Idacat

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Everything posted by Idacat

  1. Here's another good link for those who are having trouble dicriminating which part of the brain does what and how Terri can be PVS yet breathing on her own. Brain functions and map, interactive even
  2. Or, you could try using some reliable sources, logic and not emotion, remember that Terri's brain injury is complete as to the cerebral cortex,as I suspect your son's is not, and use that "knowledge" of yours to screen your sources a little better.In fact, in the first 2-3 years following Terri's incident, her husband actually did pursue every possible avenue, including the experimental, in terms of treatment and therapy. Terri has a right to die, although her chances at dignity are long gone due to the actions of her parents.
  3. We all are.My parents both entrusted me with their wishes not to be kept among the living dead and, although it was hard, I did keep my word. I have seen cases in which this was not done and think they are sadder than any death could ever be. OTOH, I have a son who sustained massive cranial and facial injuries in an accident in his early twenties. He was comatose or semi comatose, off and on a ventilator, for months. He lost an eye and the right half of his face had to be entirely reconstructed. To this day he has no sinus drainage and, because the floor of the right orbit could not be reconstructed, a prosthesis is not feasible. Even after his months in the hospital for the initial hospitalization he had an open trach and was fed via an oro-gastric tube because his maxilla was fractured in several places. He is alive today with little or no cognitive impairment, and is lucky enough to have retained sight in his remaining eye. But, at the time of the accident, just several years after my parents, we had discussed being kept "alive" only via artificial means, and it was his wish also that this never happen to him. So, if logical hope had passed, I would have gracefully let him go,, unlike Terri's parents.
  4. Well said, PD, with the one exception that Michael did not attend nursing school until AFTER Terri's cardiac incident; the expressed intent being so that he could care for her, which he did do, but not for long. I'm aware that Karen Carpenter's heart attack, which was a heart attack, was quite different than Terri Schiavo's cardiac incident which was sudden cardiac death caused by electrolyte imbalance. FWIW, that electrolyte imbalance/low potassium would not have had to have been of particularly long duration; I once saw this happen in a 2 year old whose "earth muffin" mother wanted to cleanse his body of parasites and toxins using enemas from her health store. They took the potassium along with the "toxins" and the child was dead in hours. PS- I do think there was adequate third party testimony that Terri was obsessive about not regaining lost weight and doing some mightly bizarre things to avoid it, including purging.
  5. Then, their brain stems were affected with or without damage to the cortex.If you are a nurse you understand the functions of the different lobes of the brain, brain stem intact, breathing can be unassisted (except in the case of assisted breathing due to pneumonia, such as Jerry Falwell is now receiving). It is Terri's cerebral cortex that is gone, her brain stem is intact. You don't need your cerebral cortex to breathe; you need it to be. Ask a few doctors, I did. And, if anything, keeping people alive like this who require assisted breathing is even more of an abomination of compassion, and an argument for having a living will, health care proxy, and/or advance directive than is even Terri's situation.
  6. As I suspected,from this link which also explains in detail the process of death and the pain and sensation issues.
  7. At least you read it, and are not basing your entire assessment of the case on the affadavit of a fired nurse and a deposition of an ex girlfriend of Michael's with a dash of random, emotionally charged gossip thrown in.Which IS what most people are doing, in general, not just here.
  8. So,since Michael won the case and was awarded the settlement does this not become a non issue?Terri's family, as well as Michael have spoken about Terri's eating disorder, which included hyperhydration, also known to lower potassium levels. The fact that the doctor did not recognize it and diagnose it as bulimia and treat it likewise is the point on which the malpractice case was won. IMO, this discounts any implication that the bulimia is another Schaivo "red herring" thrown in there to hide the fact he attempted to kill his wife...................a scenario for which there is no evidence whatsoever. And which so many want to believe.
