Confused about Terry Schiavo

Status
Not open for further replies.
Most religions and philosophies caution us (in similar language, incidently) not to judge other people unless/until we have experienced the same thing ("Don't judge a man unless you have walked a mile in his shoes," etc.)

I know an Episcopalian priest whose wife in in an advanced state of Alzheimer's and has been institutionalized for several years. She isn't in pain and isn't dying, but she is incapable of caring for herself and does not recognize even her husband or her children.

He has a girlfriend. The children know it, they know the girlfriend, and they approve. They accept the fact that Mom isn't Mom any longer and they can accept that Dad has a right to continue to live a full life.

Under the circumstances, I think it is indefensible to castigate Michael Schiavo because he has a girlfriend.
 
Most religions and philosophies caution us (in similar language, incidently) not to judge other people unless/until we have experienced the same thing ("Don't judge a man unless you have walked a mile in his shoes," etc.)

I know an Episcopalian priest whose wife in in an advanced state of Alzheimer's and has been institutionalized for several years. She isn't in pain and isn't dying, but she is incapable of caring for herself and does not recognize even her husband or her children.

He has a girlfriend. The children know it, they know the girlfriend, and they approve. They accept the fact that Mom isn't Mom any longer and they can accept that Dad has a right to continue to live a full life.

Under the circumstances, I think it is indefensible to castigate Michael Schiavo because he has a girlfriend.
Click to expand...

Excellent post and analogy Hawkmoon. :)
 
I think it is indefensible to castigate Michael Schiavo because he has a girlfriend.
Click to expand...
If he has a girlfriend and a family, it is obvious he no longer has a abiding committment to his wife. I am not judging him for that. BUT, why not divorce her and let her parents, who have begged him to do so, take care of her. What possible reason does he have to remain married to this "vegetable", whom he does not love, other than the hundreds of thousands left of her settlement?

This guy is the lowest POS that exists, staying in this marriage only so he can grab his wife's settlement money. And when it becomes apparent she is not going to die fast enough for him, he fights in court to hasten the process. I wouldn't be surprised if he has a new car already picked out, just counting down the days until his wife starves to death.

But if requested in a living will, there will just be another argument to impose ones beliefs on someone else.
Click to expand...
Terry Schiavo doesn't have a living will.
 
If he has a girlfriend and a family, it is obvious he no longer has a abiding committment to his wife. I am not judging him for that. BUT, why not divorce her and let her parents, who have begged him to do so, take care of her. What possible reason does he have to remain married to this "vegetable", whom he does not love, other than the hundreds of thousands left of her settlement?

This guy is the lowest POS that exists, staying in this marriage only so he can grab his wife's settlement money.
Click to expand...

It's obvious that you are judging him for it.

Would you last 15 years if it were your wife? Or could you only handle 15 days????
 
In Minnesota, some thirty years ago or so, a

somewhat similar story started. It involves a former Miss Minnesota, or a Mpls. Aquatennial queen. (I don't recall the names involved, else I'd google it). At any rate, whether it was simply mental illness or brain damage, I do not remember that, either.

However, this happened a bit further on in the couple's life. He was a successful lawyer. His wife was "institutionalized"--which would have been the typical response of the day--and, IIRC, in a private facility.

Eventually, he divorced her and, I think, remarried. But throughout all this, he provided for his first wife's medical care. His will provided for her care, should he die before her.

Now, personally, I find that kind of committment admirable, and well-based on principles. In the discussion at hand, I see no reason why we cannot see Michael Schiavo's behavior in the same context. The committment between Michael and his wife is modified by any number of understandable (to me, at least) contingencies--not the least of which is that his wife has no cerebral cortex left.

More importantly, it is apparent the court does not seem him as an opportunists. From my POV, the only opportunists here are the parents--they are the ones playing the political cards, and arguably, based on their religious beliefs--thus introducing another variable into the game.
 
