Terri Schiavo and narcissism

[October]

in this case.. im not sure it would have turned out the same, if the husband were the one in the hospital....

Perhaps the emotions on this case are running too high at present for anyone to work out what is true and what is not.  Here is the story of Tony Bland, from a Christian medical perspective;

http://www.cmf.org.uk/ethics/content.asp?context=article&id=1368

[vunil]

Hi, all--

One thing severely muddying up this case (not a reference to mudpup!) is the media.  The link I included awhile back (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terri_Schiavo#Initial_medical_crisis)  gives a much more thorough timeline than the media have done.

I am pretty angry at the media for trying to simplify the case and get people riled up-- presumably for money.  They and the politicians are the real demons in this case, in my opinion.

Anyway, I'll stop posting about it.  I will say that a lot of the demonizing of the husband (e.g., he just wants to make money) and doctors (e.g., they didn't try to diagnose her) just don't seem supported by the facts.  And the parents lied a lot-- they said that Terry spoke (!) even though she has no brain capacity for speech and has not for 15 years.  Magically she only spoke to them and no one else.  That is one of the things that "pinged" my N meter.  I know there is  projection there-- my parents lie, so...

Which is not to demonize the parents, either.  All involved could have behaved better.

And all of us project our experiences onto the situation.  With the media's help  

[Anonymous]

mud said:

People argue the death penalty should be abolished because a small fraction of people are falsely convicted. Its a good argument.

Not only that but inmates on death row get appeal after appeal before they are "put to death".  Look at Scott Peterson, it will be 20 years before he actually gets the death penalty.  I"ll never understand what the rush was to have Terri die and it does disturb me.

This should not be, and I don't think it is, a partisan issue

.

I agree. This was a rare time when this wasn't a partisan issue.  Jesse Jackson of all people was in support of the parents.   Known Hollywood liberals from LA LA Land like Susan Sarandon were in support of Terri living.  I live in a suburb outside of Philly and many of the local liberals were in support of Terri living just as there were Conservatives who swung the other way.

There were too many questions as to whether or not this is what Terri wanted.  Yes, many would not want to live the way she was living BUT that doesn't mean she would not want to.  Regardless of what the parents were sayiing or what good old hubby was saying....this was about Terri and I agree with Mud.....her voice was ignored.

I was joking with Vunil that if I had N parents I would be on his team but in my heart I was on Terri's team.

The courts have way too much power and that scares me.  Something needs to change.

Mia

[vunil]

Not only that but inmates on death row get appeal after appeal before they are "put to death". Look at Scott Peterson, it will be 20 years before he actually gets the death penalty. I"ll never understand what the rush was to have Terri die and it does disturb me.

Oh, no!  I'm posting again!  

I just have to say, as an active death penalty opponent in a very execution-happy state, that the folks on death row here do not get "appeal after appeal"-- just the opposite.  They are rushed to their ends.  Terry was in a vegetative state for 15 years-- the whole idea of it being a rush to have her die is from the media (to make things dramatic), in my opinion.  

Her parents got tons and tons of appeals and rerulings and higher court rulings.  For over seven years.  They got the attention of governors and senators and activists all over the place.  Death row inmates, especially in (blank), the not-so-advanced state where I live, do not get anything close to that.  When the major crime lab where most of the DNA evidence is processed was shown to be tainted and corrupt, nothing changed-- people kept on being put to death based on the bad evidence.

So, to me, it was otherworldly to see so much time and energy spent on evaluating the situation of Terri, as sad as it was, and so little (basically none) spent on people on death row, some of whom might be innocent.  (Not Scott Peterson, guilty s.o.b. that he is!).   In the states where executions happen a lot, there also tends to be a real sloppiness around the evidence and the way the accused are tried.  And no one seems to really care.

Something in all of it just felt so weird-- and morally inconsistent.

Anyway.  I'll stop.  I KNOW I'm being argumentative and I just can't help it.  Just ignore me  

[Anonymous]

Hi vunil, anna and mia,
I am not sure what her husband's motivation was. I only know what third parties like the nurses said about him and the fact that he specifically denied her therapy which would have made her more comfortable and might have helped her. Maybe he sincerely believed what he said. The point is nobody knows and that's a pretty thin reed on which to deny food and water to someone. She never had a disinterested advocate in court.

The doctors voted 3 to 2 that she was PVS. One of the two has a documentd history of misdiagnosing PVS, and advocating for euthanasia in cases which the vast majority of people and doctors would not. She did not have disinterested medical opinions in court. That's also a pretty thin reed.

