From the letter “She Pushed for Legal Right to Die, and – Thankfully – was Rebuffed:”
I am a retired person living in Oregon, where assisted suicide is legal. Our law was enacted through a ballot initiative that I voted for. In 2000, I was diagnosed with cancer and told that I had six months to a year to live. I knew that our law had passed, but I didn’t know exactly how to go about making use of it. I tried to ask my doctor, but he didn’t really answer me. I didn’t want to suffer. I wanted to do what our law allowed, and I wanted my doctor to help me. Instead, he encouraged me not to give up, and ultimately I decided to fight the disease. I had both chemotherapy and radiation.
I am so happy to be alive! It is now 11 years later. If my doctor had believed in assisted suicide, I would be dead. I thank him and all my doctors for helping me to choose “life with dignity.’’ Assisted suicide should not be legal. I hope Massachusetts does not make this terrible mistake.
I am continually disheartened that letters such as this often resonate less than if the same woman had written, right after her diagnosis, that she just wanted to die. Doctor prescribed death activists will say, “Well, she didn’t die, so what’s the problem?” Intentional obtuseness.
For some reason, the contemporary “compassion” reflex has a hard time embracing a life with health difficulties–but rocks and rolls with accelerated death. But know this: There are people who received doctor-prescribed/administered death, who would have survived long enough to be happily alive had assisted suicide not been legalized in Oregon and Washington, applied so callously in Switzerland, and euthanasia added to the mix in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.
Assisted suicide is not “choice,” it is the end of all choices. “Death with dignity,” is actually the euthanasia of hope.
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They are GHOULS and I somewhat recall, that Felos who can crash airplanes with his mind was trying to will Terri to be dead on Halloween of 2003. They finally murdered her around Easter time in 2005. Terri died and then Pope John Paul.
Many of the cheerleaders for Terri's killing are deceased or are unwell or their families are experiencing suffering. Sadly, many who fought for Terri have passed and we shall never forget them.
Sheriff Coates' young wife has very serious cancer. Coates resigned therefore. Rice wants his old Sheriff's job back. I'm not votin' for one of Terri's killers to protect and to serve. Republicans of the RINO kind and libs killed Terri.
Terri was my turning point. She changed me forever. I loved a perfect stranger and for the first time, saw clearly w/my own eyes that there is good and there is most decidedly evil. Sometimes evil wears a good disguise but it cannot and does not masquerade forever.
God bless everyone who helped Terri & her amazing family, including the Free Republic standard bearers - and God Bless the even the atheists who sincerely knew a murder was in progress and tried to help! FV
Terri’s dad lifted my spirits many a time. He missed his true calling as he had great comedic skill and charisma.
Terri changed a lot of lives, and saved some too. I learned lessons in the fight to save her that helped me fight for my husband’s life. If I had not been involved in the fight to save Terri, I wouldn’t have known how to fight for my husband, and he’d be dead now. I have no tolerance for anyone who supports murder.
Media's not doing that well now either...
“I am so happy to be alive! It is now 11 years later.”
Wow!
Amen, sister!! I’m forever bonded with all the GOOD people who made their way to help an innocent woman survive her Govt imposed murder.
Saddest chapter in our nation’s history!
Thread by NYer.
The United Nations is debating injecting euthanasia into the right to health and is considering a new treaty on the rights of the elderly to end their own lives for the benefit of society.
At recent U.N. meetings on the issue of aging, it was reported that advanced age impacts the ability to exercise recognized rights and that it is a case of patient autonomy to decide to end life. The Holy See representative at the Human Rights Council said his delegation took strong exception to this argument. The idea is also not being well received by others who respect life.
Donald Thompson of the Christian Medical Association tells OneNewsNow that he objects to euthanasia being described in this way. “The term is sounding more and more like convincing ‘responsible citizens' to do their part to unburden society by ending their own lives,” he said. “The phrasing of euthanasia as 'autonomy' just does not make sense. Individual autonomy does not apply when someone is being pressured to do something.”
He says that under discussions of the treaty so far, the elderly would be pressured by their children, doctor, or society to end their own lives. However, Thompson believes some of the most productive years of individuals' lives are in their sixties and seventies. He raises the question of who decides at what age people become more of a burden than others think they are worth: "Is it the United Nations? Is it one of these many countries that have gone bankrupt because of wasteful spending? Is the next step to recommend euthanasia to anyone with a chronic disease?”
(Excerpt) Read more at onenewsnow.com ...
Thread by me.
Professor Raymond Tallis is a distinguished emeritus professor of geriatric medicine, philosopher, poet, novelist and cultural critic. He is also a patron of the pressure group Dignity in Dying, previously known as the Voluntary Euthanasia Society. He is additionally chairman of Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying (HPAD) which aims to change the law, medical culture and medical practice ‘so that needless suffering at the end of life becomes a thing of the past’.
In today’s Times (£), Professor Tallis argues passionately in support of ‘assisted dying’, which he claims is all about
‘...permitting physicians to assist the death of mentally competent, terminally ill patients, who are suffering unbearably despite receiving optimal palliative care, at their request.’
The phrase ‘assisted dying’ or ‘assisted death’ is, however, deeply disingenuous. Indeed, in the context of this whole argument the word ‘dying’ has turned into what one might classify as a piece of terminal spin. It is used to avoid spelling out that what is actually being proposed by Dignity in Dying is killing -- either helping people to kill themselves, which is what assisted dying is, or causing them to be killed either by a positive action (for example, a lethal injection) or the absence of life-sustaining action (for example, depriving them of food or water).
(Excerpt) Read more at phillipsblog.dailymail.co.uk ...
Thread by Free ThinkerNY.
Elderly patients are being condemned to an early death by hospitals making secret use of "do not resuscitate" orders, an investigation has found.
The orders – which record an advance decision that a patient's life should not be saved if their heart stops – are routinely being applied without the knowledge of the patient or their relatives.
On one ward, one-third of DNR orders were issued without consultation with the patient or their family, according to the NHS's own records. At another hospital, junior doctors freely admitted that the forms were filled out by medical teams without the involvement of patients or relatives.
Under medical guidelines, the orders should only be issued after senior staff have discussed the matter with the patient's family. A form, signed by two doctors, is then placed in the patient's notes to record what decision was taken.
The findings emerged in spot checks of 100 hospitals undertaken by the Care Quality Commission (CQC), an official watchdog, earlier this year.
A charity for the elderly said the disclosures were evidence of "euthanasia by the backdoor," with potentially-lethal notices being placed on the files of patients simply because they were old and frail.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
"We will not be silent.
We are your bad conscience.
The White Rose will give you no rest."
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