Terri Schiavo

Anyone can see that she is still inside. my God,
I can't imagine the thoughts that must be going through her parents mind. I have major respect and love for them I wish I could do something. Its like they are relatives or something. Keep fighting your doing exactly what ANY loving parent, sister, brother , human being would do. There is always hope!!! Bless you Beth Smile
I can't even comment on the husband all I can say is there is a pay day for all evil doers.

I think the husbands wrong

Where do people get the idea that pulling the feeding tube is a horrible way to die????? My opinion, if you want to bring God into this, is her time to go was a long time ago and we are preventing God from taking her!

If a large percentage of her brain is gone and replaced with spinal fluid, how could she possibly improve (since brain tissue does not regenerate) and even people with lobotomies react, but what kind of life is that?

The patient isn't feeling any hunger. The dying is part of a very tragic disease, and the inability to eat is an expected part of its last stages. Inserting a tube will not stop the progression of the fatal disease, though it might prolong or hasten the dying process. Dying without hydration is comfortable, many loved ones choose to forgo the tube feeding. Society is doing her a great injustice by making her the poster child to live no matter what! I myself, would hate my family for eternity if they ever chose to keep my dying body alive with my mind gone

Fuming: If we're going to begin making judgments like "what kind of life is that?" we're going to create a society in which only the well and perfect have a right to live. The alternative to executing the chronically ill or the physically or mentally defective person is providing compassionate care for them, and in this case, there are two adults ready and willing to make that personal sacrifice.

I am surprised to hear that you are certain that Terri Schiavo "isn't feeling any hunger." The court has been debating what she does or does not feel since she became incapacitated.

For those of us who are less certain, it seems cruel and inhumane to starve a person to death. Dehydration is a frightening and painful experience for any conscious being, even more so for one who has a diminished capacity to understand what is happening to her.

Fuming is WAY off base. First of all, the brain CAN regenerate and dying by starvation/dehydration is a terribly painful way to go, unlike what Terri's "loving" (sarcasm intended) husband has said.
Visit this website to see what pulling her feeding tube (which is not in all the time, by the way, but only when she is being fed) will be like.
http://fight4terri.blogspot.com/2004/09/recipe-for-murder-by-cheryl-ford-rn.html

Also, there is one woman who was considered comatose and had her feeding tube removed. She later recovered and said that she could hear everything that went on around her but couldn't say anything. Her original diagnosis of "comatose" was changed to another condition whereby muscles cannot move (like speech muscles). So, original diagnosis was WRONG! That's why they call it PRACTICING medicine.

Okay, I found the story of the woman who had her feeding tube removed for 8 days and she wasn't as responsive as Terri Schiavo. Her name is Kate Adamson. Here is the story:

Meet Kate Adamson. She is the mother of two, a motivational speaker, author and another "miracle." In 1995, at just 33, she suffered a double brain stem stroke and was in a coma for 70 days. She was completely unresponsive to stimuli and was diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state. Doctors finally pulled her feeding tube and, for eight days, she lay dying.

Instead of being completely unconscious as the doctors believed, Kate actually was very aware of everything going on around her. She was intensely aware of being left to die and very much in pain. She appeared on "The O'Reilly Factor," in 2003 and host Bill O'Reilly asked Adamson about the dehydration experience:

O'REILLY: When they took the feeding tube out, what went through your mind?

ADAMSON: When the feeding tube was turned off for eight days, I thought I was going insane. I was screaming out in my mind, "Don't you know I need to eat?" And even up until that point, I had been having a bagful of Ensure as my nourishment that was going through the feeding tube. At that point, it sounded pretty good. I just wanted something. The fact that I had nothing, the hunger pains overrode every thought I had.

O'REILLY: So you were feeling pain when they removed your tube?

ADAMSON: Yes. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. To say that--especially when Michael [Schiavo] on national TV mentioned last week that it's a pretty painless thing to have the feeding tube removed--it is the exact opposite. It was sheer torture, Bill.

O'REILLY: It's just amazing.

ADAMSON: Sheer torture . . .

