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Abstract Patients who are in the last few days of life are often too frail to take oral fluids and nutrition. This may be due entirely to the natural history of their disease, although the use of sedative drugs for symptom relief may contribute to a reduced level of consciousness and thus a reduced oral intake. Rehydration with intravenous (i.v.) fluids is the usual response in acute care settings, whereas the hospice movement has often argued against this approach. The issues are complex and involve not only physical, psychological and social concerns, but also ethical dilemmas. A review of the...

FULL TITLE: Terri Schaivo’s Brother: “Courts and Physicians Perversely Insist Its in Alfie Evans’ Best Interest to Die” The brother of Terri Schiavo certainly understands what happens when courts and doctors say someone should die. Bobby Schindler and his family fought a losing uphill battle against the court system that decided Terri was better off dead than living as a disabled patient. The parallels of what happened in the Terri Schiavo case and what is happening with little Alfie Evans are scary indeed. In both instances a court system has decided that a patient is better off dead and that...

he following is a statement from Terri Schiavo’s brother Bobby Schindler: “Charlie Gard’s life is more valuable than British and European bureaucrats realize,” explains Bobby Schindler, President of the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network. “The central issue of the Charlie Gard struggle,” continues Bobby Schindler, “is not about rationing, limited resources, or even life support. At issue is whether universal healthcare means that bureaucrats and judges will determine appropriate treatment, or whether parents like Charlie’s with the energy, finances, and physicians to care for their child will be allowed to do so.” The Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network...

Sen. Mel Martinez, nearly a year after leading the charge for federal intervention in the Terri Schiavo case, now says he may have been off-base. "Perhaps this was not in the realm of federal concern. It may have been better left to state courts to deal with it," Martinez said in a taped interview for Political Connections that airs today on Bay News 9. In a wide-ranging interview in which the Orlando Republican for the first time also publicly embraced the Senate candidacy of Katherine Harris, he alluded to the Schiavo controversy as providing a lesson "with a whack across...

TALLAHASSEE - Gov. Jeb Bush asked a prosecutor Friday to investigate why Terri Schiavo collapsed 15 years ago, calling into question a gap in time from when her husband found the woman and called 911. In a letter he faxed to Pinellas-Pasco County State Attorney Bernie McCabe, Bush said Michael Schiavo testified in a 1992 medical malpractice trial that he found his wife collapsed at 5 a.m. and he said in a 2003 television interview that he found her at about 4:30 a.m. He called 911 at about 5:40 a.m. "Between 40 and 70 minutes elapsed before the call was...

COLLIER COUNTY— Over a hundred cows were nearly starved to death in an Immokalee pasture in one of the largest cases of animal abuse in Southwest Florida. After a year-long investigation, Collier County Sheriff's Office has finally charged the person they say is responsible. Immokalee farmer Wallace Johns can't believe anyone would let a whole herd of cattle waste away. "I thought it was a bad situation. A person ought to take care of their animals if they got them," said Wallace Johns. Authorities say 120 head of cattle were being starved and at least a dozen of them died....

 Works for me.... 

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Friday that his party would wield the Terri Schiavo case against Republicans in the 2006 and 2008 elections, but for now needed to stay focused battling President Bush on Social Security. "We're going to use Terri Schiavo later on," Dean said of the brain-damaged Floridian who died last month after her feeding tube was removed amid a swarm of political

Help. Some days/weeks before Terri died, there were posts re the conditon of the Schaivo house the night Terri collapsed. The ems folks were concerned enough to call police. There was also a post about a police officer who began an investigation & was told to shut it down. I've spent the better part of an hour looking for these threads, but can't find them. Can anyone help?

Our daughter, Claire, has had a feeding tube for 10 years, and my mother is closing in on one year with hers. I am generationally sandwiched between feeding-tube patients. As Terri Schiavo was, no one is really sure how much breaks through my daughter's or mother's neurological remnants. Also, as Mrs. Schiavo was, neither needs a respirator. To the clinical, they are in a "vegetative state." The inexperienced callously refer to them as clumps of flesh that hover in a puzzling state for inexplicable reasons. But those of us who live with and care for these magnificent souls question the...