I do not want to read several pages, so I just will give my opinion. Feel free to ignore it:

1. Don't pull the tube as she left no living will. I am reluctant to terminate someone unless they left those instructions. This depends on the tests in #3.

2. The politicans are opportunist scum. They only seek to gain brownie points with their religious loonie constitutents. Let them commit personal funds and time to care for her.

3. The parents need to let her go - if competent and not religious whacko doctors and tests indicate that she truly has no higher brain functions. I'm afraid that the experts on both sides are nut balls by now.

4. The husband - see if you can get a divorce and let the parents deal with her. Surely there must be some place that will divorce you.
 
This is not your typical right to die case. Other than being brain damaged, she is healthy.
Click to expand...
You say "brain damaged" like she only had a concussion or something. It's far more serious than that. Her entire cortex - the part of the brain where "you" are, all your hopes, your dreams, the love you feel for family and friends, the appreciation you have for art or music or literature, the memories of your life, all of that is in your cortex - and in her, it's necrotised. Liquified. Gone. In other words, she is gone. All that's left is meat.

Look:
schiavo_ct_scan.jpg


She's gone. Good grief, you'd give a pet more dignity when it's terminally ill than this woman's body is being given.
 
I wondered what the initial cause of Terri's collapse was and found it odd nobody here did more than skirt the question. So I went looking. Turns out ol Mikey may well have been a wife-beater who took things a bit further than he had intended, eh? Allegations appear to date back to before Terri's coma. More below...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1350523/posts

http://66.195.16.55/bio742.html

http://www.michnews.com/artman/publish/article_7071.shtml

Lastly, if true, this flat negates the "vegetative state" argument(repost from another forum till I dig it up myself, though it's from an editor I recognize who has done numerous stories on Schiavo:

http://www.barkerhill.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3192

Ahh, here ya go. Keep telling us how this is nobodies business and she needs to die...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/1366414/posts
 
The woman is a vegetable.

How many of you would want to live like that?

How many of you would be grateful that your spouse fought to end your life if your were in that state and succeeded?

I would never want to live like that and would expect my wife to end my suffering.

Luke
 
Turns out ol Mikey may well have been a wife-beater who took things a bit further than he had intended, eh?
Click to expand...

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/03/debunking_lies_.html

Myths about the Terri Schiavo case

1. Terri is conscious

Court-appointed, government-appointed, and private physicians have confirmed that Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). Schiavo suffered massive brain damage as a result of a cardiac arrest 15 years ago, and ongoing neurological degeneration interim.

Patients in a PVS have no higher cognitive function and no chance of recovery.

Terri is neither comatose, nor brain dead. She is in a vegetative state because her higher brain centers have been destroyed and replaced by fluid.

1.' A recent study showed that patients like Terri are more conscious than we thought

A recent fMRI by study found that two patients in a minimally conscious state (MCS) showed slightly more brain activity during speech recognition tasks than would have been predicted based on the severity of their injuries and behavioral observations (Schiff ND, Rodriguez-Moreno D, Kamal A, et al, 2005). When the study was released, some commentators inappropriately cited this result as evidence that Terri Schiavo's level of consciousness might have been underestimated.

Terri Schiavo is not in an MCS. According to the authors of the study, a diagnosis of MCS is reserved for a subset of patients who demonstrate "unequivocal, but intermittent, behavioral evidence of awareness of self or their environment." Unfortunately, Terri is even more severely disabled than the patients in this study.

2. There are new treatments that might help Terri

Despite what Terri's parents say, there are no new treatments that could help their daughter. Anyone who claims that he can improve Terri's level of consciousness is a quack. You can't treat a brain that isn't there.

3. Terri's collapse is unexplained and/or suspicious

In an attempt to discredit Michael Schiavo, Terri's parents and their supporters are circulating unsubstantiated rumors of abuse and even accusations of attempted murder.