Luckily for Kate, her husband, Steven Klugman, actually fought to have her feeding tube put back in. He wanted to save his wife's life. For another two weeks he fought doctors to convince them that Kate was really communicating with the family. She says that she would try to blink to communicate. She would blink once or twice and then she was too weak to do it again for an hour or more. After three months in acute rehab she was finally able to speak.

Kate was never really in a persistent vegetative state, she was cognizant the entire time. Even when they took her to surgery for a bowel obstruction and operated on her, giving her minimal anesthetic and treating her like a vegetable, she felt the entire thing.

What are the differences in the case of Kate Adamson and Terri Schiavo? First, Kate was completely paralyzed and obviously no where near as responsive as Terri Schiavo who laughs and interacts with her family. And second Kate had Steven Klugman who loved his wife and wanted to her to live. Unfortunately, Terri has Michael Schiavo who has always refused to allow his wife to have the tests and rehab that she needs. He is fighting to let her die.

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Then there's this story:

http://www.batesline.com/archives/001350.html

February 23, 2005
Terri's not the only one
WriteWingBlog has links to several testimonies from people who have first-hand experience with acute rehabilitiation or with a misdiagnosis of PVS. Hyscience's Richard has a moving story to tell, and you can understand why Terri's situation matters so much to him. And Rus Cooper-Dowda's story is amazing -- like something out of Kafka -- you must read it:

In February of 1985, I woke up in a hospital bed in Boston, MA. I couldn't see very well and I couldn't move much -- but boy could I ever hear!
I heard a terrifying discussion then that I will never, ever forget.

Around the end of my bed were a "school" of doctors in their white coats, planning when to disconnect my ventilator and feeding tube. I immediately started screaming, "I'm here!!" No one but me heard me.

They did notice my sudden agitation. They heavily sedated me. For a time, everytime I woke up I would make as much noise and move as a much as I could to show them I was "in there."

And they would, in response, heavily sedate me...

I then started spelling the same word in the air, "Don't! Don't! Don't!...."

The doctors decided that the letters I was spelling in the air were repetitive seizure activity and just happened to occur most often when they were in my room discussing killing me...I even took to writing them backwards to make it easy for them to read...

It took subversive nurses to keep me from being killed. One nurse brought in a clipboard and a broken pen so I could finger-paint letters on paper.

Yet, it earned me a final conference where the doctors had to prove to the nursing staff for political reasons that all my communication was just agitation and seizures.

At that meeting, my then husband, who was a doctor siding with the other doctors who wanted to let me die, held that clipboard which was my lifeline up in the air in front of me. He was not going to make it easy.

The purpose was to prove that the nurses were basically hallucinating and that I was really and truly brain-dead.

To prove I could not communicate, he then put ink on my fingers and asked while laughing, "There isn't anything you want to tell us, is there?"

In response I spelled out, "D-I-V-O-R-C-E Y-O-U!" The laughter got very nervous then. The doctors called for medication because I was obviously having a sezure.

Then the nurse who used the board first with me said, "Let me try" and "What do you need to tell us today?"

I spelled out, "D-I-V-O-R-C-E H-I-M!!!!"

There was never a question after that about whether I was "in there' or not.

DCF needs to investigate this in their probe re: Terri Schiavo - AHCA Coverup

Information, materials, etc. pertinent to crimes being perpetrated against Theresa Schindler Schiavo and pertinent to a current DCF investigation listed below:

http://tekgnosis.typepad.com

Let your Congressman and Senator know and tell them to vote in favor of the Incapacitated Person's Legal Protection Act as well.

Kates brain stem stroke is from what Doctors have said, is different than Terris condition. I listened to a Florida senator saying yesterday that 19 judges have reviewed this case, and all have allowed the tube to be removed. These were not 19 doctors standing around the bed all conferring with each other. So they are all wrong! Using Kate as an example she blinked he way to recovery, and wrote with her fingers. Has Terri ever displayed any of this? These are different scenarios.

