unfreaking believable

... methods best able to assess her. Why not? If she is a vegetable, then why not pull out all the stops and demonstrate it without a shadow of a doubt?? That should be a question that everyone wonders. Given that he has spent over $400K on attorneys, surely the diagnostic evals would be money well spent.

Still, there is no MRI ...

Evie

And her parents want the right to take care of her. If her husband has moved on with his life he should allow Terri the same opportunity.

she did not want to live in such a state is he not being a stand up guy?

I just don't think all of his motives are as pure as the driven snow

If Terri did tell him she would not want to live this way, is he doing the right thing?

It doesn't matter if she did or did not write it down or if we agree or disagree with what he is doing. It is unfortunate if she told him this and didn't write it down. The question though is simply, "What if she did say this?"

Did she know at the time that he was going to get involved with another woman and maybe want her dead? If she had made a will this would all be moot! I just question his motives Clay I would not want to be kept alive if I was truly never going to function again, But her parents say she does function. Who are we to determine quality of life?

I'm not saying that he's not a sleaze, that's not the question. The question is simply, If Terri told him that she would not want to live this way, is he doing the right thing? Even if no one else in the world knows it, should he stick by his guns to honor her wishes no matter what anyone else thinks? FWIW, the question is not "Did she really tell him this?", for that we'll never know. He could be lying about the whole thing, that's not the question though.

If he was still in love with her and acting like a husband, then I would support his wishes. But since he is out of her life he should have given that authority over to her parents. Did I finally answer this??? LOL

As a matter of fact, her brother (or her parents, can't remember which one now) said in an interview yesterday, that 'even if Terri HAD expressed the wish to die rather than live like she is, we would still fight to stop it'. I don't have a link to the quote because I heard it said during a live interview and can't recall which station I had the tv on at the time.

TONI

... that I wouldn't want to live like Chris Reeve due to a student of my Dad's suffering a similar injury. There is a reason why such desires are required by law to be in writing and witnessed by someone outside the family. And one would think he would have tried to do the right thing from day one then, not get the money for her rehab and spend it on attorneys to end her life.

Evie

MIGHT have said.

And they're also too black and white for many. Not just in facing unfortunate possibilities, but because circumstances affect answers. Many people who might want to be sustained in a coma or vegetative state for a while to see if they can recover might not want to be kept "alive" in that state forever, especially if the docs say there's no hope. Yet the directives and living wills tend to be much more rigid than that -- "respirator" or "no respirator," not "it depends..."

-- Dave K, Speakeasy Moderator
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com

The opinions expressed above are my own,
and do not necessarily reflect those of CNET!

... so a civil society should err on the side of life. But you have a point, living wills were not common. By the same token, 25 y.o.'s rarely gave serious consideration to what their wishes would be in those cases. You don't find Shiavo's post-windfall recollections just the least bit suspect?

Evie

You could take a totally brain dead person if you got to them fast enough and put electrodes in their heart to make it beat, put them on a respirator and make them breathe, and stick a tube in their stomach and make them take in nutrition and they could live until their organs decayed away after about 100 years. But if you pulled anyone of those things, that person would die. What makes one tube any more of life support than the other. It seems to me that if you pull something out of someone and they die, that means it is supporting their life. Hence the term Life support!!! Just because it takes a little longer to die without one of the tubes doesn't mean it is not any less of a support of life. She is on life support and will be until she dies and she will not get any better until she dies, cause part of her brain is dead. I don't know how I will make you believe this but her parents just have wishful thinking when they think she responses to them, you can NOT fix dead brain tissue. Look it up, ask a doctor, do what you got to do but, find it out for yourself maybe then you will believe yourself.

... makes it impossible to discuss rationally with you.

Her brain is working for all her organs. She even swallows her own saliva. Nurses that have cared for her have sworn in affidavits that she could swallow and doctors and therapists have said she could probably have been rehabbed to eat by mouth. WHY NOT EVEN BOTHER TO TRY THOUGH RIGHT??? You wouldn't want to live that way, she has no quality of life, kill her off so we don't have to be reminded or have her drain on society. That is the slippery slope...

they're already dead and/or are a drain on society. How long Dave before we forget the fine distinctions, and just kill everyone who's not contributing enough?

We all die. Your point? You, yourself are getting older, and might someday find yourself being a less than productive member of society. How about we not bother feeding and hydrating you when that time comes, because surely the cost of keeping you alive could be better spent on the young.

