OK. I've come to a decision.

[Lone_Wolf_Moderate]

This decision is of course devoid of any legal weight, but here it is. I think they should reinsert Terri's Schiavo's tube. I've been thinking about this all week. The media covers it incessantly, and I've been weighing the moral options. Politics notwithstanding, I really cannot see how starving this woman to death constitutes letting her die with dignity.

This case hinges on two main factors, those being Terri's rights under law, and her overall medical condition. Michael Schiavo is her legal guardian, and has consistently argued that it was Terri's wish that she not live in this state. I recognize that the feds, barring emergency (i.e. chicanery) ought not get involved in the end-of-life decisions of individuals. The question is, is this really an end-of-life decision?

Many Court doctors have testified that she's brain-dead. Others have said that she's just disabled, and simply cannot feed herself. The family insists that she's not brain-dead. Politicians lie, but why would the family lie? What benefit is it for them to lie? With all due respect to Michael Schiavo, he does have a reason to lie. I'm not saying he's the villain his in-laws say he is, but he does have a bit of a conflict of interest. If she's brain-dead, and in a vegetative state, then that's one thing. If her parents are right, and this woman dies, then a lot of people will have a lot to answer for. If she wants to die with dignity, is starving her the best way> We treat dogs better than that.

DeLay and a lot of the Republicans are self-righteous political hypocrites. We all know that. But let God deal with the motives in the hearts of men. If the action is right, then motive is irrelevant, or at least secondary.

I just think they should insert the tube, until the whole course has been run. All options but the Supreme Court are moot at this point, but I'd hate to be the one to make the decision, and find out I was wrong.

Anyhoo, these are just my thoughts.

P.S. This idea may have come from O'Reilly, but I agree with it: What's the harm in Michael Schiavo just agreeing to the family's wishes and allowing them to reinsert the tube, and take care of her? He holds to his premise that he was only doing what she wanted, but out of concern for the family, will consent to their wish? The family could fit the bill. She apparently feels no pain, and you never know...

P.P.S. That will probably never happen, and I fear it may all be too late anyway.

[xray s]

1. Help me here

"Many Court doctors have testified that she's brain-dead. Others have said that she's just disabled, and simply cannot feed herself."

There is a difference between doctors testifying that she is in a persistent vegetative state and others saying she's just disabled.

A whole lot of people who have not examined her are making a whole lot of unsubstantiated claims (Dr William "Quakers" Frist, for example)

Or are we going to just throw out the entire legal system in this county and concede all public and private issues to the rule of the mob?

That is what this is all about.

[cynatnite]

2. Dying with dignity does exist

Holding back on nourishment and water is not uncommon and for a patient in Terri Schiavo's condition she would feel no thirst, no hunger and no pain. As part of standard procedure morphine is always on hand to deal with the possibility of any discomfort.

When we cared for patients in this condition we were careful to make sure they were treated with all the care and dignity we would want our families treated with. That includes when life support is held back. This is very humane.

The courts have litigated this for years. 19+ judges have reached the same conclusions. It's been said that this particular case has been gone over and reviewed far more than the majority.

Michael Schiavo is her husband. As her next of kin it is his right to make these decisions. It has also been proven that she did express her wishes to him and others.

The other thing to keep in mind is that in the 15 years since tihs has happened, Michael could have walked away at any time. He will not financially gain in any way.

The other thing to keep in mind, too, and I think a lot of people miss out on this is that maybe the guy really loves her. This is the woman he married and they intended to spend the rest of their lives together plus have children.

Lastly, check out www.abstractappeal.com It's all there.

[deadparrot]

3. Okay, I'll try to do my best.

First of all, I have to ask: What does Mr. Schiavo have to gain, besides marrying his girlfriend? He seems to have moved on in that regard; marriage would do little else but make it official.

As to her condition, I will cite an impartial lawyer who does work on the Schiavo case for Court TV.

http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/infopage.html

Go down to Questions and Answers, then to the question "What about the Schindlers' claims that Terri is conscious and responds to stimulation?"

I think it explains pretty well the conclusions the courts have come to in determining Terri Schiavo's state.

I think the parents are being misinformed and outright lied to by the religious fundamentalists who surround them. After reading opinion after opinion, I cannot see how someone with knowledge of what Terri Schiavo has become could possibly think that there is some viable course of treatment.

As to your first P.S., it is not about what Michael Schiavo or the Schindlers want. It is about what Terri Schiavo would have wanted had she a say in the matter--and court after court has determined that being kept alive by these means was not her wish.

[Lone_Wolf_Moderate]

13. I looked over the site.

It did answer a lot of my questions. I wonder why the media never pointed out the Michael Schiavo was one of most frequent visitors to his wife? Or that he did indeed send her around the country for experimental care? This certainly puts Michael Schiavo in a different light. I'll have to look over the information some more (he's got a WHOLE lot of the legal docs for this case).