Then we come down to what we perceive is our right to live or die. Patients have at there disposal a form which they can sign that says they have the right to die simply. Paraphrased: I do not want to be sustained by artificial means if something happens while in surgery, and you can not revive me or put artificial life sustaining tubes in me. What if Terri has cognitive capacity, and she is screaming at all of you to let her go? Have you asked yourself that question? If God and the holy spirit wants us to live we will. As a Christian, if given the choice to go home to a better life free of pain, or the choice of staying here in a crippled debilitated state, I chose to let God make that call. A non believer would chose to be sustained as they have no other hope...

Then there is stem cell research. All of you better want this to happen because it has the same implication. A means of Sustaining, prolonging life. And cloning body parts to prolong and sustain life. You better believe this is right and needed, and if you are a Christian that God ordains this. I was on Kate Adamsens website and I never saw Gods name listed. Humm. If you want bills passed for right to life, be careful what you ask for.

Example: My dad at 87 whom was having a vibrant active huge gardener type life, right up to where
he had a bowel obstruction, and got intestinal fluids down his lungs had a right to die( do not resuscitate) form filled out and was denied that right. He never talked about that after he got about 90 % recovered at least to me, but I got the feeling while in the hospital the first time he wasn't a happy camper. 3 months later it happened all over again, and this time his rights were followed and he died 4 days later. Even the in the second bout, He tried to remove the oxygen mask which was his only aid to life, and was indignant at us for forcing him to keep that. He didn't have had no brain damage at all. I can hear it now. He was old and, and. No ands. It appears we pick and chose whom has the right to live or die.

God retains the only right to life. If Terris wishes are being acted upon by her husband is wrong, then 200 years of law is thrown out as the spouse has that control guaranteed by law. Its been right for that long so why are we butting in.

You open Pandora's box when you go after this right to life bill. Brain dead people with papers signed and carried saying use my good body parts to save others is null and void. They have to be sustained wouldn't they, and some one or a bunch of people will die because they couldn't get the good organs to save them. You cannot have your cake and eat it too. Mans hands or Gods. You decide.

to starve a person is a horrible and cruel way to die. even death row imates get better treatment then this. may God have mercy on how cruel we can be to the disable.

It is a known medical fact that once you pass a certain stage of hunger ( yes, you feel hunger ) that after that you no longer feel that sensation. In fact, you may feel a feeling of euphoria, but not starvation as so many think you would feel. Beyond that, I urge people to remember what happened to all humans before tubes were available for feedings, people died. When people died of natural causes, nobody was screaming in their minds how much those loved ones were dying, they just accepted the fact, that someone was dying. Dying is a fact of life. Before tubes, before antibiotics, ... people did die. My mother had MS and I also asked her doctor if he could remove her tube feeding, she was very much like Terri. Her MD said no. My alternative, as power of attourney, was... IF she becomes ill, withhold antibiotics, and let nature take it's course. There is a common misconception out there that removing a tube feeding is such a terrible way to die, that starvation is just the worst that can be,.... but ask doctors, that feeling of hunger is a bodies' response to tell it to eat, but that passes, it is a response to indicate a need, it is not a lasting and painful and worsening effect of not eating. Many ask, who are we to play God and remove the tube ? But, another question to ask is, who are we to play God and prolong life that just 50 years ago, would have been gone ? This is not a new suffering !!! What I wonder is... what will Terri say, what will she and God discuss, when her soul is in heaven and she looks down and says, why did so many try to make me live this way ? Who made it up to them. To those who think it is killing ot remove that tube, ask, who said a tube could ever be put there to begin with. And to all those protesting, that is your right to do so, but also, ask, have you EVER been in that situation yourself ? To protest in your own belief without having been there, is to be blind. Until you have been in those shoes, I have been, you do not know what you would really do. Mimi ( I am a daughter first, and then a nurse).

The Schiavo case is obviously a heart rending situation. But many of us have had loved ones who have died after protracted periods of illness and I think many of us do have some idea of what the Schiavo and Schindler families are going through.

