N
From another forum
So, last year, I attended a nurse/physician conference at a state convention about Death/Dying, and the whole thing turned into a 4 hour discussion/debate/argument about Terri. There were tons of experts (in their own mind) in that room that made very valid arguements, but when it came down to it, none of us could give "the answer", because we simply do not know who is right in this situation. It's really one of those "once in a million years" kind of fucked up legal/ethical situations.
Here's just some medical facts/observations:
Terri was bulemic...she wasn't the brightest bulb. She had been bulemic on severe levels for some time. If you look at that picture of her, you can tell by looking at her that she is waif thin. When someone starves themselves or self-induces vomiting and tries to lose weight, they throw their body into flux. Electrolyte disturbances are the biggest problem with these types of people. Potassium is a key 'lyte that controls, among other things, heart muscle function (along with calcium, magnessium and sodium, however Potassium is the biggest effect on the heart.) Whenever someone expels great amounts of fluids from their body, be it via urine, bleeding, vomitting, profuse sweating, whatever..., the sodium-potassium exchange in the kidneys does not take place, so ultimately you get an electrolyte distrubance with an abundance of sodium (hypernautremia) and a severe shortage of potassium (hypokalemia). Those two are a deadly combination that can stop your heart basically.
Terri's heart did stop, from her own doing. It wasn't a congenital defect, it wasn't heriditary disease, it was because she was self absorbed with her image and killed her body to maintain a certain self image. After rescusitive measures were applied, her heart began beating again. Unfortunatly, her heart had been without rhythm (asystole) for quite a few minutes, so brain damage occured because of the lack of oxygenated blood flow to the brain. Other problems had occured when this happened to her body, it was a roller coaster falling off the tracks.
That was years ago. Today we have more diagnostic tools and methods of intervention that weren't available 10 years ago, 5 even, but nothing could have saved or prevented the level of Terri's damage.
Terri's brain damage has effected many things, while others still function. Instead of giving you the history of what her body has done over the last 15 years, I'll just hit the major systems and tell you what they don't do now.
Musculoskeletal - Obviously, Terri lacks the ability to walk. Due to 15 years of disuse syndrome (where she doesn't use her limbs), if you see a picture or video of her now you will see that her arms are drawn up very tightly and contracted against her chest, crooked at that. They don't move, they don't function. They might have an occasional spastic motor neuron that fires and they twitch, but that's it. If you tried to straighten her arms now or do range of motion on them, you'd snap them because of their fraility and the lack of tone of the muscle. The muscle is dead effectively. Same thing with her legs. They aren't as drawn up because the doctors and nurses have kept those realitivly straight with boards, but they are bad and only going to get worse. Once this starts happening to the MS system, it isn't fixable. So to review, Terri can't move shit...except her neck. She can voluntarily move her neck..not her head but her neck to rotate her head.
Cardiac - because of her previous damage, her heart occasionally would have flutters or arrythmias. She had pacing wires placed some years ago for external defibrilation, but those have since been taken out since she is in hospice (will get to that later).
Respiratory - from the initial heart stoppage and ensuing coma, Terri could not voluntarily breathe. She had a tube down her mouth and later as she regained the ability to breathe, a tracheostomy was placed (tube in your neck). When she went hospice, that was removed, but by that time she could breathe on her own, but she still requires oxygen therapy and respiratory therapy all day.
Renal - her kidneys were damaged from the inital heart stop and ensuing coma. I don't remember which one, but one of her kidneys only operates at 10%, and the other isn't quite 100% itself. She will need fluid replacement (IV fluids) and things like sodium and potassium suppliements, to say nothing of possible dialysis until she dies.
Bowel/Bladder - she lost function of this some time ago..she's incontenent..which means she shits herself/pisses herself at will...skin integrety suffers because of this. Plus since she's on tube feeds, she has nothing but liquid diahrrea.
Brain/Cognitave function - This is the biggest area of debate/misinformation right now. Terri is NOT in a coma. Terri is NOT a veggie. She's close, but she exhibits signs, albiet small, of independent cognitive function that prevents the state and a doctor from classifying her as a vegitable. With audible stimulation, Terri opens her eyes, makes eye contact, occasionally grunts/moans, has a smile perminatly on her face (since her muscles and muscle control is gone, she can't change her disposition). EEG studies (brainwave scans) have shown the minimalist of activity in Terri's brain. A vegitave coma state would have a level of next to nothing. Nothing is brain dead, at which time life support is removed. Vegative coma is a low low low level that will probably never improve, but might get worse, but stays the same at all times...consider it the step above braindead. Terri is like 3 steps above braindead, where you and I are 100 steps above. The biggest way to understand this is to put yourself in Terri's place for a second...you can't move, you can't do anything voluntary, you lay in bed. You have eyes and see, you have ears and hear, you have a nose and smell...you have a brain and think...however it does not function the way that yours or mine functions right now reading this post. Being in her place would mean you see things, hear things and smell things, but do not interpret them the way we do, they carry no meaning, no attachment, no analysis, no connection. Cranial nerves and old reflexes enable her to respond to stimuli and such.
