I know we got a little sidetracked discussing things with fessie, but does anyone have an answer to my question? (See post #362)
Amen Shayna.
Fessie, get used to the fact that you will have no rights with respect to your children once they become adults.
Let me repeat: you have no rights with respect to your children once they become adults. Similarly, the Schindler’s have no rights with respect to their daughter once she became an adult. More particularly, once Terri Schiavo married, all rights to control health care for Terri were granted to her husband, and vice versa.
You had better get used to the fact that one day, God forbid, your son or daughter in law may be making the same decisions regarding one of your twins. It’s an awful thought, but it’s one that every parent has to prepare themselves for, no matter how inadequate that preparation may be in the face of reality.
If you would prefer to blather on about subjective and/or emotional opinions, go for it. But the fact is that these things are approached using a left brain, logical method for good reason. Let me give you a hint why: your subjective opinion is only valid from your point of view. Hardly anyone shares your unique point of view to any great degree. Opinions change, point of view changes, and so do emotions. The only opinion that matters here is Terri Schiavo’s. We know what that was and it had nothing to do with the husk pictured so prominently on the national news.
CJ
What is this, the fucking Steel Cage of Ignorance Tag Team Match around here? Every other page somebody has to poke their head in and say something that’s already been answered, and all the facts have to be pointed out all over again?
Read the thread, please! Read the cites, please!
DUH.
I forgot to say that the Foley allows the nurse to measure the amount of urine produced. It does nothing to increase or decrease urine output per se.
It is used so that the skin to the buttocks etc can remain as clean and dry as possible so that decubiti, aka bedsores do not occur.
A small/short and incomplete survey of the total care that Terry needs:
Terry, or someone like her, also needs to be turned a minimum of every 2 hours, probably more often, to prevent bedsores, and also to help drain mucus from her lungs to prevent pneumonia. At the same time, her mucus membranes in her mouth and nose need to be kept moist.
Her joints must be put thru what is called passive range of motion in order that they don’t contract (flexor muscles are stronger than extensors), but despite that, it looks like she has some degree of contracture to her hands, at least.
She must be suctioned to clear her airway on an as needed basis.
Her feeding tube insertion site must be kept clean and dry and if it has a dressing, that must be changed daily.
She is incontinent of bowel and must be kept clean, also her she requires additional perineum care when she is on her menses.
Constipation and diarrhea must be avoided–the former b/c it could lead to a bowel obstruction and then major surgery to correct that; the latter to avoid dehydration and electrolyte loss. She must be monitored for infection every day…I could go on, but why?
My point is not to say–look she needs so much care, why should we have to do all this(I don’t feel that way at all) but rather to show folks–and most of you are up and about, normal, healthy, don’t give it a second thought active–just how we provide care to those who cannot literally do anything for themselves.
Hope this provides some insight.
I’m glad you said that, Diogenes. I’d been thinking for a long time this man has more honor that most people out there today, based purely off of this situation.
Quite educational Eleanor.
What kind of backstory are you looking for - like, who is she and why would she suddenly be making these outrageous claims? At this point I think it’s anybody’s guess, but given that absolutely nothing she says has ever been reported during 7 or 8 years of testimony and trials, there are no corroborating “witnesses,” and the claims she’s making border on the absurd, I’d say the odds are 100% likely that she’s a lying bitch with an agenda. I mean really, she fed the woman pudding? Terri could laugh and talk? Interesting how the words she supposedly was able to say were “mommy,” “help me,” “hi” and “pain,” not “allow me,” “Michael,” “die” and “please.” I really hope Michael Schiavo sues the bitch for slander.
I’d just like to add that my father, at 82 and in poor health had not gotten around to a living will. I can’t imagine why the average mid 20 year old would.
I would also like to point out that while the Shindlers are giving interviews, complaining that Michael has “another family” (after absolutely devoted care to Terri for 5 years), continue to lie about things like “denial of treatment” (unless you’re talking about allowing a speech therapist in recently - that’s not denial of treatment, that’s “let’s not force Terri’s body to go through any more than necessary to make her comfortable, especially when there’s absolutely no chance in hell that it would do anything for anyone except line the therapists pockets”), and my personal favorite one about how much $$ Michael got (how long do you really think that settlement lasted in paying to care for Terri? How much $$ has Michael spent in attorney’s fees to help him honor her wishes?).
and yet, when Michael is interviewed, he saves his negative comments for the politicians and other hangers on making a mockery of his family tragedy. I"ve not heard of him making negative comments about Terri’s family, despite their never ending shit fest via web site etc.
Oh, and if it means anything, 9 of the top 10 results of a google search on the nurse’s name, Carla Sauer Iyer, come from the following (unbiased - haha) sources:
freerepublic.com (2 occurances)
discardedlies.com
rumormillnews.com
apfn.org (American Patriot Friends Network)
hyscience.typepad.com
bamapachyderm.com (My Vast Right Wing Conspiracy)
Page 2 results are just as enlightening.
Hunh. I missed this in my read through of the GAL report.
Prior to their falling out, the SCHINDLERS encouraged Michael to “move on” with his life and to to date other women, whom he introduced to them.