Bascially I agree with the above post by Mimi. I'm an MD and I know that some years ago withdrawl of food and water was hardly ever considered an option. Now, for a patient with an severe irreversible problem, it is considered an option as long as it is believed to be clearly the will of the patient. Also, narcotics and transquilizers can be given if the patient has some retained consciousness in order to relieve any discomfort that might occur.

I know that such a process does not sound palatable to some people. But lately I have been surprised to see patients with living wills asking for that approach and having their families fully supportive. In such cases the role of the physicians is, in part, to be sure that everyone has the medical facts straight. One would not want to do that in the case of a condition that would have a good chance of getting much better in a reasonable amount of time.

Never having seen Ms. Schiavo I really do not have any way of knowing what her condition is via my own experience. From what I have read, the majority of hightly qualified doctors who have examined her are certain she is in a persistent vegetative state and that she has been in such a state for many years. Assuming that is correct, I think that withdrawl of food and water can be an appropriate thing to do, assuming that is what the woman would have wanted. We cannot know that for sure, but I believe that this has been looked at very thoroughly through years and years of litigation. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think that Michael Schiavo made the appropriate decision. I'm sure it has been terribly hard for him too. While he perhaps has not covered himself with glory for fathering a child with another woman before his wife is officially dead, wasn't there someone who said something like "Judge not..." or some such thing?

One can always second guess these difficult decisions. It sounds as if Mimi's mother was going through her travail at a time when withholding food and water was not commonly done. In that case the approach of no aggressive treatment with antibiotics was probably the appropriate approach under the circumstances. But what if there had been another sibling who said "You must do everything and treat every infection. Otherwise you're killing her! How inhumane to let her suffer bacterial infections without antibiotics!" Then that case might have gone to court even despite a power of attorney. Such things happen but if there is something on paper drawn up by a good attorney, usually the cases do not turn into horribly protracted public arguments. And even more important, I think, than getting things on paper is for the family members to communicate well with each other. But I guess some times that isn't possible.

might say that Ms. Schiavo's soul may already be in Heaven and she is looking down at all this commotion from above.

Mimi and Dr. S.: I appreciate your thoughtful comments. You both show a very profound respect for life in the things you say. I share that respect, and it is that same respect for life that is creating so many strong opinions about Terri Schiavo.

There is lots of disagreement about what is right, what is moral, what God might want. But I think it's very good for all of us that we have this national conversation. The ethics of modern medical techniques and biological inquiry have been left too long to a small number who are directly involved in these decisions every day. They understand the nuances of the issues, but they may also be too close to make objective decisions and policies about death, what constitutes appropriate research, respect for life, and so on.

Like everyone else, I have my own (strongly held) opinions. Parts of Europe have embraced euthanasia and doctor-assisted suicide. Physicians in this country are overwhelmly uncomfortable with the idea. We are moving as a culture in directions that we have not fully discussed, with possible consequences that we have not fully understood.

So perhaps the best thing Terri Schiavo has done for us is to become the focus of a national dialogue on some issues that are difficult to talk about and morally complex, but that must be faced head on. Perhaps as a result of her plight, we can come to some agreements about what sort of approaches are permissible, moral and respectful of life.

I can not get over the fact that this woman is still on TV saying she was being "starved to death" when the fact of the matter is she had her tube feedings held because of gastrointestinal problems and they were hydrating her via IV in the meantime. Plans were made for rehabilitation in the ICU unit and she could communicate in the ICU unit. She was never in a vegetative state.

My prayers are with the Schindler family. It is one thing to decide your own fate; quite another to decide for someone else; especially with so many questions unanswered as to her condition and her true wishes. I myself would not want to live in the state that Terri was in, but I most certainly would not pull the tubes from my husband or children unless I have had very clear instructions from them.

Even my 14 year old daughter questions the motive of Mr. Schiavo as to why he would not allow Terri's parents to take over the care of their beloved daughter.

"Micahel & Jodi, you do have your own lives and your own CHILDREN, why not be decent and return Terri's body to her parents for a proper Roman Catholic burial." Even for a assumed dedicated loving husband, don't you think you have done absolutely ENOUGH!