  9. I posted several links in a previous post, and there are links within those links (summary and timeline) to virtually every court document and action, in order of sequence, also detailing the actual timeline of Terri's medical treatment including intensive specialized therapies and electrode implantation early on prior to knowledge or understanding of the severity of her deficit.Most of this, including the fact that there were non familial witnesses to Terri's expression of the fact that she would not want to be artificially sustained, and that she was bulemic, have also been referred to in mainstream media broadcasts and publications through the years and months this case has gone on since it was first presented as a Dateline segment almost ten years ago.. This is not secret or privileged information and you don't have to be a rocket, or any other kind of scientist to understand it, you only have to get your information from sites with as much objectivity as possible instead of politically or religiously motivated "blogs" dead set to damn Michael Schiavo in the face of not only evidence, but a huge body of court decisions made according to the rule of law, to the contrary. Point in case (which I already mentioned): the malpractice case was about Terri's doctor's negligence in not more aggessively treating her bulemia, which Michael Schiavo won. This alone would indicate that Terri's bulemia is established fact and not speculation. I don't believe I have ever heard anyone question the reality of Terri's bulemia before. One of the things that bothers me the very most when observing discussions about this case is that people are much more willing to believe things like the fired nurse's affadavit, the ex girlfriend's deposition,both dismissed aas whithout merit in a court of law, and other hearsay, gossip, and downright libel and slander than they are to actually look at the facts from a viewpoint more objective than Hannity and Colmes and Operation Rescue, the latter of which has so co opted the Schindlers themselves, and used them as pawns, that the Schindlers have gone from the confused, grieving parents on the Larry King Show five or ten years ago to the figureheads of a legal and media circus.
  10. Terri's bulemia was well documented by her private physician well before her cardiac incident. Michael Schiavo's malpractice suit was brought against these physicians on the basis that their treatment of the condition was not adequate. And, he won the suit. So, the bulemia is not a matter of hearsay or propaganda originating with Michael Schiavo.Nor are Terri's statements regarding her wish to not be kept alive in a very incapacitated state; there were several witnesses who heard these statements and testified in court, under oath, to them. This is part of the court record.
  11. Not at the time of her incident, but prior to that her weight had always been a problem; in excess of 200 lbs as an adult. She lost this weight and apparently maintained the loss by purging and was also know that hyperhydrate, which can affect electrolyte balance as certainly as can dehydration.
  12. She is not being given morphine around the clock, is not on a morphine pump. As I recall, and I heard this on mainstream news broadcasts, probably NBC or MSNBC, she has received a small amount of morphine twice since the feeding tube was removed. I don't know why she received even that; perhaps so that her caregivers would not later be accused of allowing her to suffer without morphine.PVS would not require a ventilator except for two reasons: if the brain stem were compromised instead of or in addition to the cerebral cortex, or is artificial ventilation were required during a bout of pneumonia. As you may have noticed, Terri does have an open tracheostomy. There are probably thousands of people in PVS's who do not require artificial ventilation, this would depend on which part of the brain was affected; Terri's brain stem is intact, a sort of freaky fluke of fate, IMO. And, people whose brain stem is affected are not usually said to be in a PVS, but fall into the category of "brain dead"; their brain is incapable of generating the necessary impulses to sustain life in terms of breathing and automatic functions. More on the pain issue. KSL had a physician on the noon news the other day, someone whose specialty is terminal/hospice care who explained the process of "starvation". Even in cognizant individuals the end stage is preceded by ketosis which may produce a state of euphoria and well being (and, I have been there, this is true)which is followed by the release of endorphans in the brain, which are a natural tranquilizer/sedative/analgesic. I do know a few people who fast for extreme periods of time for spiritual reasons and describe and eleven day fast as a great natural "high", however strange this sounds to those of us who have never done this and are not likely to try it.
  13. Here are some great informative links just in case anyone is interested in discussing this case at a level above unsubstantiated gossip and innuendo: Terri's CT; this is from a medical ethics site Normal CT for comparison, showing the detail missing in Terri's scan Good starting place source link with links to ALL depositions and other legal documents and court rulings Summary timeline Nurse's affadavit dismissed by court.
  14. I can answer this easily............not in Terri's case. Unless you are talking about her brain stem or lower brain, then it is true, but she still has no pain or awareness whatsoever.We are all used to hearing about people who are "brain dead" and must be placed on ventilators because they are unable to breathe on their own. These people have damage to the lower brain, or the brain stem, the part of the brain that controls breathing and other automatic functions. This part of Terri's brain is still there and functioning, but her cerebral cortex, the "higher brain" is the part that was destroyed by lack of oxygen and is, quite literally, gone, along with all the things that make you, and I, and Terri, human and alive. I think further brain scans, such as MRI and PET were not pursued because they'd be pointless; the CT shows empty space where the cortex should be, there is no liklihood that an MRI would show brain mass in the space that the CT showed as empty. And PET scans measure cortical activity. No cerebral cortex, no cortical activity. FWIW, it seems at this point, in my mind, to have been some huge and awful cosmic dirty trick that left Terri as she is today, when, had it only been a different part of her brain starved for oxygen first, or if she had not received first aid as quickly as she did, her brain stem, lower brain, would have been affected, she would not have been able to be revived, nor would she have had to languish in this ghastly state between life and death for all these years.
  15. Yes.Is this why I don't place the deposition of Michael's ex girlfriend and the affadavit of a fired nurse higher on the tree of evidence than the CT scans of Terri's head and the timeline of what treatment(s) Terri received and where? Not to mention the fact that both the deposition and the affadavit, the source of much, if not most, of the vicious gossip about Michael Schiavo were thrown out of court as having no merit several times by a Southern Baptist judge who has now been asked to leave his congregation for having the utter gall to place the word of law above his own personal religious beliefs.
  16. No, it isn't insensitive, it's the sad and objective truth.For me, this, and not the character assassination of Michael Schiavo at the hands of the right wing political machine, has been the deciding factor. She is already gone, now, let her go in peace. I see this as compassion and not insensitivity. If you doubt her cerebral cortex is gone, find the CT scan on the internet and you can see that it is. Gone. Entirely. This is not reversable, and in the beginning Terri's husband actually did see to it that every possible therapy was tried. We are not talking about someone with "brain damage", or cerbral cortical damage which can sometimes resolve as other parts of the cortex take over for the damaged parts. We are talking about someone whose cerebral cortex was deprived of oxygen long enough to die and has since atrophied and/or been resorbed, the empty space being filled naturally with cerebral spinal fluid. I don't know what it is about this case that makes people so bound and determined to grasp after every libelous slanderous straw to virtually pillory Michael Schiavo, when Terri's medical history and a timeline of events is also out there for anyone who actually cares to find and read.
  17. I think it wise to remember that Terri lacks the "hardware" to feel pain, hunger, thirst or anything else. Her cerebral cortex is essentially gone, and long ago replaced with liquid....cerebrospinal fluid.Terri is like your computer.....without a hard drive. The person is gone, the body lives on.
  18. When was this?I took a the full year of honors Book of Mormon from Nibley sometime in the dark ages (1963-1964 school year). A few years later I when I was out of school, but my then husband was still in school, and I was home in Provo with the first of my boys he would often walk through our yard, sometimes with a small child and pick apricots from our tree. This was 1967-1968 and the child, a girl, was a preschooler. I have always wondered if it were his child since at the time he was in his late 50's, or perhaps a grandchild, but if the daughter, Martha,who has written the book is "40-ish" as all the articles say, perhaps he and his wife had some of their seven very late in their lives. I think he pulled the final exam trick on a regular basis. To call Nibley eccentric is a profound understatement; he was an aesthetic, unworldly scholar of an intellectual type rare in the world and essentially non existent, save Nibley, in the LDS Church. I thought then, and I think now, that he did not live and think in the same world or terms as the rest of us; that his mind was that of a Sophocles, a Plato, an Einstein, or, perhaps on a darker note, a John Nash. It would have been ineresting to see what direction and form his scholarship would have taken outside the aegis of the Church, or to hear opinions of his intellect from sources outside the church, perhaps peers at UCLA, Berkeley, Pomona, Scripps, and Claremont.
