Euthanasia, the right to die, and why you need to talk to your ENTIRE family RIGHT NOW, and even better, WRITE YOUR WISHES DOWN
If you were in a persistent vegetative state, with no hope for any recovery of brain functions, do your loved ones – who will be making medical decisions for you in your incapacitated state – know what your wishes are? And if they do, would they be likely to comply?
The case of Terri Schiavo is playing out right now in Florida. This woman collapsed with a heart condition 13 years ago. Her heart had stopped for an estimated 10 minutes. This is on the very outer edge of the bubble for how long your brain can be without oxygen before brain damage is certain and irreversible. She is on life support right now – life support that consists of a feeding tube. Her heart keeps pumping and her lungs keep the oxygen flowing. But without food and water she would slowly starve to death.
Her husband wants to disconnect the feeding tube. Her doctors say that she has absolutely no chance of recovery. They say that, on the brain scan, where her cerebral cortex should be, there is only a large bubble of spinal fluid. The lack of oxygen has largely killed that part of her brain, and the spinal fluid has expanded to fill the vacuum. Dictionary.com says that the cerebral cortex is “largely responsible for higher brain functions, including sensation, voluntary muscle movement, thought, reasoning, and memory”. In other words, this woman has no “her” left. Her husband says she would not want to live like this – he says that he expressed this to her after one of his family members went through a protracted life support battle. But her parents do not want to take her off the life support. They feel that she is responding to stimuli. The video clips you can find on the internet seem to show that. Fifteen doctors say that her movements are only reflexive action. The parents claim that they have doctors that say that rehabilitation is possible. I’ve seen the videos. They seem heartbreaking one instant, and obvious the next. And I’m not sure which is which.
In the state of Florida, it is the spouse and the children, and not the parents, who make the medical decisions for someone that is incapacitated to this degree. After a long time in the courts, finally her husband got through all the lawsuits and appeals in order to disconnect the feeding tube. Terri Schiavo would die of starvation and/or dehydration in 7-14 days. Yes, that’s right. Starvation. Dehydration. Right-to-life groups (who of course support the parents) rightly point out that we do not allow this sort of death sentence on death row, because it is inhumane. So, a convicted criminal will get a more humane death than this woman, who has done nothing wrong. And why?
Partly because this country has no comprehensive euthanasia laws. And because she did not make her parents aware of her wishes. So her parents believe her wish would be to be kept alive, and her husband believes that her wish would be to be let go.
Of course there are lots of variables here. Her husband, Michael, says that Terri did tell her brother, as well as him, her husband, that she would not want to be kept alive in a persistent vegetative state. Her parents say that she has never heard her say such things. I’m tempted to say that he should just give her parents custody, and let them “have” her. But there are two things wrong with that. I’m an atheist – my belief is that that’s not her, anymore. To me, I think that that is just “animated flesh”, so who cares whether her wishes actually get respected. When I die, I don’t want a big funeral or memorial service or anything like that. What I really mean is, I don’t want anyone to put themselves out to “impress” me, or impress my friends. I’m not going to be hovering over and critiquing, saying “I can’t believe they brought chicken instead of ham!” But Terri and her husband may not be atheists – they may believe that her soul is there and trapped in her body. Her parents are definitely believers – but they seem to think that she can improve with rehabilitation. Everyone’s beliefs are so personal that it’s hard to tell someone else what they “should” do to resolve this situation.
Then there’s the issue of the money. Apparently her husband received a large medical malpractice settlement, with the money intended for her lifelong care. I don’t know when he first filed his lawsuit to have her tubes removed. According to an editorial by Debra J Saunders on August 19, “he spent a great deal of time caring for his wife in the first couple of years after she collapsed and then waited years after damages were awarded” before trying to have the life support disconnected. On the one hand, it doesn’t sound like he’s been saying from the beginning that she’s wanted to die with dignity. Maybe he blocked that part out until he himself was over his grief at “losing” her. And, she supposedly told him she would not want to “be a burden”. Maybe she only became a burden after the settlement money ran out.
I can certainly see how if Mr. Schiavo did transfer custody to her parents, their first action would be to sue him for the settlement money, which after all is supposed to go for her care. If they are to care for her, they should get that money, or what remains of it after so many years. The optimist in me says that maybe the money is there, or maybe he can prove that he has spent every dime of it on her care up to this point. The pessimist says maybe he wants to keep it, or maybe it’s all been spent on other things and he does not have money to repay it with. I don’t know.
The other part of it is, if he really feels that Terri would not have wanted this, then maybe he feels an obligation to her memory to fulfill his promise to her. Maybe he just needs to let go, to seek therapy and help him accept that just because he did not succeed in fulfilling his promise to her that does not make him a “failure”. Think about a parent that tries to save a child that’s choking, who fails. Do we blame that parent? No. But the parent sometimes blames him- or herself.
On the other hand, there’s Jeb Bush. Who jumps in to the Florida state legislature with a bill that effectively blocks the law that gives the spouse control over the patient’s medical decisions. The bill luckily is written fairly narrowly – it only applies to someone who did not sign a “living will” stating their wishes for these sorts of scenarios, who is in a persistent vegetative state (and thus cannot state their wishes now), and where the feeding and hydration tubes have been removed but a family member has challenged the removal. (As far as I know it only covers feeding tubes and not respirators and pacemakers.) But what does this really do? Analysts say the bill was written very specifically to only cover Terri Schiavo’s case, but think about these two questions – what relationship do you have to have in order to be considered a “family member”? And, this does not really overturn the previous law, right? So it’s not saying they have to leave the feeding tube in. I can see it now – husband invokes the law to have the tubes removed, parents invoke the bill to have the tubes reconnected. Ad nauseum.
For now, Michael Schiavo has blocked his inlaws’ visitation rights. This law may have forced him to reconnect the feeding tube, but it does not overturn his right to decide who has access to visit her. I fully expect Mr. Bush to force more legislation through to grant them visitation. And poor Terri remains a pawn.
What I’ve learned from this case is two things:
- This country needs euthanasia laws. If this woman had had a humane death 5 days or so ago, instead of just having the feeding tubes removed and an expected 7-14 days to die of starvation, this horrendous breach of privilege by Jeb Bush would not have occurred. Maybe the state of Florida would have performed a more deliberate, reasoned, and accepted changing of the legal system long before this particular case arrived at this scenario. Instead we have this piece of crap.
- Talk to your families about your wishes, and write it down just in case, if it is important to you. Like any other will-related issue, your actions now could avoid your loved ones pain and suffering (not to mention bickering and in-fighting) in the future. Lucky for me, my whole family seems to feel the same way. My mom and my siblings and I have all talked about it, and none of us would want to live like this. My husband also agrees. I’m sure that sometimes, the right time may be hard to know. But I’m very happy to know that, if I were in Terri’s situation, with no cerebral cortex, my husband would not have to fight with my blood relations to pull the tubes – if not inject the euthanasia drugs. How will your relatives deal with your persistent vegetative state?
10:29:53 AM 
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