[deadparrot]

15. Yeah, those were really useful.

There's a lot of primary documents, which are good for sorting out the really blurry details.

[panbanger]

4. final wishes

Hopefully after I'm dead, my loved ones wont decide to have me stuffed and mounted in the living room because that would make them feel better. Their reasoning could be that I don't know the difference anyway.

I would hope they would respect my wishes and bury me.

[sandnsea]

11. Oh god thank you

That is exactly it. I don't know what in the hell these parents are thinking about.

[tjdee]

5. So if you were in that state but your family wanted you to be, okay?

First off, Michael Schiavo is the decision maker. Period. If he says unplug her, it should have already been done.

Second, the parents took care of her for 2 (or 3) weeks. They brought her right back to where she is. They don't want to take care of her, they just want her to stay alive at whatever cost. They have said that *even if* Terri said she didn't want to be kept alive this way, they would have wanted to keep her alive.

Which leads to the last point: Are you saying "fuck Terri and what she wants?" Because that is what this comes down to (aside from the legal issues)--if she does not want to be alive, should she have to be? Just so her parents can be happy?

[Lone_Wolf_Moderate]

16. No that's not what I said.

I'm just trying to get a hold of this case. I want her wishes respected, I just wouldn't her to die if she didn't have to. I've been reading a lot of the court docs and records (after my initial post). It adds a whole lot of perspective. I may have to rethink my position again.

[lyonn]

18. A natural death

Had they never inserted a tube in her stomach she would have died naturally. Now she is being un-naturally kept alive. If a person had a chance of any kind of recovery then a tube would be the thing to do.

[KaliTracy]

6. private decision between closest kin and informed doctors. Government

should not be involved in this. Nor should the public. Government did not come to the rescue of the baby who's mother wanted to keep him alive (in Texas), though he wouldn't get "better" (and if the doctors had known about his condition, would have never been placed on life-support at all). And in Fact -- then Governor Bush Passed this law that Hospitals can veto parental wishes if the treatment is known to be ineffective.

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3087387

<SNIP>
Sun was delivered full term at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital, but Hudson, 33, said she had no prenatal care during which his condition might have been discovered.

He was put on a ventilator while doctors figured out what was wrong with him, and Hudson refused when doctors recommended withdrawing treatment.

Texas Children's contended that continuing care for Sun was medically inappropriate, prolonged suffering and violated physician ethics. Hudson argued her son just needed more time to grow and be weaned from the ventilator.

Another case involving a patient on life support — a 68-year-old man in a chronic vegetative state whose family wants to stop St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital from turning off his ventilator — was scheduled to be heard Tuesday by the Houston-based 1st Court of Appeals. But the case was transferred to the 14th Court of Appeals, which promptly issued a temporary injunction ordering St. Luke's not to remove the man's life support. No hearing date has been set.

[Mr_Spock]

7. You can't starve an unfeeling corpse to death!!!

I feel so bad for the limited ability of people to understand how the body works. My grandfather starved himself to death voluntarily - he couldn't feel much of anything and he just became unconscious and passed away. I feel sorry for people who can't accept how fantastically our body is at adapting and releasing the appropriate chemicals to minimize any suffering. I wish people could at least TRY to understand this. And Terri doesn't even HAVE a cerebral cortex to even FEEL THE PAIN!!!!!!!!! Can you imagine if she IS inside here head BEGGING to be let go and nobody will listen because she can't talk?? The only reason I see for her existence is for the edification of scared people like here parents and others who can't accept reality. It's CERTAINLY NOT FOR TERRI's BENEFIT!!! I can't deal with ignorance any more. No more on this subject for me...

[Algorem]

8. Why can't they try a brain transplant?

Or even a whole-head splice job?

[punpirate]

9. The great problem with this case is...

... that many people, just like you, feel they have some say in the decisions about this woman's life.

It's not up to you. It's not up to me. It's not up to the various Bushes involved, it's not up to DeLay or Frist or the members of Congress.

It's not up to anyone but the family, and they have their disagreements. The courts have decided upon their disagreements--even to the extent of appointing an outside guardian ad litem to evaluate the case, the testimony and the religious and medical ethics involved.

It's none of our business, except to the extent of pointing out the implicit hypocrisy involved with the political participants in this unfortunate display of national stupidity.

Cheers.

[Lone_Wolf_Moderate]

17. I never said it was up to me. I made that clear in the beginning.

I was just stating an opinion. I almost wish I could forgot about this case, but the media keeps bringing it up, and you know, you think about things.

[punpirate]

22. Maybe the word "decision" sounded...

... more moralistic than thoughtful. Apply whatever you glean from this to your own life, if there's a lesson in it for you. But, saying you've come to a decision about someone else's plight isn't quite that, it seemed to me.

