It seems to me that if we as a nation allow Michael Schiavo to have his wife's feeding tube removed, we have crossed a dangerous line. I don't think anyone would begrudge Michael a more normal life, if that is what he wants. I do not claim to know the emotions he must have experienced because of Terri's condition, but if he wants to be free of her, he can always get a divorce. Her parents are more than willing to take care of her.
I work with handicapped children every day, and many of them have feeding tubes and are minimally responsive, at least until you get to know them and know how they respond. Yet educational law says that these children are entitled to education in a public school, in the least restrictive environment. Why should Terri be entitled to less? Certainly no one would deny nutrition to these children.
I find it hard to believe that when Terri said she did not want to be kept alive by extraordinary means, she meant having food and/or hydration withheld. I have a living will. When my husband and I discussed its issues, we agreed that while we did not want machines to breathe for us or those kinds of measures, the withholding of food and hydration would be inhumane. We figured if we could stay alive without the machines, there must be a reason for our being there.
I watched my mother die as her brain stem failed ovet the course of almost thirty years, and medical "practitioners" did not accurately diagnose her condition until three weeks before she died. An accurate diagnosis would not have changed the situation, but it certainly would have encouraged people to treat my mother better than they did. Doctors blamed her gradual loss of communication and other skills on "that menopause thing," dementia and mental illness. One pastor said she was depressed because she was now, at the age of sixty, an empty nester. He failed to consider the fact that at sixty my mother's condition became noticeably worse; things started much earlier. When we received an accurate diagnosis, we found out that Mom could communicate by writing even though she could not speak. How we wished we had known that before! The day before she died, she wrote a note to my father reminding him to take his offering to church because he had forgotten it the week before. Hardly the memory of a "demented" woman!
I was angry when people tried to tell me my mother was better off when she died. Although I was glad she was no longer in pain, the people who told me she was better off had dismissed her as a person long before her death. For instance, Mom liked to dance, so my father took her to a square-dancing class for seniors. The other members of the class went to the teacher, not my parents, to ask that my mother stop attending since she did not always immediately understand the directions or move appropriately. I had thought that seniors would be sympathetic to her plight, but most of them were afraid of ending up like her.
Where do we draw the line if we say Terri's life is no longer worth living? I take drugs for rheumatoid arthritis that cost around $30,000/yr. Since I am almost fifty years old, I do wonder what will happen to me if some insurance company decides that my life isn't worth their paying for my medicine. The quality of my life went rapidly downhill when I came down with RA, and while it has improved a lot, things aren't like they were. What if someone decides that I no longer entitled. I mean, I am older, and maybe young people need the insurance money more. My husband would bankrupt himself to keep me comfortable, but then what?
I thought we settled this before as a nation. We fought the Nazis as they tried to decide who had a life worth living and who didn't. Have we changed that much?
There was an episode of STAR TREK;THE NEXT GENERATION in which people were required to commit suicide when they turned sixty. It didn't matter what they had accomplished or the kind of health they were in. They owed their deaths to their society. My father, who studies the classics, said there was a Greek civilization that required the suicide of its older citizens. Is that what we will come to?
I know Terri's fight might not seem important to you NOW, but I think we as a nation had better beware. Sometimes when you cross a line, it takes a lot of work and hurts a lot of people before you get things back the way they should be. I guess I would agree with Pogo; as far as our courts are concerned, "We have met the enemy, and it is us."
For more information, go to www.terrisfight.org.
I work with handicapped children every day, and many of them have feeding tubes and are minimally responsive, at least until you get to know them and know how they respond. Yet educational law says that these children are entitled to education in a public school, in the least restrictive environment. Why should Terri be entitled to less? Certainly no one would deny nutrition to these children.
I find it hard to believe that when Terri said she did not want to be kept alive by extraordinary means, she meant having food and/or hydration withheld. I have a living will. When my husband and I discussed its issues, we agreed that while we did not want machines to breathe for us or those kinds of measures, the withholding of food and hydration would be inhumane. We figured if we could stay alive without the machines, there must be a reason for our being there.
I watched my mother die as her brain stem failed ovet the course of almost thirty years, and medical "practitioners" did not accurately diagnose her condition until three weeks before she died. An accurate diagnosis would not have changed the situation, but it certainly would have encouraged people to treat my mother better than they did. Doctors blamed her gradual loss of communication and other skills on "that menopause thing," dementia and mental illness. One pastor said she was depressed because she was now, at the age of sixty, an empty nester. He failed to consider the fact that at sixty my mother's condition became noticeably worse; things started much earlier. When we received an accurate diagnosis, we found out that Mom could communicate by writing even though she could not speak. How we wished we had known that before! The day before she died, she wrote a note to my father reminding him to take his offering to church because he had forgotten it the week before. Hardly the memory of a "demented" woman!
I was angry when people tried to tell me my mother was better off when she died. Although I was glad she was no longer in pain, the people who told me she was better off had dismissed her as a person long before her death. For instance, Mom liked to dance, so my father took her to a square-dancing class for seniors. The other members of the class went to the teacher, not my parents, to ask that my mother stop attending since she did not always immediately understand the directions or move appropriately. I had thought that seniors would be sympathetic to her plight, but most of them were afraid of ending up like her.
Where do we draw the line if we say Terri's life is no longer worth living? I take drugs for rheumatoid arthritis that cost around $30,000/yr. Since I am almost fifty years old, I do wonder what will happen to me if some insurance company decides that my life isn't worth their paying for my medicine. The quality of my life went rapidly downhill when I came down with RA, and while it has improved a lot, things aren't like they were. What if someone decides that I no longer entitled. I mean, I am older, and maybe young people need the insurance money more. My husband would bankrupt himself to keep me comfortable, but then what?
I thought we settled this before as a nation. We fought the Nazis as they tried to decide who had a life worth living and who didn't. Have we changed that much?
There was an episode of STAR TREK;THE NEXT GENERATION in which people were required to commit suicide when they turned sixty. It didn't matter what they had accomplished or the kind of health they were in. They owed their deaths to their society. My father, who studies the classics, said there was a Greek civilization that required the suicide of its older citizens. Is that what we will come to?
I know Terri's fight might not seem important to you NOW, but I think we as a nation had better beware. Sometimes when you cross a line, it takes a lot of work and hurts a lot of people before you get things back the way they should be. I guess I would agree with Pogo; as far as our courts are concerned, "We have met the enemy, and it is us."
For more information, go to www.terrisfight.org.
You can skip to the end and leave a response.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home