Former chief medical examiner for the city of New York and co-director of the Medicolegal Investigation Unit of the New York State Police, Dr. [Michael] Baden is often quoted in news reports and interviewed on television. [...] Dr. Baden, who has written three books on forensic pathology, told [Greta]van Susteren: "It's extremely rare for a 20-year-old to have a cardiac arrest from low potassium who has no other diseases . . . which she doesn't have. . . . The reason that she's in the state she's in is because there was a period of time, maybe five or eight minutes, when not enough oxygen was going to her brain. That can happen because the heart stops for five or eight minutes, but she had a healthy heart from what we can see." [Village Voice]

Terri Schiavo was not a healthy young woman. Her heart stopped because of a potassium imbalance induced by severe bulimia nervosa.[AP]

Hypokalemic cardiac arrests are rare in the population at large, but they all too common in young women with severe eating disorders. Michael Schiavo successfully sued Terri's doctors for failing to diagnose her condition. If there had been an alternate explanation for Terri's condition--like attempted murder by the plaintiff--you would think the doctors Schiavo sued would have brought it up.

Here's a transcript of the Greta van Susteren's interview with Dr. Baden on FOX News.

In the interview Baden alludes to Terri's alleged "history of trauma" and suggested that her brain damage might have been caused by a "head injury." Dr. Baden's insinuations don't hang together. Both Terri's bulimia and her potassium imbalance are well-documented. Whereas there is no evidence that Terri Schiavo's brain was destroyed by any kind of trauma.

BADEN: Yeah, your staff has provided me with a bone scan that you guys obtained ah from her initial admission in 1991 to the hospital. And that bone scan describes her as having a head injury. That’s why she’s there, that’s why she’s getting a bone scan. And a head injury can cause, lead to the vegetative state that Ms. Schiavo is in now, and it does show evidence that there are other injuries, other bone fractures, that on healing-stage, so that...

Dr. Baden says that the bone scan describes Terri as having a head injury. The implication is that the bone scan reveals that she suffered a head injury. The paperwork requesting the bone scan describes Schiavo as having had a head injury, but the bone scan didn't show any evidence of head or neck trauma.

The head injury hypothesis is utterly far-fetched. Believe me, if Terri had been bleeding into her brain on the night in question, the ER would have noticed.

An even crazier theory of Terri's collapse is phantom strangulation. This one got a sympathetic hearing from both Hannity and Colmes. The evidence is that Terri was admitted with a rigid neck. So far, no one has claimed that Terri had any of the classic signs of manual strangulation. Patients who have been strangled tend to have bruises on their necks, petechiae in the whites of their eyes (blood spots), and bits of their assailant's flesh under their fingernails. Manual strangulation doesn't always leave marks, but why attribute to phantom stranglers what can be explained by hypokalemia?

4. Michael Schiavo abused Terri

There is no firm evidence that anyone abused Terri. A judge ruled the abuse allegation irrelevant years ago, but Terri's "supporters" are determined to keep meme alive just to destroy Michael Schiavo's reputation.

Dr. Baden alleges that a bone scan taken in 1991 showed that Terri had suffered trauma. Here is the deposition of the radiologist who analyzed Terri's bone scan, Dr. William Campbell Walker.

During the deposition, Walker acknowledges that the abnormalities on the bone scan could have been caused by Schiavo's collapse, vigorous CPR, an earlier car accident, prolonged immobility, or aggressive physiotherapy. Contrary to Dr. Baden's insinuation, the scan revealed no abnormalities in the head or neck.

By the time the scan was taken, Terri had already been in the care of a nursing home for several months. For all anyone knows, Terri's bones may have been damaged by neglect or abuse at the nursing facility.

5. Terri's brain damage was caused by a closed head injury

The head injury claim has been repeated over and over in the right wing media. Here's the only evidence I was able to find for this bold claim: In his deposition, Dr. Walker says that Dr. James Carnahan, Terri's rehabilitation physician, wrote "closed head injury" on a form requesting a radiological trauma work up. Maybe Schiavo has a history of closed head injuries, but it is absurd to think that a closed head injury caused her current vegetative state.

