I find the case of Terri Schiavo heart wrenching.
Without taking sides, b/c I truly don't know and I find huge differences in the 'facts', I have been reading several commentaries.
Peaktalk has some good summaries; to me it is surprising so many fall (him in particular) on the side of Jeb Bush and the like.
In reading a little, for our mutual benefit, I am going to include a link here for Advanced Directives. You can create a handy-dandy print out this stuff out for yourself particular to your state and hopefully have some say if bad things happen your way.
I'll vouch for the fact that most of us have had our fill of bad things, at quota, thanks, but signing a form is a little thing to do to try to make something very wrong more right.
My only quandry right now is having an ex who would LOVE to have custody of his son...
4 comments:
It's this case that's making me think that I need a living will and a tatoo on my chest that says:
"Do not resuscitate".
I can speak from personal experience on this, so I'll comment on that part specifically. My G'ma-IL (from my now ex husband) suffered a stroke when she was probably 85. She lingered for a month or two, got a feeding tube during that time. When all hope was lost, her daughter requested the feeding tube be removed.
It was always known that daughter would remove and/or not allow feeding tubes. Similar happened with her father about 3 years earlier; his was never put in after a major stroke. All directives were written for both parents and daughter is an ultra-fundamentalist God-squad type, too.
Yeah, right, don't believe it takes just a few days to die after a feeding tube is removed. With G'ma, it took 23 days. She was already a tiny woman; she wasted away with horrible contortions until she was down to nothing. It took weeks, people. Everyone around her suffered, too.
I think removing the feeding tube is the right idea, wrong execution, and I do mean that literally. G'ma should have had a nice, warm dose of morophine instead; it would have saved her and her loved ones a lot of grief. Not to mention, for the insurance and finance minded, it wouldn't have cost 23 fewer days of care in a nursing home.
It's a business.
Just like pharmaceuticals. Keeping the barely living, breathing...keeps the wheels of some professions going.
On both sides too. Who knows who's right. I just feel so awful for her parents. And for her. Can't really stomach the husband though, for some reason.
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