That kind of puts the “he was screwing his mistress and thus doesn’t deserve to have any guardianship over her” stuff in a whole new light.
I can understand why it would be hard for a parent to let go of a child. The record suggests that it was not easy for Michael Schiavo to let go of Terri. But after she’s been in this condition for years, it’s evident he decided she was not coming back and that the right thing to do was honor the feelings she’d expressed in that regard. The Schindlers have remained in the same state for 15 years, and for me that’s a little hard to accept as hope. Delusion, maybe. Denial, maybe.
As I mentioned in another thread, next month my mother and I will both have living wills made up, saying I do not want to be kept alive artificially if I have no consciousness and no hope of recovery. [I’m 22.] I’d like my father to do it too, but I haven’t talked to him about it. I will not leave this responsibility directly to my parents precisely because I don’t expect them to be objective. You’d expect a parent to want to preserve the child they raised and continue past hope and reason. I’d rather leave it to a spouse who views me as an equal, a partner who took me willingly, instead of a child. If I can write the document this way, I’ll leave my care to a spouse or long-term girlfriend if I have one; children if I have those and don’t have a spouse/S.O.; and then probably my parents if I have neither of those.
Hmmm, reading this article has given me a scary thought.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7254897/
bolding mine
Who wants to bet that they’ll say she was perfectly fine (laughing, playing GTA3, debating the bible with scholars, etc.) until the tube was pulled and now blame that on her not being responsive?
In the 5 stages of grief, they are stuck between denial and bargaining. For people to be there for 15 years indicates mental illness, my guess severe. The parents should be thoroughly checked by a psychiatrist and committed to an institution. That is too long to be in such deep denial. But guilt makes you do funny things. This is just sick, plain sick.
I find it simply disturbing that as an adult, my parents would think they had the right to trample upon my free will in determining when I would choose to have medical treatment terminated or who I chose to make those decisions for me if I should be unable to, and that so many elected idiots in suits would trample on that right as well.
Adults are no longer the property of their parents, and they ought to have the absolute right to decide when to stop medical treatment or who should decide that for them. Terri Schiavo chose that person when she said ‘I do.’
Exactly. I am 27 years old. I am also now considering drawing up a living will or durable power of attorney naming someone who I know for sure will follow my wishes and pull the plug, because I am not entirely sure that my parents would.
We don’t have to be. She chose to give him that power when she made him her next-of-kin by marrying him.
Some of us have had children and been in this position. Mr. Toy and I made this decision, and would do it again. It was the right thing to do for our child.
I have children. It is precisely because I have children that I am completing a health care proxy form tonight, which will not name my mother as even an alternate. Even though I know my mother made the same decisions for her father that I would want made for me. Even though my mother’s own living will contains the same decisions I would want made for me. Because I don’t know that I would be able to make those decisions for my children. I hope I would, but I’m sure it’s one thing to make such decisions for your parents, who you expect to predecease you , and another thing entirely to make them for your child, who is supposed to outlive you. I don’t know that my mother would make those decisions for me in her own grief, but I do know that she believes she is my next of kin and would likely fight my husband if she disagreed with his decisions.
Sure, half of all marriages might be doomed. But if I one day come to feel that I can’t trust my husband to make decisions that I am not capable of making, to choose what I want or what’s best for me rather than most convenient for him , that seems to be to be a damn fine reason for a divorce.
Just out of morbid curiosity, I guess, but if they left the feeding tube in and continued the care as you described, how long could she be expected to exist as she is? To a ripe old age? What do people in this condition usually end up actually dying of?
I recall reading somewhere that it’s extremely rare for someone in her state to live longer then 10 years after the incident.
Donno if that’s true but I thought I’d toss it out there.
Infections from bed sores, pneumonia, a whole host of things. But usually these result from less than perfect care. By all respects, while she isn’t recieving therapy, she’s been well cared for. She could exist like this indefinately, for many more years.
I’m not going to address the issue of the videotape; this has been addressed elsewhere. Suffice it to say, a videotape shows what the maker wants it to show; it is by no means objective “proof” of anything.
That said, I’ve been in the unenviable position of having to make the decision to terminate my older son’s life support. He had contracted an infection during labor and delivery that attacked his brain and left him comatose at 29 days old.
This was not a decision that I made lightly. I didn’t want my son to die; losing a child is the worst thing anyone can go through. But the alternative was worse. The alternative was a lifetime spent in intensive care units and nursing homes watching this shell of a person. While he was in the hospital, it was actually painful spending time with him. He wasn’t capable of any kind of meaningful response; the movements he made when I’d stroke his cheek were reflexive.
When the time came to make the decision to terminate life support, my family and I consulted my rabbi for a lengthy discussion of the ethics and theology involved in this decision. We decided to terminate life support on the basis that to force him to “live” out his life with no sentience or feeling was cruelty of the worst kind. Letting him go was the best course of action, because it spared him that torture.
Terri Schiavo is in the same boat as my son. She is not capable of any kind of sentience, feeling, emotion, or anything that makes us human. She is a body, period. I truly feel for her parents, and genuinely wonder what is driving their denial and hope that they can let go.
Robin