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Isara -> RE: Terri Schiavo (6/16/2005 3:55:02 PM)
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All I know about the case (which I'll admit is rather limited, I'm Australian and there hasn't been as much coverage here) Is that it's a very hard thing to have to make the decision to not resuscitate after someone's heart stop's beating or they stop breathing.
My mother was ill, both with mental illness and renal failure which had been caused by a doctor's negligence. We lived with that for fifteen years, hospital visits, mental wards and conflicting doctors reports.
My mother, who had been a nurse, knew what was happening to her, and so, in the last few years of her life gave my father "Power of Attorney" and made him promise that if she got like that he would turn off the machines. She just wanted to see her children raised and unfortunately that wasn't able to happen. Nevertheless, that final time in hospital, even a few days before she slipped into the final coma, we knew this was the end. She had been put on a breathing tube and it was taken out long enough for her to speak to her children, a brief "I love you, and I'm proud of you." She spoke to my father for a few minutes until she resorted to writing messages when breathing got too hard and then, she wrote a final "I'm done." She laughed, kissed us all, and my father asked for more morphine. She faded over three days and was gone. As per her wishes, any organs that could be salvaged were, her brain given to science, in the hopes of understanding schizophrenia and she was buried quickly.
She had asked not to be resuscitated and when she stopped breathing the fist time, was resuscitated, after dealing with my father they didn't dare again. He wanted his wife of thirty years and the mother of small children to live. But he wanted her to be at peace more. And he knew she wouldn't want to live like that anymore, oxygen loss had been gradual and her brain had been damaged. She wasn't 'our' mother anymore; anymore then she was 'his' wife. She would never have wanted to be a burden on us and we had to honour her wishes. And ultimately, that was what was best for her.
Quality of life for these people has to be taken into account, as a woman who was raised on the land? If an animal is in serious pain, and neither we nor the vet can do anything to help them, we're going to do the kindest thing and put them to sleep to end their suffering.
When there is no quality of life left, when we are no longer 'us'. Perhaps it's time to let go. I've made my wishes very clear, and at my father's insistence when I turned 18 left a legal document with my lawyer stating that if I find myself in such a state, my life support is to be turned off and my organs donated to someone who needs them.
If I’m not ‘me’ anymore, I don’t want to live. I will have ‘died’ even if my body hasn’t quite worked it out yet.
Isara.
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