CNN.com - Court won't block feeding tube removal - Mar 16, 2005
CNN.com - Court�won't block feeding tube removal - Mar 16, 2005
Okay, yeah....take note: If I'm ever in this kind of state...remove the feeding tube. Please! Who wants to live like this with no hope of recovery?
I can't believe this is still dragging on. I thought it had been resolved some time ago!
7 comments:
I was at a dinner party right before the last ruling to allow removal of the tube some three or four weeks ago. Everyone there kept going on and on at how sad it was the the government allowed her husband to legally murder her in such a cruel and unusual way (starvation). All I could do was imagine myself in her body screaming for someone to put me out of my misery. I would sooner starve to death ten times over than to be forced to inhabit a body without function for more than a decade.
RE: blogger problems
I tried changing my blog settings but I'm still experiencing extreme slowness and a lot of "page not found" errors. It's frustrating. The Blogger Status site stated they are having issues with the servers that support Blogger so hopefully they'll get it fixed soon. I've had to retype several of my blog entries because it got "lost" during the publishing process.
I posted in my blog a few days ago, and still feel strongly:
If Terry is truly brain-dead and vegetative, as her husband and some doctors contend, then Terry shouldn't be aware of her surroundings, of her life, or of anything going on. If she's brain-dead, she's not home. She knows and feels nothing. What's the harm if she's fed a little longer? The idea of letting someone die in this type of situation is to alleviate suffering. If she's brain-dead, she's not suffering. She doesn't know anything, and doesn't care.
But what if she isn't brain-dead? Her parents insist she's not. Her parents, and others, insist they see signs of life, of activity, and of awareness. If she's not brain-dead, then she will suffer as no one should suffer if she dies of starvation and dehydration.
And therein lies the pickle: if she's not brain dead, no one knows what she's thinking. She could be screaming "kill me please", but she could be screaming "I'm in here, please, God, don't kill me!", or "I'm lonely... I wish my husband would visit me." (Oh wait, he's got a new girlfriend and two children by her, now, so he's kind of busy.)
The point is, we don't know her mind, or what she told him. So I ask: What's the rush to kill her? I know, I know, this case has been winding it's way through Florida courts for years. But, still...why the rush to kill her? Why the demand to get it done? Where's the harm in waiting just a while longer before killing her?
I just think that, when ever there is a doubt or uncertainty, we should always err on the side of life.
Gidget and Ed, if you really feel that way, I'd get a living will done up real quick. That's the only way to let those who will be caring for you know your true intentions.
Why rush? I wouldn't call 15 years of fighting courts exactly a rush. That is more like a extremely slow crawl. Not to mention that she verbally expressed to her husband that she did not want to be on life support in a persistive vegetative state. It seems as if these two facts seem to slip the minds of those arguing for her life which brings me to my last point. What business is it of ours? I certainly would not like everyone breathing over my shoulder whispering unsolicited opinions in my ear when I was forced to make a decision about what to do with my vegetative wife. Anyway, it looks like this will all drag on a little longer. This is just off the press:
**Exclusive Fri Mar 18 2005 00:50:07 ET** The Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor, and Pension (HELP) Committee, Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming) has requested Terri Schiavo to testify before his congressional committee, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned. In so doing it triggers legal or statutory protections for the witness, among those protections is that nothing can be done to cause harm or death to this individual.
Members of Congress went to the U.S. Attorney in DC to ask for a temporary restraining order to be issued by a judge, which protects Terri Schiavo from having her life support, including her feeding and hydration tubes, removed... Developing...
I have posted a more in depth response to the Terry Schiavo fiasco on my own blog if you are interested in reading it. All comments, pro or con are welcome.
Just in on the CNN website:
The feeding tube that has kept Terri Schiavo alive for 15 years has been removed, said Suzanne Vitadamo, her sister. The move comes amid a flurry of legal activity focusing on the brain-damaged woman Friday, including two very different orders handed down by two judges. Seven years ago Schiavo's husband, Michael, and her parents began a legal tug-of-war over whether to have her feeding tube removed and allow her to die. That battle has grown to include the U.S. Congress.
So noted Mom! Just remember that I feel the same way. I'd rather that my family just let me go to a better place than be forced to lie there day after day, regardless of my awareness.
Metallica has a song on their "And Justice for All" album about a man who is incapacitated by war wounds...some of the lyrics: "landmines have taken my sight, taken my speech, taken my hearing, taken my arms, taken my legs, taken my _____(soul?)...left me with life in hell". I think of this song and then I think of Terry and everything in me cringes at the thought of being forced to endure life in that state of helplessness.
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