Culture of Life: Pull the plug on conscious patients - W's law.

[dutchdemocrat]

Culture of Life: Pull the plug on conscious patients - W's law.

by YucatanMan at Daily Kos

No one here can forget the spectacle made over the death of Terri Schiavo, whose brain had died long, long ago. But in Texas, the law George W. Bush signed as governor allows doctors to inform the family that further treatment is hopeless (and costly) and Pull the Plug.
Literally.

In the latest case to escape the Culture of Life warriors, Tirhas Habtegiris, a young woman and legal immigrant from Africa, was CONSCIOUS and responsive when removed from a respirator and allowed to die.

Let me rephrase that: She was killed by doctors who removed the ventilator keeping her alive. And this action was fully legal under Bush's economic considerations law. Her body was ravaged by cancer, but she was alert. She was responsive.

LINK

They handed me this letter on December 1st. and they said, we're going to give you 10 days so on the 11th day, we're going to pull it out, said her brother Daniel Salvi.

Salvi was stunned to get this hand-delivered notice invoking a complicated and rarely used Texas law where a doctor is not obligated to continue medical treatment ....

She wasn't white. Politicians did not speculate on her diagnosis via video tape. Conservative religious zealots did not picket the hospital. She didn't have insurance. Ventilator treatment is expensive. Baylor did not want to incur any more expenses. So they removed a conscious woman from a respirator.

THIS is the true face of compassionate conservatism and of the phony culture of life. They don't give a rat's ass, as long as the insurance will pay the bill. No insurance? Good-bye, you die.

...Tirhas still responded and was conscious. She was waiting one person.

She wanted to get her mom over here or to get to her mom so she could die in her mom's arms, says her cousin Meri Tesfay.

Ten days was not enough time, they say, to get a mother from Africa to America.

The family and hospital desperately tried to get Tirhas moved to a nursing home but they say no one would take her.
A fund issue is what I understand. Because she is not insured and that was the major reason the way I understood it, Salvi said.

A statement from Baylor Plano disputes that and says the hospital did its best to comply with the family's wishes in every way.

Still, on the 11th day, Tirhas Habtegiris was taken off the respirator and died.

A dying person's last request: To die with her mother by her side. Yet, economic considerations are more important in Texas than compassion. Without insurance, you are literally condemned to death if you need expensive treatment.

LINK

It was against our will to unplug her. We never wanted that.

After the fact, the hospital claims they were willing to help bring the mother from Africa, but the family here in Dallas says they were told time had run out. Yes, the hospital was willing to help, but only within 10 days. Otherwise... the bill.

Tirhas Habtegiris would not have recovered from her cancer. There is no dispute of that. But... just to see her mother one more time. That was all she asked. And the hospital allowed 10 days before treatment was discontinued.
Daniel Salvi and his family surrounded his sister's bedside Monday at Baylor Regional Medical Center in Plano and watched doctors take the 27-year-old off life support.

It didn't take long -- 15 to 16 minutes, Tirhas Habtegiris' brother recalled.

Can you imagine what it must be like to know you are dying for 15 minutes? Every time some wing-nut Republican politician trots out the phrase culture of life, remember Tirhas Habtegiris. Reflect on a conscious person knowing that life-giving air was being cut off.



Sit quietly for 15 minutes and contemplate how hopeless and horrifying that must feel. Recall the abject hypocrisy of Schiavo: Bush rushed back to Washington (more than he did for New Orleans) to sign the Schiavo Federal Court review legislation. But, Tirhas Habtegiris died quietly, died for 15 minutes, without anyone knowing, without politicians manipulating her life and death, never uncared about within the phony culture of life.

And she died without seeing her mother one last time.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/14/151930/63

[notadmblnd]

1. I remember about a week after the Schiavo circus

there was a baby in Texas that the state demanded the plug be pulled on against the mothers wishes. There was only a short blurb in the papers at the time and noone threw a fit about it either.

[dutchdemocrat]

2. All Patients on Life Support Are Equal - Some Are Less Equal Than Others

All Patients on Life Support Are Equal
Some Are Less Equal Than Others
By Billmon

Not to mention a different color:

The baby wore a cute blue outfit with a teddy bear covering his bottom. The 17-pound, nearly 6-month-old boy wiggled with eyes open, his mother said, and smacked his lips. Then at 2 p.m. Tuesday, a medical staffer at Texas Children's Hospital gently removed the breathing tube that had kept Sun Hudson alive since his birth Sept. 25. Cradled by his mother, he took a few breaths, and died . . . Sun's death marks the first time a U.S. judge has allowed a hospital to discontinue an infant's life-sustaining care against a parent's wishes, according to bioethical experts.”

