Comments don't seem to be working at Blogs For Terri, so I was just looking for someplace to ask this where people would see it: Why are all these motions or injunctions or whatever about reinserting the tube? Wouldn't a request to be allowed to feed her by mouth be harder to turn down?

As long as I'm here, Thomas Sowel has written another of his masterpieces, that I plan to link on my blog later. Damn, Dawn scooped me by luring me into her comments before I blogged it myself!
Dave Munger | Homepage | 03.26.05 - 3:18 pm | #

I just went and read the article you linked, and that's something I've pointed out in the comments at a few places. BTW, constant drooling would've dehydrated her FAST. A lot of the things that are being bandied about with an air of medical authority are patently absurd in a way that dosen't require medical training or direct contact with the patient to see; They show you a picture of a brain that's nothing BUT cortex, and say that it shows there's no cortex left (do they think the cortex is in the core of the brain because it sounds kind of like "core"?) Everything missing in in the neighborhood of the medula (which you can just chop right in half and still hold down a job) and the stuff that makes you do the things that it is generally conceded she's doing, like blinking, breathing, etc. Then they'll come up with a source that looks really good, except that it says that there is literally no electrical activity at all in the brain, when in this case she wouldn't be in a PVS, she'd be a literal corpse, there'd be no way to dehydrate her (body just wouldn't be doing anything) and no point anyway, it wouldn't make her any deader. The only way she'd have a heartbeat then is if the corpse were hooked up to machines that force it to beat, and force her to breathe. There'd be no blinking or digestion going on, let alone vocalisation and head movement.
Dave Munger | Homepage | 03.26.05 - 4:01 pm | #

RE: "...constant drooling would've dehydrated her FAST."

Are you saying that there would have been a measurable difference in the amount of hydration she needed throught the tube if she had not been swallowing her saliva while she was on the tube? As in, the medical staff would have to acknowledge whether or not she was swallowing? Or are you merely pointing out that if she were not successfully swallowing her saliva, she would have faded more quickly after the tube was removed?

Dawn, you find the best links! This was the second forehead-slapping I've had this week as a result of your links reminding me how much first-hand experience I actually have in this realm.

Maybe I'm more brain-damaged than I think.

A few years ago I had brain surgery; and for several weeks afterward I had to make a conscious effort to not drool. Even though I showed no other outward signs of brain damage (or so I thought!)
Mark H | 03.26.05 - 5:12 pm | #

Please disregard the extra 't' in "...she needed through[t] the tube...' I'm sticking to my 'brain damage' defense. For some reason, the errors are much easier to spot _after_ posting.
Mark H | 03.26.05 - 5:15 pm | #

Mark, thanks for your kind words, and for sharing your own experiences. I like your self-effacing humor.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 03.26.05 - 5:25 pm | #

I don't know if it's the Mike Schiavo PC Damage Control strategy, but Fox News online is reporting that the cause of Terri's collapse was due to low potassium levels from bulimia. I had heard that assertion previously, but for it to be trumped out now seems suspicious...

...like everything else about this case.

I can't get her off my mind, nor can I separate her from the Easter Triduum events...
Shy One | 03.26.05 - 7:26 pm | #

> Or are you merely pointing out that
> if she were not successfully
> swallowing her saliva, she would
> have faded more quickly after the
> tube was removed?

That one.
Dave Munger | Homepage | 03.26.05 - 8:55 pm | #

I've found this to be a particularly dismal Easter weekend myself. I could barely function at work on Friday. I dread returning to work tomorrow. I keep thinking two scriptures again and again:

"Jesus wept."

"'I thirst.'"

I've come up with the thought that maybe I need to study and mediate on the example of the Centurion at the foot of the cross. His job was, after all, to ensure that Jesus died as scheduled. But when Jesus gave up the ghost, the Centurion cast down his sword and cried, "Surely this was an innocent man!"

Part of my despair is the thought that with Terri's death, the "right to die" people will be exchanging high-fives, the way "escorts" do outside abortion mills each time a weeping woman is hustled inside. They're congratulate themselves on a job well done and look for the next vulnerable person to hustle off to the afterlife.

Maybe God has in mind more of a movement of Centurions, of people who will somehow, after having legally and matter-of-factly carried out her death, cry out that they were wrong. But I don't see how.
Christina | Homepage | 03.26.05 - 10:31 pm | #

I'm in total support of Terri's right to life, but after reading McCullough's column I'm puzzled. If she can swallow her saliva, why can't she swallow water? The only thing the hanging judge's order does is remove the feeding tube. He doesn't forbid anyone from giving Terri water. Why hasn't that been done if she can swallow?
David Fischler | 03.26.05 - 11:09 pm | #

David, the judge has forbidden Terri to receive ANY food or water, by tube or mouth--even a drop of wine and wafer for Holy Communion. The judge is basing his opinion on the opinions of Michael Schiavo's "experts," who claim that Terri is unable to swallow. Yet it would have been impossible for Terri to have survived a day, let alone 15 years, being tube-fed if she could not swallow. Also, nurses have testified that they put chips of ice or small amounts of Jello in Terri's mouth--one let her suck on a towel dampened with juice--and she was perfectly able to swallow. She is being coldly, cruelly starved.
Dawn Eden | Homepage | 03.26.05 - 11:14 pm | #

Dawn, thanks for the clarification (the MSM leads yet another person astray). Even if I bought the idea that removing the feeding tube was only a "passive" measure, to actually forbid giving her hydration pushes this over the edge into the realm of judicial murder.
David Fischler | 03.26.05 - 11:29 pm | #