If he’s had his way, she’d have been dead even sooner than that.
Then debate these issues. Hell, I’d even agree that 3 weeks wasn’t long enough, as that’s even shorter than is typically required to make a PVS diagnosis. If you actually want a debate, which is what the purpose of an OP in GD is usually for, then do so. There are plenty of places on this board for ranting.
To sum up:
The girl is still alive.
That she has any chance of even a miniscule recovery is still not known.
The state is not currently attempting to rush the process of pulling her tubes.
There is no evidence that any doctor is attempting to murder her.
At this time, not a single medical expert has provided evidence that she is anything other than in a PVS. If that changes, I’ll be very happy.
There is every indication that DSS is going to cover their asses so thoroughly at this point (even if it’s at least partially politically motivated) that the poor little kid is almost definitely going to be kept alive a lot longer than medically prudent, even if she remains in a PVS.
I don’t see a particular problem with the current handling of the situation.
I apologize for the lack of restraint I showed. This is still better left in GD. IMHO. But if you feel it must be moved then you can do so, it will be understandable.
I figured that my OP was clear on that being a debate point? Are we too willing to pull life support. You have no problems with how the state was handling it? They wanted to pull life support 3 weeks after the beating. They may be handling it better now, but the point is it would of been too late. If she was in PVS and actual experts other then state appointed ones say so, then my argument would be more moot. But thats not the case, only ONE doctor pushed for her removal from life support.
Longer then the 3 weeks it took them to say she was in a PVS lets kill her. Now if she is responding as some say she is, she is not PVS, is she?
Sounds like it just may be a misdiagonis eh. And to think these doctors where better then the experts who say 3 weeks is not even close to long enough to decide to pull life support.
But a coma and PVS are two different things. This girl is not just in a coma; there are questions about whether she will ever regain higher brain functions as simple as swallowing.
A definition of the term “coma.” And while the site notes that “a [persistant] vegetative state may last for years,” it also notes that “the cognitive part of their brain no longer functions.” The person is simply no longer there; the body may be moving and blinking, but there’s no thought behind the actions.
Three weeks might be too soon for many types of brain injuries, but the fact that a portion of her brain was sheared tells me that there is little chance she’ll ever be more than a group of cells waiting to be released to the soil.
My husband’s brother killed himself. But he didn’t die immediately. He was on life support and was missing a big chunk of his brain. It doesn’t take a genius to see that even though a person is still alive, the chance of meaningful improvement simply doesn’t exist.
There is still no medical evidence being provided that there is any hope of recovery. There might very well be such evidence, but we haven’t seen it yet. If it is forthcoming, I’ll be cheering for the girl right beside you. Until then, I see no reason to try and make any determination. As for believing in doctors, who should we believe if not them? I’m not sure what “the human bodies ability to fight for its life” has to do with anything in this debate, so you’ll need to clarify that.
There very well could be cases where life support was pulled before it was medically prudent to do so. Reviewing those and punatively dealing with them where warranted is fine by me. I’m certainly a fan of nailing down the process.
I’m not happy with how they were handling it, but at the time you posted your OP, it was being handled fine in my estimation.
Three weeks is not enough time to make a PVS diagnosis by most counts, so I’d be interested in their reasoning here.
Until we know if she is actually recovering, we don’t know that anything would have been “too late”.
Then debate that we need more formalized procedures to make a PVS determination. I’d be more than happy to support that.
If I was in a coma, I wouldn’t want anyone pulling the plug. If I was in a PVS, sure, I’d be happy to have at least several doctors agree with the diagnosis.
I think the problem is that you brought a particular case into the debate. In the case in question, there is still no evidence that the girl is not in a PVS, nor any evidence that she has even the slightest chance of recovery. A large majority of us have been debating it from that standpoint. A debate about how best to make the call when to pull the plug would be quite interesting. Emotional pleas about some poor kid who has been fucked over for her whole life, who still hasn’t been shown to be recovering, and saying that the doctors tried to murder her, all regarding a case in which we don’t know anything about her current state, doesn’t make for a good debate.
I’m sorry to hear that, but this case is different as many experts our saying. This is a child who just by being a child has a better chance at recovery. Is it not fathomable to you that maybe she wasn’t PVS, I mean if she was I don’t think the same people who where pushing for life support removal are now saying,
Abbie Normal, this is where you keep losing me. The only person who wants or wanted to “kill” this girl is her bastard step-father, and **he’s ** the one the blame should be placed on if she dies. Her doctors don’t *want * her dead. They simply don’t see the benefit of keeping her alive if there’s no hope of recovery. Please try to grasp the difference, and stop attributing evil motives to people when there’s no evidence of them.
Your tone is, frankly, hysterical, and your mistrust of the medical establishment seems to border on tin-hat conspiracy theories.
You keep linking to essentially the same article, which emphatically does **not ** say that she has experienced any significant improvement. All it says is that she is breathing on her own, and has responded to stimuli. One thing I did notice:
Okay…What if she recovers to the point that she can frown and move her hand, but cannot communicate with people or feed herself? Do you feel the doctors have the responsibility to leave her on life support?
