Food for Thought

I have just been reading about the judge's decision today to keep the feeding tube out of Terri Schiavo. My heart is breaking. I remember four years ago when our son, Isaac, was so little and so sick, and a doctor asked us to consider letting "nature take its course", by pulling his tubes and his oxygen, and letting him die. I now look at my healthy, strong four-year-old son, and I think...Thank You, God. Thank You for having everything in your control. Teach us that You don't need our help to do ANYTHING. Certainly, my son is autistic, and there might be those who think that we would have been better off to let him die...but GIVE ME A BREAK! Isaac has so much to offer the world, and the decision was NEVER ours to make! Read this article, please....and continue to pray for Terri Schiavo.

The Christian Underground http://www.christian-underground.com/ READ IT - LEARN FROM IT - PRAY OVER IT - SHARE IT---Culture of death stalks Terri Schiavo (March 22, 2005; J.D. Mullane) In a video, Terri Schiavo appears pale, puffy and fragile. Her mother, Mary Schindler, faces Terri, back to the camera from a three-quarter shot. Mrs. Schindler lifts her left hand to caress Terri's face. Terri smiles. But this can't be, for we have been told that Terri Schiavo is hopelessly brain damaged and in a "persistent vegetative state" or, as one doctor who recommended starving her to death put it, in "wakeful oblivion." Another video. It shows Terri grimacing and turning away when a doctor places a cotton swab in her mouth. Who knew that someone in a persistent vegetative state could feel discomfort enough to react as anyone might when a swab is shoved in your face? Terri seems wakeful, but not oblivious. Another video. Terri's eyes follow a Mylar balloon as it is moved over her, back and forth. Huh. A profoundly brain-damaged woman who appears to have the ability to concentrate. Oh, it's probably just a reflex. More video. Terri laughs. Terri moans. Terri tries to speak. (Yesterday the Internet was ablaze with a 2004 audiotape of Terri attempting to speak to her father.) Laughter? Moaning? Speech? From someone whose brain forever spins somewhere near Jupiter? Of course, who am I to question the wise men of medicine who actually examined Terri? These doctors gave their opinions to a Florida state judge, who used them to rule that "persistently vegetative" Terri should die by starvation. Among the doctors the judge relied on is Ronald Cranford, a neurologist who has taught at the University of Minnesota's Center for Biomedical Ethics. I'm sure it's just a slip among us in the media, but it hasn't been widely reported that Cranford has long advocated starving the brain damaged, especially those suffering from Alzheimer's. He even wrote an op-ed piece in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune about it." In Europe," he wrote, "feeding tubes are rarely seen in nursing homes. Once a patient is so severely brain damaged that only artificial nutrition can sustain life, many doctors and families ask, 'What's the point?' " The point, doctor, is that brain-damaged people can improve, and the videotapes of Terri Schiavo are evidence. I had a cousin who suffered an aneurysm and lay comatose for weeks. Several doctors examined him and said there was nothing more to do. Compassion dictated that life support be turned off. But one doctor had an unscientific hunch that my cousin would recover. Several weeks later, my cousin was talking. Today, you'd never know that he had nearly been a victim of medically induced "compassion." What stalked my cousin, and what's stalking Terri Schiavo, is what Pope John Paul II calls the "culture of death." That is putting to death someone who is medically helpless in the name of compassion or for the sake of our own convenience. It's becoming normalized. Just last Sunday, The New York Times, quoting "experts," reported that inducing death by withholding food and fluids "can lead to a gentle death" - as if none of us have seen the horrific images of Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. If Terri Schiavo dies, she won't be the first victim the culture of death has claimed. She'll merely be the most famous among millions who've been silently terminated because it was decided that their life was more trouble than it was worth.

Can I also suggest to everyone that you plan ahead? Have a will made up...have a living will made up. Let your loved ones know LEGALLY what your desires are. I know I have a lot of room to talk, but Russ and I are working on it. Now that we have another baby on the way (have I written about that yet?), it seems all the more important!

God bless Terri, and if it comes down to it, Lord, take her away in PEACE and comfort. Don't let her suffer, as it seems her husband wants her to.

More later...