Did you know that Terry Schiavo's Dad "pulled the plug"...

[chiburb]

On his own mother?

Snip:

But, given the vehemence with which he has been fighting to prolong
Terri's life, it is a little surprising to learn that Robert decided to turn off the life-support system for his mother. She was 79 at the time, and had been ill with pneumonia for a week, when her kidneys gave out. "I can remember like yesterday the doctors said she had a good life. I asked, 'If you put her on a ventilator does she have a chance of surviving, of coming out of this thing?'" Robert says. "I was very angry with God because I didn't want to make those decisions."

When some people "kill," it's apparently because God told them to -- and it's out of love.

When others do it, they are stripped of their legal rights, and damned to hell. And certain people -- but, it would appear, only members of the Christian Right -- are sometimes on the side of good, and sometimes on the side of evil. It also would appear that they get to choose which is which -- both for themselves, and for everyone else.

http://coldfury.com/reason/comments.php?id=P1235_0_1_0

[grannylib]

1. Oh man...seems like rampant hypocrisy to me although to be fair...

I think I would have an easier time making that decision for an elderly parent than for my child...
I really can't say, never having been faced with those choices.

[JitterbugPerfume]

2. I have been there

I made the decision for my son because I loved him more than I loved myself
Do not resusitate No heroic measures

sometimes you just have to put the other person first

[grannylib]

23. I am so sorry to hear you have had to face this, and with a child...

My deepest sympathy to you...

[liberalhistorian]

3. There's a big difference

between the two. His mother was dying and had absolutely NO chance of survival, so he did the right thing and let her die peacefully.

But, in the case of his daughter, it's a different story. Her husband won a million-dollar settlement so that he could ostensibly use the money to care for Terry. He then suddenly "remembered", after winning the money, that she had said she wouldn't want to live that way. The doctors at the time said she might benefit from therapy and other treatment, but he refused to allow her to have anything at all, insisting that she would just want to die. Of course, he would have had to have spent some of the settlement money for any therapy and/or treatment, and it's obvious he didn't want to do that.

He became involved with someone else and had a child with her in 1998 (she's now pregnant again), which is when he really began to fight to starve Terry to death. A growing family needs a lot of cash, you know, and maybe the girlfriend wanted to get her hands on some of it as well. He would not even allow Terry's family to visit her without his permission, and since he was the spouse, he held all the cards. If he wanted Terry to starve to death so that he could then have all the money, well, then, there's nothing much her family could do about it. Her family suggested that, since he didn't want to care for her anymore, he could divorce Terry, go on with his life the way he was already, and let them take over her care. But if he divorced her, he wouldn't get hardly any of the settlement money, so that was out of the question to him. I cannot imagine my child's spouse wanting her starved to death because he wanted her money, and me, as the person's own parent for God's sake, not being able to do anything about it. That is just plain WRONG.

So, you see, there's quite a bit of difference between the two situations.

[bleedingheart]

7. I read an article posted here and I watched Larry King interview

Mr. Schiavo. Apparently there is not much money left in the trust only about $50,000. He did have her receive 3 years of therapy after the incident happened. He even had a doctor implant a device to help stimulate her brain. None of it worked. He gave up hope. He has been fighting this legal battle for a long time with her parents, specificaly her father.

According to Schiavo, and of course this is his words, Mr Schindler wanted to know how much of Terry's settlement he would get if they pulled the plug on his daughter.

Personally as a parent I would feel conflicted but thirteen years is enough time to let go.

How would you feel if the Schindlers got custody of her and then had her used by the right to life organizations in videos and promos to help support their cause. What if they wheeled her around the country for people to gawk at her for profit?

Her care right now is primarily being funded by taxpayers because she receives disability and state funding. When the trust is finally drained she will go into debt...something that Mr. Schiavo risks having to pay...if that is the case and he continues on...I think that he won't have been in it for the "payout".

[OKNancy]

8. She has been brain dead for 13 years

She is never going to get better. The parents are just deluded.

As far as the husband is concerned, I give him props for staying married, and I see nothing wrong with him having another relationship.

He will not get any money from insurance. He got a medical malpractice settlement, but I'm sure you are aware that it takes big bucks to attend to Terry's needs. According to him, there is about $50,000 left. As far as I have read, the husband has done many procedures, some he knew wouldn't work.

