I thought that I was done with this whole Terri Schiavo nonsense, but here we are, March 28, 2006, with Nancy Grace on Headline News running an hour of shit with the Schindlers. I am remarkably pissed off. And what pisses me off is that this waste of an hour of national news time. It is sensationalizing something that didn't even blip on medical ethicists radars.
I could rant for hours on this subject, but I will confine my ranting to a few select points. (1) I have not yet been presented with any evidence in the news media that would make me question the diagnosis of persistent vegetative state. Based on the news coverage out there, I would be inclined to believe the court-appointed physicians who concluded PVS.
(2) It is a straight up miracle that she did not die from decubitus ulcers (bed sores). I've seen far more capable patients die from bed sores, and I'm talking on the order of months, not years. In my mind, if her husband managed to keep her bed sore free, that's love.
(3) Being Catholic is not an argument for keeping the feeding tube. As a Catholic, I would not ever want to live like she was living. It is cruel to imprison someone in their body like she was. If it were me, I would've pulled that feeding tube years ago, with my own two hands, fuck the court orders. I feel that medicine as a science has done something God and Nature never intended: we can keep the dead alive. That's not for us to do.
(4) If you think about what it would be like to be in a PVS, without consciousness, without any hope for recovery, without any pain or pleasure, wake or sleep, joy or sadness, without awareness, I'm guessing that you'll agree, it's not a desirable state. It sounds downright awful. I wouldn't wish it on anyone.
So to sum up, PLEASE! This is nuts!
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