Evie

>>By the same token, 25 y.o.'s rarely gave serious consideration to what their wishes would be in those cases. You don't find Shiavo's post-windfall recollections just the least bit suspect?<<

I don't know about your household, but these sorts of issues certainly come up in passing in ours, usually while watching the news. For example, not 15 minutes ago we were watching to a news story about someone severely burned in the BP Texas City Plant explosion today (14 dead, over 100 injured, more than 20 critically -- pray for them, as there's hope for many of them, unlike Terry!) who has 2nd and 3rd degree burns over >90% of his body. He's basically waiting to die at that level, but K again (as she has on numerous previous occasions) said something to the effect of "if that ever happens to me, just let me go." That thought's engrained in my memory, and I'm sure she said something similar when she was in her 20's (She's from Boston, and grew up hearing about the Coconut Grove nightclub fire -- it engendered a particular fear of severe burns in her).

-- Dave K, Speakeasy Moderator
click here to email semods4@yahoo.com

The opinions expressed above are my own,
and do not necessarily reflect those of CNET!

You have now swallowed the new "study" that the brain doesn't process risk fully until age 25, yet youth, with its delusions of immortality gives serious consideration to matters of death? Yeah, right.

I hope that if I ever became quadrapalegic my parents wouldn't pull the plug on me because as a teenager I commented how I wouldn't want to live like that. Michael Schiavo only recalled Terri's "wishes" several years after this occurred.

There is a reason why such wishes should be in writing, and hopefully that will be one positive to come out of this tragedy. Same reason that matters of property inheritance are written. Just the misconceptions in this thread regarding just how Terri is living (also in that ridiculous ABC poll that misrepresented the situation) demonstrate that

K told you she wouldn't want to live with extensive burns. Yet just like those that become paralyzed, most of the burn survivors I've ever seen (and actually met the one from the WTC and another when I was a teenager) are happy to have been kept alive to recover.

My problem with this case is that there IS medical uncertainty in her PVS diagnoses. Why the rush to kill her, why not at least do the "gold standard" tests used in the present day. A PET scan. I think that there are some that will not take any amount of evidence and believe she has a life. I'm not among them, I've just heard from enough nurses that have cared for her and doctors that disagree with the PVS diagnosis that it should be re-evaluated. It seems that for some reason those adamant about her being "dead" don't want that done and that makes me very uneasy -- actually just downright sick to my stomach.

Evie

Jehovah's Witnesses have special views on some aspects of medicine. So for years we have carried legal documents specifying our wishes. The latest version is a wallet-sized paper which covers our old Advance Medical Directive and the Durable Power of Attorney. We're encouraged to put as much detail as we like in it. But I think the reality is that "no heroic measures" or equivalent would cover just about everything, meaning a situation as serious as the type discussed here would kill us; end of story.

I thought of this when I read that the family would keep her alive 'even if she had said not to.' DPA overrides everything else; that's its purpose.
Regards, Doug in New Mexico

... to tell the world about this after he got the settlement based on his testimony that he intended to care for her for the rest of her life.

Evie

about all the 'disinformation' being given, how do we know in fact that she hasn't been tested in ten years? How do we know for certain that she swallows her own saliva? How do we know for certain that the other doctors and therapists you mentioned have actually ever SEEN her in order to make statments that she can be rehabilitated?

I just suspect that much of what's being said about her ability or potential abilities are coming from people who have seen a couple of minutes of tape and have come to their own conclusions after talking with her parents.......who are just as biased about wanting to keep her alive as her husband is in wanting the courts to allow her life to end.

If all he wanted was to get on with his life, he's been given the opportunity to do that before....via cash in the millions offered to divorce her and let the parents or another guardian take over....and he turned it down.

Or was that more 'disinformation' because it falls on 'his' side of the fence rather than the parents' side?

TONI

of his abuse. Apparently he was a crazy, stalking, abusive control freak that strangled her. This is what I'm getting from the keep her alive side.

If there was evidence of this why didn't the police persue it?

I must have missed something here. Is this coming from a site in favor of Terri?

Evie pointed me to this site among others when I asked for more information regarding some things she posted.

Date of Complaint: Tuesday, June 3, 2003
Request: Office of the State Attorney to open an investigating based on the following:
1.) Evidence of Michael Schiavo?s possible domestic abuse, and attempted murder,
2.) Michael Schiavo?s perjured testimony and subsequent fraud on the court stemming from malpractice trial and his misuse of Terri?s intended trust,
3.) The sealed finances of Terri?s medical trust fund.
Note: Complaint was filed with over 20 pages of supporting documentation verifying the need for investigation.

Based on affidavit of Ms. Rhodes as well as several female friends of Michael Schiavo, there appears to be a pattern of domestic abuse and perhaps even violence with at least one of the women saying that Schiavo had stalked her after she had broken off a relationship with him.

... one I'm at a loss to understand why most folks aren't curious about. If she had died, there would have been an autopsy. This way, ...

At the very least, there should be an autopsy now. What would be the objection to that?

Evie