You do know that the husband is an emergency room nurse?


http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/10/28/schiavo.lkl/

[liberalhistorian]

9. I never said there was anything at all wrong with him

having another relationship, and there certainly isn't. But I do not trust his motives, I don't like the way he's treated Terry's family, and I think there's a lot more in the trust than just $50,000.

[bleedingheart]

10. If there is more in the trust than why do they keep talking about the

original settlement amount? Why not talk about what is still remaining in the fund???

I actually think that $700K wasn't a lot of money for a woman who has been receiving a lot of care for 13 years.

My daugther was in a NICU unit for 9 days and the bill was $90,000.

This woman has been receiving feeding treatments (not cheap) and nursing care for a very long time.

I am starting to believe that along with the Kobe and Peterson cases this case is being set up to give it more media hype than it deserves.

[Bunny]

11. Michael Schiavo received $300,00 in the total million dollar

settlement that was his alone to use, to compensate him for "loss of consortium". He was not obligated to spend any of that on Terri's care. I do not know if he spent any on her or not, but the fact is that he didn't have to. I would think that with medical care being as expensive as it is, it's amazing that there is anything left of the original $700,000 settlement after 11 years (I think the settlement was reached in 92).

Originally, I was pretty suspicious of his motives as well. I thought it was pretty sneaky that he suddenly remembered, after getting the settlement, that she would have wanted to die after all. Especially since he allegedly swore during the original malpractice suit that he loved his wife, in sickness and health, and would do whatever it took to help her recover. I also think it's shaky that the only other people who said that Terri didn't want to live that way were members of HIS family, not hers (if I'm not mistaken).

And the Newsweek article a couple of weeks ago also painted him in a bad light, saying that he became enraged because she had spent $80.00 getting her hair done the day before she collapsed. It also said that he watched the mileage on her car, and that she had told a friend that she wanted to divorce him because he was so controlling. Overall, I had a pretty dim view of Mr. Schiavo.

Having said all that, I watched him on Larry King, and I do have a better understanding of his point of view. If he is being truthful, I think he honestly did try to get her rehabbed, and after a couple of years of efforts, it sank in to him that nothing would help her. He showed a cat scan of her brain, and that picture alone went a long way in convincing me that most of her brain is indeed gone. (I'm no doctor but it looked pretty grim to me).

He also said that the video that is always shown of Terri responding to stimuli is a condensation of at least 4 hours of videotaping that her family did, and the great majority of that time she was not responsive at all. Basically he said that if you video taped her long enough, you would get little snippets of her appearing to react to stimuli, but that it was just random movements. I guess it seems more possible to me now that he is correct in this regard.

I don't have a problem with Michael moving on with his life, but I think he could have just divorced her and let her family take care of her. I also think her family needs to stop their denial and let her go to her eternal reward. I don't care what anyone says, her condition is no kind of life - it's merely existence.

I think Michael Schiavo may personally be a jerk, but it seems to me that he has been misunderstood in the media. My heart breaks for Terri and her family. The biggest lesson I got from this was to prepare a living will, and appoint a power of attorney for health care. Both of those forms are now duly signed and authorized, and my entire family knows of my wishes. I would never want them to go through this.

[liberalhistorian]

12. Yes, he should indeed have divorced Terri and

let her family take over her care, especially since he has a new family now and should just move on with his life.

[Cleita]

13. I hope my husband's family doesn't interfere when it's

time for my husband to be let go. This should be a decision between Terri's husband and her doctors anyway you look at it. The doctors have decided there is no point in keeping her body alive as she will never get better. He is not arbitrarily pulling the plug, which would surely be murder. The Governor of Florida should never have interfered.

[11 Bravo]

15. I do not trust, I don't like, and I think.

For someone on the outside looking in, you are awfully free with your proclamations. One man held Terry Schiavo as she fell asleep at night; and he says she told him she would not want to exist in the state she currently finds herself. Who you trust, what you like, and what you think, don't really enter into the equation.

[maha]

19. I'm surprised ANY of that money remains.

Even a million dollars doesn't last forever, and the kind of care Schiavo is getting literally costs a fortune.

[maha]

18. No, it's NOT a different story.

"But, in the case of his daughter, it's a different story."

The daughter's cerebral cortex has atrophied away. That means she has NO HOPE of regaining consciousness, thought, self-awareness, perception, cognition, or even voluntary control of any part of her body.

She appears to be conscious only because her brain stem is still working. Her facial expressions and movement are just reflexes caused by firing neurons. But "she" isn't there any more.