The parents claimed she tried to speak to them. True. But one of her lawyers filed an affidavit with the court that he heard her try to speak. Many of the nurses who attended her over the years claimed she tried to speak. Some of the doctors who examined her believed her vocalizations were attempts at speech. She was apparently capable of speech for some time after her brain injury. When the doc hired by the court thumped her between the eyes she recoiled and moaned. He called this an involuntary reaction. Other doctors wouldn't. From what I understand it is impossible through a CAT scan to tell whether she was incapable of speech. Who knows.

Thats the point. Nobody including, the judges, had any idea what her wishes really were or what her condition really was. Maybe she was PVS, maybe not. Maybe she would have wanted to be disconnected maybe not. It seems to me when that is the case the courts should err on the side of life. If not, the state is going to be in the business of executing people whose only crime is they can't speak for themselves.

mud

[Anonymous]

Hey vunil,
What's the matter with being argumentative? You're not being mean or nasty, you're just stating your opinion. There's nothing wrong with that.  

mud

[Anonymous]

Mud told Vunil:

What's the matter with being argumentative? You're not being mean or nasty, you're just stating your opinion. There's nothing wrong with that.  

That's what I love about this board.  Everyone has a voice!  

Mia

[Stormchild Guesting]

I happen to be in a very good position to weigh in on this one.

My Nmom had Munchausen's Syndrome - and Munchausen's by Proxy - BIG TIME.

What this means is: she took advantage of every real illness and frailty she had, and she did everything in her power to exacerbate any illness, and when my Edad was ill and dying from a lingering dementia type illness, she withheld his meds, provoked him, and made his life a living hell until he would lash out at her, whereupon she'd wail oh poor me and try to get my Nsib and myself to quit our jobs and move in with her full time as permanent caretakers.

I finally had enough of this and broke off contact after an extremely abusive series of phone calls from her and Nsib.

Shortly therafter (a couple of months) she managed to get herself hospitalized for what should have been a routine UTI treatable with antibiotics (according to her live-in caretaker, whom I had been while Nmom was charging the poor soul RENT by way of thanks).

In the hospital, she rapidly picked up several nosocomial infections, one of which eventually killed her.

When I went to see her, I was treated like a piece of S**T by the nurses, and the physicians, and the entire hospital staff. I found out much later that Nmom and Nsib had been slandering me to everyone within earshot, as hard as they could shovel with both hands. Of course, the gullible fools believed this obviously malicious bulls**t, because it was more fun -- and less work -- than doing the hard heavy intellectual lifting that it would have taken to ACTUALLY TALK TO ME AND FIND OUT WHAT MY SIDE OF THE STORY WAS. I am eternally amazed at the willingess of people to believe vile lies told with obvious pleasure about people who are not present to defend themselves.

Dammit, none of us knows the truth here. But I can tell you that nurses are just as capable of spreading malicious lies and fabrications, and generating there own, as anyone else. I know!!!!!!

         

[Stormchild Guesting]

typo above: I was PAYING the caretaker. My Nmom was charging her RENT.

[Stormchild Guesting]

Oh yeah... I forgot to add that I went to the hospital SPECIFICALLY to anoint Nmom and pray over her because I knew she was dying, and that of all her devoted family I was the only one who was willing to swab her mouth, wash her face, etc. -- the rest of the human dung was afraid they'd catch what she had, and were more interested in going out to eat and drink booze than in actually spending any time with her. (I will drink, but not with these creeps, ever.)

So help me, I hope every one of the b*****ds who believed that crap about me is cared for at the end of their lives by someone they have slandered relentlessly and remorsefully without cause. As she was.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Greta]

I am drawn to the idea that we project our stuff onto the Terry Schiavo case--I've been noticing that in myself.  Having nparents, I had a visceral fear when I first heard about this story, that my mother would love to have me in a coma.  Then I'd finally be the good daughter she always wanted, she could have me all to herself, and I'd have no voice of my own.  

Usually I find it very hard to know what my opinions are on controversial topics, because having my own opinions was squashed by my nparents.  My nfather thinks he knows everything about everything, and I used to assume that I had to know everything too, compulsively research everything.  But I don't know much about Terry Schiavo--and this doesn't mean I can't have an opinion, just that it can be complicated, partial, uninformed, and that's ok for now.  I don't have to take a side like the media(of all sorts--mainstream, bloggers, Operation Rescue) wants me to do.  