It all comes back to how one agent of government decided the facts, the evidence and the law. Terri Schiavo has lost her valiant struggle against the forces of law that set the forces of nature at work against her body. May the work of Jesus that conquered the force of death bring her family and friends comfort. One of the most puzzling aspects of this distressing ordeal has been the repeated mantra, “People just don’t want government involved in ‘end-of-life’ decisions. It should be left to the family.” A poll conducted by CBS last week indicated that “82 percent...

In a perfect storm of exposure, several pieces of evidence are hitting the kitchen table at the same time. One is the report of an unimpeachable panel assigned to the task, that the Bush Administration and it's advisors did not, in spite of the unrelenting and hysterical chants of the liberals, conspire to pressure intelligence officials to lie about, or inflate, the "evidence" of weapons of mass destruction. Unfortunately this conspiracy had become the last remaining hope of the liberals to emerge unscathed from their lockstep obstruction of U.S. response to attack on our home soil. Those liberals will never...

Access to Hospice Care: Expanding Boundaries, Overcoming Barriers, a report drawn from a three-year study of hospice access and values issues conducted by The Hastings Center and the National Hospice Work Group, a voluntary association of progressive hospices, was published as a Special Supplement accompanying the March/April 2003 issue of the bioethics journal, the Hastings Center Report... The report also offers a new vision of hospice, one that holds firm to many of the traditions and values of the past but finds new and more flexible ways to deliver care. The model of traditional hospice care as an independent and...

On March 31, 1631, English priest and poet John Donne entered into life everlasting. He is Commemorated this day on the calendars of the Episcopal and Lutheran churches. His most well known essay is "for whom the bell tolls". Nuc lento sonitu dicunt, morieris. Now this bell tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die. ...No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well...

CBS BLUNDERS AGAIN! Read the obituary notice....even before Terri is dead!! It was titled: "The short, sad life of Terri Schaivo" It was scheduled for publication on Monday, March 28th, 2005! It has been corrected and pulled, but can you imagine a two-page obituary in all this detail? INCREDIBLE. CBS was counting on Terri's death, pulling for her to die! YOU HAVE TO READ IT TO BELIEVE IT! http://www.glennbeck.com/news/03-29-05/printable683.pdf

As Terri Schiavo's parents grew more resigned to their daughter's fate, a federal appeals court said it would consider a new hearing on whether to reinsert the feeding tube that kept the severely brain-damaged woman alive for 15 years. The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals (search) did not indicate when a decision could be expected. The court order late Tuesday night allowed Bob and Mary Schindler (search) to file the emergency appeal, even though the court had set a March 26 deadline for doing so.

"George Felos, Michael Schiavo's lawyer, said after visiting Schiavo yesterday afternoon that he believed her death was near. He and hospice officials said she has received two 5 milligram doses of morphine since her feeding and hydration tube was removed on March 18, but that those very small doses were administered by hospice nurses who noticed 'slight moaning, facial grimacing and tensing of [her] arms.'" From article by Maeve Reston, Post-Gazette National Bureau So look me in the eyes and tell me that Terri can't feel anything. Or that Terri hasn't felt herself slowly starve and dehydrate over the last...

Sunday, March 20, 2005 Beware of So-called Living Wills! From Flip Benham with comments by Steve Mashburn "You shall not murder." Exodus 20:13 Sunday afternoon Flip and I discussed the current crisis in Clearwater, Florida with Terri Schiavo and the issue of so-called “living wills.” It is our firm conviction at Operation Rescue/Operation Save America that “living wills” are extremely dangerous and should be viewed by Christians with extreme caution. We are opposed to “living wills” because God Himself is opposed to them.” He is sovereign. He is the One who determines who lives and who dies – not us!...

March 28, 2005 Jesse Jackson to Visit Hospice and Meet with Schindlers On Tuesday morning, March 29, The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr., founder and president of the RainbowPUSH Coalition, plans to visit the Woodside Hospice, where Terri lives, located at 6774 102nd Avenue N. (near 66th Street N and 102nd Avenue N) in Pinellas Park, Florida. Rev. Jackson is responding to an invitation from the Schindler family to come and pray with the family, and if possible visit Terri Schiavo in the hospice. After meeting and praying with the Schindler family, Rev. Jackson will make a statement to the...