Schiavo case highlights eating disorders.. a sad lesson

[BrklynLiberal]

Terri Schiavo, shown in an undated family photo, weighed 200 pounds at her heaviest. She lost 65 pounds in her late teens.

Before she was the severely brain-damaged patient at the center of a legal dispute over whether she should live or die, Terri Schiavo was a young woman who desperately wanted to be thin.
At 26, she was strikingly beautiful with delicate features. But she had spent her childhood and high school years as a chubby and shy girl, standing just 5-foot-3 and weighing 200 pounds at her heaviest.
When she finally lost 65 pounds in her late teens, men started to pay attention — including the man who would become her husband, Michael Schiavo, who was tall and handsome.
But keeping the weight off was a struggle for Terri Schiavo, and years later — after her heart stopped briefly, cutting off oxygen to the brain — a malpractice case brought against a doctor on her behalf would reveal she had been trying to survive on liquids and was making herself throw up after meals. The Schiavos' lawyer said her 1990 collapse was caused by a potassium imbalance brought on by an eating disorder.
It is a cruel twist lost on no one close to the case: A woman who is said to have struggled with an eating disorder is now in the middle of a court battle over whether her feeding tube should be removed so that she can starve to death.
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more...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-02-25-schiavo-eating-disorder_x.htm

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[BrklynLiberal]

2. How come 19 judges believed it?

Why did they win a medical malpractice suit against the doctor for the misdiagnosis of the bulimia?

Why are you such an expert about it?

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

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[StopTheMorans]

5. btw, if you're going to try and advocate for someone's "life", you should

at least learn to spell her last name right to show how much you "care" about the person, rather than the politics :eyes:

[BrklynLiberal]

6. You have no idea whatoever what you are talking about

[CottonBear]

7. MSNBC & CNN are not reliable news sources.

You don't know what you are talking about. You need to research the facts. The state of Florida appointed a legal guardian for Terri who determined that she did not want her body to be kept alive if her brain was gone. Terri can't appeal anything. She has no brain. Her husband is the only one who can speak for her.

[StopTheMorans]

4. so now her husband tried to murder her originally, and now wants

to finish the job? this shit gets more unbelievable by the minute; enjoy your stay :eyes:

[pansypoo53219]

8. instead of deleteing assholes

i wish they would just make it red or something. makes it very confusing.

and would they delete it if i said she finally got her wish to be thin?
ever seen a chubby 'veggie'?

ooh, i'm a baaaaad girl.

[NorthernSpy]

9. huh?

ooh, i'm a baaaaad girl.

I don't know whether you're bad. I do know that you're not making much sense...

[Chovexani]

10. Sad but typical.

Yet another flame war over a troll and the original point gets ignored. How ironic, considering the subject of the story is how Terri's alleged bulimia has been a virtually ignored aspect of this case.

With all of the media coverage of this case, I've heard about the eating disorder maybe once in passing and that was it. It's sad, because there is a huge opportunity here to educate people, particularly young people, about the hidden costs of these diseases. The fact that there are entire Livejournal communities of anorexics & bulimics sharing tips on how to get the most out of the eating disorders is living proof that education is sorely needed.

This entire situation is so utterly tragic I don't even have the words anymore.