6. Michael Schiavo just wants to inherit Terri's fortune

What fortune? Even the pro-tube Terri Schiavo Foundation reports that of the nearly one million dollar malpractice settlement earmarked for Terri's future medical care, less than $50,000 is left.

The TSF is righteously indignant that a fair chunk of that money has gone to attorneys' fees. A judge authorized Michael Schiavo to spend that money on legal representation for himself and his incapacitated wife. It's odd that the TSF is so indignant, seeing as they picked the legal fight that depleted the account.

The TSF also acknowledges that Schiavo offered to donate whatever money he stood to inherit to charity if Terri's parents would stop trying interfere with his right to make medical decisions on behalf of his wife.
Click to expand...

There are supporting links in the original article.
 
The TSF also acknowledges that Schiavo offered to donate whatever money he stands to inherit to charity if Terri's parents would stop trying to interfere with his right to make medical decisions on behalf of his wife.
Click to expand...
Is this true? This is the first I've heard of it. So many have said all he wants is the money he gets when she dies. There is also speculation that he doesn't want her to recover and risk the chance she'd say he was abusive. :scrutiny:
 
Likewise there are numerous statements from qualified professionals with opposing conclusions. Thus the fact remains it is simply a matter of who you choose to believe. And please don't tell me "the courts have said". Courts have the least credibility of anyone either side can mention in this. Courts and judges are merely bought and paid for arms of the political parties who, like us, simply have to choose which side they happen to believe at the moment.

Another fact is that Mikey has for all practical purposes clearly stated he has no over-riding interest in his estranged wife's welfare. Right or wrong, whether you agree with or condemn him, he has another family. He can't even offer an explanation at this point for why he continues the fight to kill her

As for your "rebuttal to the abuse charges, from the first paragraph:

The Terri Schiavo case has transfixed the right wing media while attracting comparatively little attention from the left. This is discrepancy is understandable. Once you know the facts, there's very little to argue about. The case is literally a no brainer.

Heh. Funny. The entire site carries on in the same silly vein. From the title no less:

Majikthise
Analytic philosophy and liberal politics

She'd have a lot more credibility if she at least got the label correct. In the US today it is Leftist politics. :rolleyes:
 
Is this true? This is the first I've heard of it.
Click to expand...

Yes, it is true. I made a point a while back of noting this in this thread to give Mikey his due. With what I have learned since then I don't believe I would have even tried to portray both sides at this point...
 
Honestly, I don't condemn him. I just don't understand why he is still fighting this fight. Can't even say what I would do in his shoes. Doesn't seem to be any good solutions here. Not knowlegable in the medical field either. I don't think it fair she suffer, but some have said she isn't. I'm more confused now, I think :confused: than when I started reading this thread. Originally, my opinion was that her parents should be given guardianship and allowed to care for her. Maybe, in time, if in fact she doesn't recover, they will make the choice of right to die for her. This really just boils down to a lesson for all of us. MAKE IT KNOWN TO ALL YOUR LOVED ONES BEFORE THIS HAPPENS TO YOU!!!!
 
I just don't understand why he is still fighting this fight.
Click to expand...
Why do you bother to put flowers on a grave or keep it neat and tidy, when it's just a patch of ground with a rotting corpse buried under it?

She was his wife. She is now dead - at least in any meaningful sense. They were a family and then she died. And in the space of 15 years, he started a new family - but that doesn't mean that the same sentiment that makes people put flowers on graves (that being the instinct to honour someone's memory) doesn't simply end. Even remarried widows and widowers still visit former partner's graves, y'know.

