The Globe and Mail: Schiavo's parents ask Supreme Court to intervene
I have read much of the information that is available about Terri Schiavo, and I am aware that I do not know all of the facts involved. I believe, though, that there is a lot more than we as the public are aware of, and I wonder if those people who have said Michael Schiavo is within his rights to request Terri's death have been on the website that I started reading two years ago:http://www.terrisfight.org. Some of the information there about Terri's state of consciousness is disturbing, especially in light of the fact that her husband and court-appointed doctors maintain that she feels nothing, either emotionally or physically.
And I don't think living wills will solve anything if Terri's husband is successful in his attempts to euthanize her. As a person with a chronic disease and a handicapped sticker of my very own, that frightens me. I watched people over the weekend, people in WalMart who were pushing the wheelchair of a disabled person and had to continually straighten her head, a woman in church who walked her Down's Syndrome daughter to her seat. Are they frightened too?
Nine years ago, I had a thyroidectomy. In preparing for the surgery, I was asked to make out a living will, and my husband and I discussed the very issues that Terri now faces. I did not want to be kept alive by extraordinary means, but we both thought removing food and hydration would be cruel. We thought, though, that the issue of removing a feeding tube is different from the decision to have one inserted.
We had just watched my mother die as her brainstem failed, and the watching was painful. She lost her ability to swallow, and so my dad kept her alive with protein drinks and as many milk shakes as she wanted. Not a lot actually got in her, and although her official cause of death was a heart attack, I am pretty sure her lack of nutrition was a major contributor. It wasn't until about three weeks before my mother died that her condition was correctly diagnosed and we discovered that she could communicate pretty much as well as she ever had if you just gave her a pen and paper. She just couldn't get her words out.
My mother did not have a feeding tube, probably mostly because my dad had not yet faced the fact that things were that bad. And she died. In my mind, though, as in those of a lot of other people, not having a feeding tube is much different from taking the feeding tube away. One is not taking extraordinary measures; the other is starvation.
Why does this frighten me? Well, because in Scandinavia, people are already euthanized. And I think if we blur the line about where life has meaning, about what it means to live life with dignity, then euthanasia could become the norm here. My medical treatment costs a lot of money every year, money about which the insurance company periodically puts up a fuss. If we euthanize, then I assume they will put up more of a fuss. At what point in time will I no longer live my life with dignity? At what point in time will I no longer be able to take the medicines that allow me to move? In countries with socialized medicine, I would already be denied my TNF blocker because my rheumatoid arthritis is serum negative. It is that medicine which has allowed me to keep my employment, so I am aware of what doing without it would mean. And my cataracts and hearing loss are probably both attributable to my RA meds. When will the insurance company or the government say enough is enough, that they want to save their money for younger people or people with less severe disease?
My husband tries to reassure me. Nothing like that will happen, he says, as long as he is here. But what if he isn't? Or what if our government takes the decision out of his hands? What if a court-appointed doctor says that my life is no longer worth living?
If we blur the line about where life has meaning and where it doesn't, the rest of our citizens better beware. Because if Terri Schiavo's life is no longer worth living, if what she is doing has been determined BY SOMEONE ELSE as NOT living, someone could say the same about theirs.
I have read much of the information that is available about Terri Schiavo, and I am aware that I do not know all of the facts involved. I believe, though, that there is a lot more than we as the public are aware of, and I wonder if those people who have said Michael Schiavo is within his rights to request Terri's death have been on the website that I started reading two years ago:http://www.terrisfight.org. Some of the information there about Terri's state of consciousness is disturbing, especially in light of the fact that her husband and court-appointed doctors maintain that she feels nothing, either emotionally or physically.
And I don't think living wills will solve anything if Terri's husband is successful in his attempts to euthanize her. As a person with a chronic disease and a handicapped sticker of my very own, that frightens me. I watched people over the weekend, people in WalMart who were pushing the wheelchair of a disabled person and had to continually straighten her head, a woman in church who walked her Down's Syndrome daughter to her seat. Are they frightened too?
Nine years ago, I had a thyroidectomy. In preparing for the surgery, I was asked to make out a living will, and my husband and I discussed the very issues that Terri now faces. I did not want to be kept alive by extraordinary means, but we both thought removing food and hydration would be cruel. We thought, though, that the issue of removing a feeding tube is different from the decision to have one inserted.
We had just watched my mother die as her brainstem failed, and the watching was painful. She lost her ability to swallow, and so my dad kept her alive with protein drinks and as many milk shakes as she wanted. Not a lot actually got in her, and although her official cause of death was a heart attack, I am pretty sure her lack of nutrition was a major contributor. It wasn't until about three weeks before my mother died that her condition was correctly diagnosed and we discovered that she could communicate pretty much as well as she ever had if you just gave her a pen and paper. She just couldn't get her words out.
My mother did not have a feeding tube, probably mostly because my dad had not yet faced the fact that things were that bad. And she died. In my mind, though, as in those of a lot of other people, not having a feeding tube is much different from taking the feeding tube away. One is not taking extraordinary measures; the other is starvation.
Why does this frighten me? Well, because in Scandinavia, people are already euthanized. And I think if we blur the line about where life has meaning, about what it means to live life with dignity, then euthanasia could become the norm here. My medical treatment costs a lot of money every year, money about which the insurance company periodically puts up a fuss. If we euthanize, then I assume they will put up more of a fuss. At what point in time will I no longer live my life with dignity? At what point in time will I no longer be able to take the medicines that allow me to move? In countries with socialized medicine, I would already be denied my TNF blocker because my rheumatoid arthritis is serum negative. It is that medicine which has allowed me to keep my employment, so I am aware of what doing without it would mean. And my cataracts and hearing loss are probably both attributable to my RA meds. When will the insurance company or the government say enough is enough, that they want to save their money for younger people or people with less severe disease?
My husband tries to reassure me. Nothing like that will happen, he says, as long as he is here. But what if he isn't? Or what if our government takes the decision out of his hands? What if a court-appointed doctor says that my life is no longer worth living?
If we blur the line about where life has meaning and where it doesn't, the rest of our citizens better beware. Because if Terri Schiavo's life is no longer worth living, if what she is doing has been determined BY SOMEONE ELSE as NOT living, someone could say the same about theirs.
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