I don’t know, now you are entering a gray zone. My cousin who as I mentioned is severely mentally challenged can do none of those things, well grunts but not for any real reasons. And yet I am pretty sure my aunt wouldn’t want to put him down. But if she can do any of those things, she is not PVS now is she? Didn’t think so.
Yes, I think she would be in a persistent vegetative state if she can only raise her hand and frown. There are degrees of PVS, as you have laid out in this particular case. She couldn’t breathe before but now she can. She’s still PVS. It is a higher degree, but vegetative nonetheless.
Actually, grunting, frowning, and moving her hand *doesn’t * rule out PVS.
Doing these things *knowingly * and *voluntarily * would rule out PVS. But grunting, frowning, and moving are all things that certainly can happen reflexively.
It amazes me that some people on here are better then the best doctors in the world at explaining PVS, wow and here I thought PVS was still uncertain and misdiagnosed with some frequency.
Well, this thread pisses me off, particularly references to the parents, so I felt like yelling. Originally it was going to be “She has no parents”, but I thought it sounded way too cold, guess I was wrong.
(BTW, Point me to what’s wrong in that post.)
And as worthless as yours, whether you use little fonts or not.
Despite their their legal status, they still are Haleigh’s parents.
Somehow, I don’t think you’d be quite so dismissive of their views if they agreed with yours.
Since their desires have been an issue in this thread, I thought it necessary to make it clear what those desires were.
Feel free to update that information if/when it changes.
Most likely, Holli Strickland is responsible for what happened to Haleigh, but since she’s dead she can’t be prosecuted.
But hey, we can just say it’s all Mr. Strickland’s fault!
You get bile in your throat “just thinking the person who saved her life”, I’m choking on it having to defend this prick.
Re your post to Diogenes the Cynic
Soo, sometimes what she says counts, sometimes it’s worthless?
I too wish we were in the pit but I’m trying to keep my thread starting virginity.
Kalhoun just to clarify, all the news stories I’ve read say it was her brain stem that was partially sheared.
–You really can’t make the diagnosis of a PVS less than about three months after the initial event. Recovery does happen, and it almost always happens in this period of time (probably a little longer in children). Up to that point, you can say that the patient is likely to be in a PVS, but not for sure.
So anyone who wanted to pull the plug three weeks out would have been jumping the gun (but see below). However, it also means that any further improvement at this point would be pretty much unprecedented.
Of course, terminology is not always thrown around with great precision in medical settings, especially when multiple doctors are involved, and even moreso once it gets filtered through the media. Everyone involved has probably used the term “PVS” only because the Schiavo case brought the term into the national consciousness. It’s hard to say exactly what the patient’s condition is, and what doctors have thought about it, or said about it.
–The fact that the state went to court to secure the right to remove life support doesn’t mean they wanted to do it right then. If I were in the state’s position, knowing full well that a decision was going to have to be made and there would be some question about who had the right to make it, I would start getting that sorted out as soon as possible. This is especially true when they know it could take months for the court to make its determinations.
–Abbie says that the state refused to let other doctors review the case. After the Schiavo case, I can understand why. That case showed us that there is no shortage of doctors out there who will say absolutely anything because 1.) it supports their non-medical beliefs, 2.) it is politically expedient to do so, or 3.) a lawyer pays them to say it. Would you want the case reviewed by that guy who was all over Fox News claiming that he had been nominated for a Nobel Prize?
Your high ground may not exist. What does exist is your desire to holler about doctors and the state of Massachusetts trying to murder this girl, as evidenced by the fact that waiting to find out more about her condition is (for you) unnecessary).
No, but most of the things you’ve said about the case are identical. People here and elsewhere could talk or post your ear off with reasons Terri Schiavo was obviously alive, communicating, and could recover. And Florida and the husband were killing her because “they haven’t allowed!” this that or the other thing. But at the end of the day, there was no medical ambiguity about what was happening. So in that respect, all of this seems very familiar. If this girl is capable of recovering and living any kind of life, I suspect we’ll find out about that soon.
There are definitely those who believe it’s misdiagnosed that often, but I don’t see why this pokes holes in Kalhoun’s statement.
Abbie’s definition of “life” appears to be literal. As long as the cells are still technically alive, that’s all that matters to her. And that’s her business.
Most people, however, consider the quality of that life when deciding whether or not they’d want to be kept alive under these circumstances. There is no reason to believe this kid will have a “life” in the conscious, productive, meaningful definition most of us use to define ourselves. If Abbie, should something horrible befall her, want to be defined as a mass of cells without the “personality” that defines the individual, that’s her right. However, the majority of people need more than that. Mistakes are made every day in medicine, but to go out on a limb and suggest that a thin chance of a miraculous recovery warrants keeping someone on life support indefinitely is to cheapen the definition of “life” as most people interpret it.