Houston Chronicle

Baby dies after hospital removes breathing tube
March 16, 2005

Of course, being born in Texas didn't help, either:

Texas law allows hospitals to discontinue life-sustaining care, even if a patient's family members disagree. A doctor's recommendation must be approved by a hospital's ethics committee, and the family must be given 10 days from written notice of the decision to try and locate another facility for the patient. Texas Children's said it contacted 40 facilities with newborn intensive care units, but none would accept Sun.

(Via Wild Sects and No More Mister Nice Blog)

Meanwhile, back at the ranch:

ABC News obtained talking points circulated among Senate Republicans explaining why they should vote to intervene in the Schiavo case. Among them, that it is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited, and that it is a great political issue -- this is a tough issue for Democrats.

ABC News

DeLay Says He's Not Giving Up Schiavo Fight
March 19, 2005

A patient's inability to pay for medical care combined with a prognosis that renders further care futile are two reasons a hospital might suggest cutting off life support, the chief medical officer at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital said Monday.

Dr. David Pate's comments came as the family of Spiro Nikolouzos fights to keep St. Luke's from turning off the ventilator and artificial feedings keeping the 68-year-old grandfather alive.”
Houston Chronicle

Hospitals can end life support

March 8, 2005

Late one evening in the summer, a sudden rumour ran round the farm that something had happened to Boxer . . . A few minutes later two pigeons came racing in with the news: Boxer has fallen! He is lying on his side and can't get up!

About half the animals on the farm rushed out to the knoll where the windmill stood. There lay Boxer, between the shafts of the cart, his neck stretched out, unable even to raise his head. . . .
After about a quarter of an hour Squealer appeared, full of sympathy and concern. He said that Comrade Napoleon had learned with the very deepest distress of this misfortune to one of the most loyal workers on the farm, and was already making arrangements to send Boxer to be treated in the hospital at Willingdon.
The animals felt a little uneasy at this. Except for Mollie and Snowball, no other animal had ever left the farm, and they did not like to think of their sick comrade in the hands of human beings. However, Squealer easily convinced them that the veterinary surgeon in Willingdon could treat Boxer's case more satisfactorily than could be done on the farm . . .

The animals were all at work weeding turnips under the supervision of a pig, when they were astonished to see Benjamin come galloping from the direction of the farm buildings, braying at the top of his voice. It was the first time that they had ever seen Benjamin excited -- indeed, it was the first time that anyone had ever seen him gallop.
Quick, quick! he shouted. Come at once! They're taking Boxer away! . . .

Sure enough, there in the yard was a large closed van, drawn by two horses, with lettering on its side and a sly-looking man in a low-crowned bowler hat sitting on the driver's seat. And Boxer's stall was empty.
The animals crowded round the van. Good-bye, Boxer! they chorused, good-bye!

Fools! Fools! shouted Benjamin, prancing round them and stamping the earth with his small hoofs.
Fools! Do you not see what is written on the side of that van? . . . in the midst of a deadly silence he read: 'Alfred Simmonds, Horse Slaughterer and Glue Boiler, Willingdon. Dealer in Hides and Bone-Meal. Kennels Supplied.' Do you not understand what that means? They are taking Boxer to the knacker's!

George Orwell

Animal Farm
1945

[acmejack]

4. Thye breathtaking cruelty of this.

God, I feel like crying so often. What have we become? All this fine talk from our leaders, and talk is all that it is.

[Arkansas Granny]

5. Your excerpt from Animal Farm is just chilling. I read the book

many years ago, but I think it's time to find it and read it again. There's a lot happening these days that make Orwell look prophetic.

[acmavm]

3. There's nothing to use in these cases that they can pander to their

base with. These people are not middle class/upper class whites who's life, they feel, is of value. They are non-white lower class people (like that should matter!) that they feel are only good to fight their wars, sweat in their factories for little or next to nothing.

[newportdadde]

6. Thats the rub isn't it, cost. Conservatives are all pro-life until

you ask them to take out the wallet. I imagine myself walking around with a jar outside of Terri's care facility. I tell the protestors that her insurance ran out and that inorder to keep her on life support I would need 5000 a year every year from each family there until the day Terri naturally died. That if they wanted to remain they could but I would need their check in this jar, then I leave the jar and go back inside.

I come back out 2 hours later and nobody is there and the jar has been stolen.

[MadHound]

7. Baylor, it figures

Compassionate conservative Baptists. That is until you run out of cash, then you are nothing to them. One of the reasons I left the Baptists decades ago. Even at the age of twelve I could discern that the Baptist church was all about the money. I'm sorry if this offends any Baptists on this board, I know that you are fine and generous people. But it has been my experience in dealing with the Baptist church that they are first and foremost all about the money. Sad, sad, RI{ Tirhas Habtegiris:cry: