All of the things that are in this blog today are only my opinion,..but the first ammendment says that I can state that opinion! here goes:

The value of a living will?

To determine one's own course of action after one has become so permantely disabled that one can no longer express one's cognition to the outside world?

I read some more articles on Terri Schiavo this morning. Should this woman be kept alive? What makes her case so impotant that it has come to the fore front of the national news again and again? Could it be the million dollars, which the lawyers will be getting anyway..because of all of the court wrangling going on, which Terri was awarded in a lawsuit be the reason?

What I am saying is sad but true: I have seen lives like her's ended after five minute decisions in the nursing homes and hospitals in which I worked as an LPN. I would say,..if Terri's eyes visibly followed the hands and body of the person, removing her tube,...that the tube should not be removed.

I once watched such a tube being removed to spare the family more medical expense, which they could not afford. The man had ALS. He had no way to say "yes" or "no"....about anything. He was breathing on his own.

What I can never forget..is...how his eyes seemed to widen as he watched the medical personel removed his feeding tube. Did he understand the implications? I don't know. Was he still capable of rational thought? I don't know.

People with ALS can maintain cogency even after all of their bodily functions and corporal means of communication fail. They know what is happening around them,..they are unable to communicate what they think or feel about what is going on. I never WILL forget that man's eyes..as they pulled that tube....out.

Teri Shavo has brain damage. I don't know what her mental capacity is. I do know that folks with brain damage,.even the most extreme forms,..can suprise folks with what they might be capable of!! "Brain damage" is not a good reason to say a person has no future.

And recently,..I do believe that a man in Terri's condition woke up. he thought it was 1984,...but his family didn't seem to care..so the newspapers said. And a woman in a coma, like Teri's, woke up!! This lady recently, so the newspapers said, talked to her mother on the telephone and asked for some make-up!! Whoever pulled the feeding tube on Teri Shiavo,..I hope that they at least once..looked into her eyes.