It was a jolt when I realized that I *assumed* her parents are n's, and that being the daughter of an n, she may have chosen an n husband, and the whole thing is a feast of the n's.  This is my stuff--I'm projecting it all over the place.  What I do know though, is that Terry Schiavo lost her  voice when she went into a coma, and that is what makes me truly sad--we don't know what she wanted, and her husband and parents were eager to speak for her.  The coma was the first thing to take her voice, but then everyone else was ready to use her like a ventroliquist's dummy, and this distresses me.

Greta

[Anonymous]

Hello all,
My last post on the subject. (I hope)
This quote is what concerns me. Where does this end?

Read the words of Leo Alexander, a doctor who assisted the chief American counsel at the Nuremberg Tribunal, about the beginnings of Nazi society and he is describing our own:

Whatever proportion these crimes finally assumed, it became evident to all who investigated them that they had started from small beginnings. The beginnings at first were merely a subtle shift in emphasis in the basic attitudes of the physicians. It started with the acceptance of the attitude, basic in the euthanasia movement, that there is such a thing as life not worthy to be lived. This attitude in its early stages concerned itself merely with the severely and chronically sick. Gradually, the sphere of those to be included in this category was enlarged to encompass the socially unproductive, the ideologically unwanted, the racially unwanted, and finally all non-Germans. But it is important to realize that the infinitely small wedged-in lever from which the entire trend of mind received its impetus was the attitude towards the non-rehabilitative sick.

That's what scares me. Every devalued life devalues everyone else's a little more. The euthanasia movement in this country already goes far beyond PVS patients. Many of them consider Down's infants candidates for death. Some even consider healthy newborns non persons because they are cognitively limited, and therefore eligible for elimination if the parents change their mind. It is a small step from there to the burdensome, unproductive physicaly disabled who are nonetheless of sound mind. A smaller step than we think.
These ethicists are not cranks. They are the leaders of the philosophy and medical ethics departments in some of our most prestigious universities. They are the leaders in ethical thought, not the fringe.
They give me the creeps.

mudpup

[Stormchild Guesting]

J.C. on a moped!

I have described one of the most catastrophically painful experiences of my entire life here, and in response I get--

not support

not empathy

but a lecture about projection.

I thought people here were capable of better than this.

[vunil]

Hi, Stormchild--

I just got home from work and didn't have the chance to read everything until now.  Your experience sounds harrowing and I'm sorry you didn't get the support you needed.  I think this issue has us all swirling around with political and ethical and religious and personal and and and all this STUFF that it's tough to concentrate on any one post.

I don't think anyone was talking about you with the projection-- they were talking about me     And probably all of us.

Your mother does sound like a nightmare.

Just be patient with us-- we'll get to you, I promise!  It's just tough to blend all of this with the workday sometimes.

[d'smom]

The point is nobody knows....

hi all, i guess this might be off topic but i think its good to discuss ethical issues, it gives people a chance to define their values, and find out more about themselves, and i think debate is healthy if its respectful. it helps people exercise their thought processes and find out more about themselves. so this is just for purposes of healthy debate.

that said, this above was my only point as well. i just dont think anybody really knows.  my opinions arent based on emotion at all, or the media; and im also not assuming her parents or husband are 'n' or not.

my 'angle' is that, nobody knows. nobody has proven that i have seen, with scientific fact of any sort, (and scientific fact would be my standard, not emotion), that people in 'persistent vegetative state' cannot feel or experience in a way we would consider meaninful. until someone goes into one and comes out and tells us what its like, i dont think its a determination we can scientifically make. to me its speculation, as to 'what they experience'.

its just too convenient to treat them like they dont experience, because you know, they cant stand up for themselves. i just dont feel comfortable with that type of determination. i dont think its scientifically sound.

to think about this from another angle, what if the husband had been receiving money of some type for keeping her *alive*, for instance social security payments or insurance settlement? if he received $2000 a month to keep terri *alive*, do you think his decisions would have been different? would the medical determinations have been 'different'? i am not attached to outcome or any particular angle, i just see value in exploring ethical questions. im not interested in labeling anyone as evil. i jsut like exploring peoples motivations. the reality is, hospital care *is* expensive. *someone* has to pay for it.

dont mean to talk aobut something people dont want to, i really dont think there is any 'n' angle here, to me its more an issue of denying voice.

take care all :} i like to think about stuff. dont mind me :}
anna