  19. Thanks, although I've been reading since Septemeber, I guess it took something "along my line" to make me post more than once I think my only other actual post was about the church welfare system or endowments for young people only if they are going on a mission of getting married since those are the other two threads I remember having an interest in.
  20. He was called "the American archaeoastronomer Neil Steede." Wow. I'm going to have to come up with something more spectacular than how intrasite spatial organization relates to social structure to beat that one
  21. Indeed this seems his only forte' although the funding doesn't appear to be institutions such as universities and most of the controversial artifacts or evidence seem to be those in which he has a vested interest.Maybe he could write a grant proposal and submit it to the National Science Foundation or. better yet, National Geographic, which funds the majority of BYU's Mesoamerican projects. I'm sorry, but this is not the way science is done, and if he expects his work to be accepted he needs to do it right. I have no clue as to whether he knows how but doesn't bother because of lack of funding, but I do know that no archaeologist with any integrity would plow ahead willy nilly under these circumstances; they would let the site sit rather than do it wrong and ruin the integrity of any data found. I don't know of many archaeologists who are cited on UFO sites. He is.
  22. Just a comment on the subject of the hill Cumorah (or any other significant archaeological evidence) being present in what is now New York, or, for that matter, any of the eastern two thirds of the U.S.If the sites we hoped to find were located in these areas, and the Book of Mormon peoples therefore being the indigenous inhabitants of these areas, we would not find much, if any, archaeological evidence of them. This is simply because the ancient peoples who populated these areas did not leave us much in the way of hard archaeological evidence in the first place, as did the ancient peoples of the Southwestern US and Mesoamerica. We have artifacts in terms of stone an some pottery, as well as soapstone, there are mound sites that yield information on things like subsistance,and there is evidence of trade in pottery and soapstone, but these people did not build buildings of materials that could withstand time, even as well as the mud structures of the Fremont with whom I am most familiar. Even in the case of the Fremont there is a dearth of human remains among the archaeology to indicate "many dying in a war". So, archaeologically speaking, it would be extremely handy if these sites were in Mexico/Mesoamerica as those cultures left a lot of durable evidence behind.
  23. I had never personally heard of Steede until now, but what I have been able to glean during the last couple of days plants him firmly in the "fringe".He is not educated as an archaeologist having simply an "MA in General Studies". He is absent from mainstream archaeological publications and seems heavily vested in a number of theories that require the complete suspension of a world of known fact to "buy into them". He is an archaeologist, it seems, along the lines of fanciful theories such as those presented in works such as Chariots of the Gods, Fingerprints of the Gods,The Forbidden Archaeology. He seems to be heavily vested, to the point of ignoring what we DO know, in several general concepts: that the New World was populated far earlier than has ever been conceived of, that a multitude of Old World languages are evidenced in Mesoamerican artifacts (bricks, to be exact) along with Mayan heiroglyphs. He participated in an NBC special; The Mysterious Origins of Man, which was universally panned by scientists and non scientists alike. Obviously, I would not put any money on this person to be the one to definitively prove that a hill in Mexico is Cumorah, at least until he instills some sound scientific method into his research design, but this seems a person who seems oblivious to the important of process,provenence and context and is very much single artifact oriented in drawing broad conclusions heavily weighted with bias. IMO, this has NONE of the necessities of a serious and valid endeavor, much less the trappings. Simply the idea of including amateurs with NO training in how to approach plotting, mapping and systematically excavating a site makes me a little queasy. Archaeology is far more than the digging of holes and finding artifacts. In this century anyway. Afterthought: I belong to a listserve of New World Archaeologists, I can inquire about this fellow, but I pretty much know what the answers will be.
  24. I didn't just show up and no one asked me over just to comment. I've been visiting, reading and occasionally posting here few several months, since early fall, I think.I have a B.S. from BYU, and a PhD. from the University of Utah in Anthropology/New World Archaeology and have specialized in the prehistory of Utah for a little over twenty years now. Ummm, how DID Kevinb get here?? On edit...you can click on my name to view my profile; I registered Sept 9,2004, with no clue that any subject relevant to my profession would ever come up.