On another thread, someone used the phrase "entertainment" in a post, and it occurred to me that this spectacle is a kind of perverse entertainment, one that the media has used (in the basest sense of the word) and it reminded me of a film from over fifty years ago--"The Big Carnival," from 1951. I would recommend it to everyone, and recommend to watch it with the Terry Schiavo case in mind.

If you understand why you're being inundated by the media with every seemingly infinitely small detail of this story, that knowledge may help you know why you're distracted by it, and perhaps, even why you've come to a decision about something the details of which you actually understand very little. Perhaps the media has led you to where you are now.

The reason I make mention of this is I have a friend who was an RN who spent several years rehabilitating people with brain injuries, spinal cord injuries and such. From experience, she had a pretty good sense of the range of injuries, including people who seemed barely cognitive, but who were, in fact, cognitive. She'd seen any number of patients who weren't.

Then one day a couple of years ago, she was coming home from work, fell asleep, rolled her car several times and ended up with a number of injuries, including a depressed skull fracture. By the time she reached the hospital, her brain had swollen badly, had several large hematomas and a fair amount of brain damage due to both the accident and the swelling, and she'd stopped breathing on the helicopter. She had an excellent neurosurgeon who stopped the bleeding, removed the damaged brain tissue, but wouldn't give any assessment of her chances.

At any point, her family could have said, in consultation with the doctor, pull the plug. But, in her case, it was worth waiting, said the doctor. So, she was kept in a chemical coma for a week, on a ventilator, and monitored. When she came out of it, she was aware, but in serious trouble. She's alive and well and still rehabilitating.

My point in saying all this is that even she doesn't want to come to any sort of opinion about the Schiavo case, because she's familiar, intimately familiar, with both sides of the ethical question, based on both personal and professional experience.

In talking with her, I have the feeling that she wouldn't have wanted to be resuscitated had she been in Terri Schiavo's condition, but wouldn't have wanted that decision to be left to her family, and was saddened by the thought of the hardship such a decision might have caused her family--very much the situation in which the Schiavos now find themselves.


Cheers.

[Laurab]

21. EXACTLY!

I haven't posted on any of these threads for that very reason. It's NOT my business. It's the family's business, and if they don't agree, they'll have to work it out, just like any other family.

It is a personal family matter, and should have remained that. Now, no matter where I go, I can't get away from it. It's in politics, it's in latest breaking news, it's on the greatest page, it's front page news in every newspaper. I don't watch the news, but I imagine it's there, too.

It needs to go back to being between the family and the doctors.

[sandnsea]

10. Are you married?

It doesn't surprise me that O'Reilly doesn't value the love and commitment of marriage vows.

I don't understand why people think it would be easy for spouses to just walk away. It's no easier for a spouse than a parent.

[seabeyond]

12. major misinformation in your post

the doctors that have examined her says she is in a vegatative state and cannot recover

"Others have said that she's just disabled, and simply cannot feed herself."

the others you refer to, none of them have examined teri and frist for one made his diagnosis from watching a highly edited video tape done some years ealier for a couple of minutes

so intellectually what you say alone is false, or not honest anyway

[LittleClarkie]

14. I thought the Supreme Court was moot too

In fact, I'm pretty sure they've been there too.

[Still_Loves_John]

19. I don't think the parents have a "motive" per say

but I can see how they would want her to be conscious to the point where they truly believe it. I know that if I was in the situation I could easily believe the same thing. No one wants to believe that they're just looking at a shell instead of the daughter the raised, or the sister they grew up with, or their wife (Schiavo waited 8 years before he believed that she was really gone).

That being said, the medical evidence is simply to the contrary. All the independent doctors that have examined her have reached the same conclusion: she is in a persistent vegetative state, and only some hired doctors from the other side (with shaky qualifications, none the less) have asserted otherwise.

[LSK]

20. her cerebral cortex is gone

http://biology.about.com/library/organs/brain/blcortex.htm

Go look up what that means and then tell me if she is simply "disabled".

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

23. Not every adult would choose for their parents to care for them

I know I wouldn't. We know she chose Michael. Did the relationship sour? I don't know. I seriously doubt that a man that would beat his wife would then go to the ends he did for her to recover, and provide the care he has which by the accounts of many uninvested parties has been beyond what most would do.
I know - I've been there with a severely disabled family member.

[Clarkie1]

24. You don't get to decide, and your opinion doesn't matter here.

Neither does mine.

And that's how it should be.

[MollyStark]

25. Good job

I respect your ability to have an idependent opinion and state it clearly. Good for you, really. We are supposed to be thinking human beings and not sheep who follow whatever our fellow partisans think.
Thinking for yourself and making up your own mind is always a good idea.