He can't even offer an explanation at this point for why he continues the fight to kill her
Click to expand...
Why do people keep thinking that this will kill her? It won't, it'll just stop her body from ticking over. That's it. Any part of her that you could say was "her" died a long time ago, as surely as if someone put a pistol to her head and pulled the trigger, spraying her grey matter all over a wall. Because that same grey matter has necrotised. It's gone. She's dead.

I just do not understand the difficulty in understanding this part. I mean seriously folks, her brain isn't there any more, it's physically missing. Where the hell is the difficulty in accepting that that means that she's dead for any meaningful purpose? Keeping her body alive afterwards, it's on a par with having your dead spouse stuffed by a taxidermist and sitting them at the dinner table!
 
I wondered what the initial cause of Terri's collapse was and found it odd nobody here did more than skirt the question. So I went looking. Turns out ol Mikey may well have been a wife-beater who took things a bit further than he had intended, eh? Allegations appear to date back to before Terri's coma. More below...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1350523/posts

http://66.195.16.55/bio742.html

http://www.michnews.com/artman/publ...icle_7071.shtml

Lastly, if true, this flat negates the "vegetative state" argument(repost from another forum till I dig it up myself, though it's from an editor I recognize who has done numerous stories on Schiavo:

http://www.barkerhill.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3192

Ahh, here ya go. Keep telling us how this is nobodies business and she needs to die...

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f...s/1366414/posts
Click to expand...


All quotes from the Schindler Camp. Don't believe 'em.

Terry's gone. Let the vessel die.
 
And please don't tell me "the courts have said". Courts have the least credibility of anyone either side can mention in this. Courts and judges are merely bought and paid for arms of the political parties who, like us, simply have to choose which side they happen to believe at the moment.
Click to expand...

Yes, let's just waive off the rule of law and put it up for a vote. :scrutiny:

We could just lynch the guy and settle it.

The courts have ruled that she did, in effect, have a living will. Those who don't like the ruling keep trying to reopen the arguments or create new ones to support the outcome they would have preferred.

I am really only interested in preserving a husband's rights over those of his in-laws. Terri's parents are not keeping faith with the living will judgment and attempts to appeal. It's really all about their feelings, not her wishes.

If there was any truth to scuttlebutt about the husband's motives, it could be substantiated, and was considered relevant, the major press would be all over it. There has been no shortage of personal attacks on the poor guy.

He has rights, and we of all people should care about that a whole lot. Any rights that Terri may have are her husband's custodial responsibility. That's the law. The church is not in charge.

A lot of this is just pro-lifers trying to score some legal points against abortion and capital punishment, actually caring little about the people involved. They care more about their own sensibilities, in effect wishing to strip everyone involved of their legal rights.

Congress is now demonstrating how dangerous the political influence of religion can be. They are also undermining confidence in sound legal rulings, not to mention once again being heavy handed about State's rights. Like or not, the US Supreme Court will utimately hear this case and dump it right back to where it started.
 
Except for this:
http://www.alternativescience.com/no_brainer.htm
Click to expand...
In all 600 cases that Lorber studied, there was some cortex still intact. There isn't any in this case - look at the scan above.
Plus, those cases were of hydrocephalus, a condition present from prior to birth. In other words, they developed from childhood with the condition and their brains had the benefit of the plasticity that neonate brains have in order to adapt to the condition - it wasn't something they suffered in adult life and then recovered from.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

D
  • Locked
Schindlers: Impeach Fla. Judge
Replies
5
Views
532
Art Eatman
A
P
  • Locked
Norris kin says drugs and guns are to blame
2
Replies
28
Views
2K
falling leaves
F
T
  • Locked
Supreme Court to Clarify Death Penalty Ruling
Replies
4
Views
455
bountyhunter
B
C
  • Locked
Selective Restraint
Replies
4
Views
331
Rebar
R
H
  • Locked
Terry v. Ohio versus Arizona v. Johnson - An expansion of Police Powers
Replies
13
Views
881
Sergeant Sabre
S
Back
Top