The Guardian article (which I think is the article we are commenting on here) is inaccurate in that it says Schiavo is in a coma. She is not in a coma. She is in a vegetative state.

Every picture tells a story ...

[Lars39]

4. The article doesn't say when he had to make the decision

concerning his mother. I wonder if it was before he became more fundamentalist(unless he's always been this extreme). I've seen people that I have known for 20 years or more become more fundamentalist within the last 5-6 years.

[xxqqqzme]

5. that fundie thing is an epidemic.

My Mother stepped off that ledge 2 years ago.

[Lars39]

6. It is almost like a death in the family, isn't it?

It's really become intense the last few years, affecting sooo many families, and not for the better,either. :(

[Heddi]

14. The one problem I have with this case

is that the husband had her on a feeding tube for so long, won a settlement THEN remembered, YEARS later, that Terri said she "didn't want to live this way"----wouldn't that have been the FIRST thing he remembered once she was in this state? Why wait 6 or 7 years to REMEMBER that your wife said she 'didn't want to live this way'?

[tishaLA]

16. Maybe because that's when all hope of recovery was lost

and so what? I reject all this gossip, innuendo, and character assassination the fundies are doing to Mr. Schiavo. If they have any information about his bad motives, let them present it in court and let the judge decide. Instead, they go to bloodthirsty nedia outlets on the lookout for salacious reports about Mr. Schiavo's behavior, motives, etc.

I'm not surprised that someone like Randall Terry, the family's spokesperson and Operation Rescue leader, can stoop so low. I am surprised that reasonable people accept the bullshit he is spreading.

[maha]

20. Randall Terry is slime.

Words cannot express utterly worthless he is.

[dsc]

17. a few things

First, it is hard to tell from such a poorly written article but it appears that he didn't pull the plug but refused to have the plug plugged in. Those are different things. Funny how that columnist, who accuses his or her opponents of being incapable of distinguishing grey did such a poor job of doing so.

Second, and again the article is sketchy, we have no idea what the grandma Shaivo's wishes were. It is a perfectly consistant position to say that people should be able to pull the plug only when there is consistant evidence that is what the person wanted.

Third, no mention is made of the fact that every single group that represents disabled people also supports the parents. I guess they were harder to demonize.

Fourth, the fact there is only 50k left is irrelevent to his motive. What is relevent is how much money was left when he originally asked to have this done. Given the time that has passed that would be considerably more money. And hence considerably more money.

[maha]

21. When to pull the plug.

My brother and I decided to sign a DNR order for our mother a few months ago. She has Alzheimer's plus some other medical problems that could take her before the Alzheimer's does. She's very frail.

What made up my mind about this order was an experience of waking up after a simple surgery with a breathing tube in my throat. In my case I was fully cognizant of where I was, that I had just had surgery, that the thing in my throat was a breathing tube, and that I was safely getting oxygen in my body. Even so, I panicked. As soon as I had some control over my hands I yanked the damn thing out (the nurse fussed at me). I can't explain WHY the breathing tube seemed to terrible, because it didn't hurt. I think my body was yelling at me that I wasn't supposed to have something blocking my breathing tubes like that.

Anyway, I thought about my poor mother, with her dementia, gaining consciousness with breathing tubes and other tubes and who knows what in her and being terrified. And she wouldn't be able to understand what was happening. I don't want her to experience that.

My brother said that what made up his mind about the DNR is witnessing the agony his wife went through over having to make the decision to stop life support on her father. It's almost certain that if our mother's condition deteriorates to the point she needs life support, she's not going to ever recover enough to get off life support.

Schiavo's only "life support" is a feeding tube, which she needs because the part of her brain that controls voluntary action has atrophied away. It may be that for the first few years after her accident there was some hope her condition could improve, but at this point her cerebral cortex is gone, so there is no hope for her. Physicians say that she lacks the neurological apparatus to feel pain, so removing the tube would not cause her to suffer. No matter what she might have "wanted," the kindest thing that could be done for her is to let her go.

[dsc]

22. That may well be the case

but I don't trust his motives and combined with the utter lack of evidence that those are her wishes and not his I have a problem.

I know what Alzheimers is like and I am sorry for your mom. That is a terrible way to go and I wouldn't wish it on anyone. My parents to an aunt in who had it and watching her go was not fun at all. In most cases I think family is to be trusted here. There is no extraneous motive, no apparent dispute. That isn't the case here.