Basically, Terri isn't sitting there in a shell with her brain going a million miles an hour thinking "God, this sucks. I love lamp. I hate my husband. This whole thing is silly. I wish I could commicate with them, I wish I could let them know...." ...none of that is going on, just this ....."sound........person.......sound...."
The biggest issue...
Nutrition - Terri has lost the motor function to swallow. If she had something down her mouth like idiots trying to bring her water/food, she'd aspirate and die right there. Bad idea. She has a tube, a jeujenostomy tube which is a 13 inch or so long plastic tube that goes from the top portion of her transverse colon and intestines and leads to the skin on her abdomen, where a plug is that you connect the tube feeding to. Terry is in hospice, which by national requirements means that you go there when a physician certifies that you have less than 6 months to live given your present condition. If you're still kickin' at the end of 6 months, they just re-certify you. At some point, Terri was bad enough/family agreed to place her in hospice. You don't go to hospice to get better, you go to hospice to die. Hospice is end of life care, they do comfort measures and such, but when you go they don't intervine, they don't do CPR, they just watch you die (in dignity of course). Hospice has certain requirements like no IV's or anything. So Terri doesn't get nutrition or hydration from TPN or IV fluids, but from Tubefeeds. With the feeding tube pulled, a person that can't swallow and has no IV has absolutly no intake into their body, no hydration.
So what will happen?
If the courts intervine, we'll talk about this for years because that's how long this will last. If they don't, she won't last long. Her body has already been damaged. With no intake or hydration, her electrolytes will become inbalanced and she will become dehydrated. Most people in the media and those that stand outside the hospital are screaming that she'll "starve" to death. Nothing could be further from the truth. She'll die from heart arrythmias when her electrolytes become imbalanced enough with her potassium and sodium that she'll just die. Painlessly.
****FHEW****
Goddamn. Now that was all pure medical jargon, sure, but it was without personal opinion, just the facts.
There is a website, Terrisfight.com i think, that has videos of Terri, most of which were on ABC or some shit not to long ago. What the media and these pro-Terri sites don't tell you, is that they spent hundreds of dollars having Terri's hair fixed, colored, makeup put on, normal clothes, ect. The family did some form of coaching, and then went in and took a video camera. (which is VERY VERY illegal, BTW, without Terri's consent thanks to the new national HIPPA law....I'm waiting for someone to bring this up)
Anyway they shot footage for 4 days and got maybe 3 minutes worth making it look like Terri is responsive and aware of people, oriented x3 to person place and time and able to accept and respond to stimuli. Liars. She can't, as proven by lack of brain activity. She has common motor movements and sounds, that just happen to coincide with a mother sitting by her face saying "How's your cold?" 30 times, or "I love you, give me a kiss" 30 times, and they freak out when she goes "UuUUUUUUUUUUHUH" because that clearly translates from retard to "I LOVE YOU TO OMG MOM".
Here's just some medical facts/observations:
Terri was bulemic...she wasn't the brightest bulb. She had been bulemic on severe levels for some time. If you look at that picture of her, you can tell by looking at her that she is waif thin. When someone starves themselves or self-induces vomiting and tries to lose weight, they throw their body into flux. Electrolyte disturbances are the biggest problem with these types of people. Potassium is a key 'lyte that controls, among other things, heart muscle function (along with calcium, magnessium and sodium, however Potassium is the biggest effect on the heart.) Whenever someone expels great amounts of fluids from their body, be it via urine, bleeding, vomitting, profuse sweating, whatever..., the sodium-potassium exchange in the kidneys does not take place, so ultimately you get an electrolyte distrubance with an abundance of sodium (hypernautremia) and a severe shortage of potassium (hypokalemia). Those two are a deadly combination that can stop your heart basically.
Terri's heart did stop, from her own doing. It wasn't a congenital defect, it wasn't heriditary disease, it was because she was self absorbed with her image and killed her body to maintain a certain self image. After rescusitive measures were applied, her heart began beating again. Unfortunatly, her heart had been without rhythm (asystole) for quite a few minutes, so brain damage occured because of the lack of oxygenated blood flow to the brain. Other problems had occured when this happened to her body, it was a roller coaster falling off the tracks.
That was years ago. Today we have more diagnostic tools and methods of intervention that weren't available 10 years ago, 5 even, but nothing could have saved or prevented the level of Terri's damage.
Terri's brain damage has effected many things, while others still function. Instead of giving you the history of what her body has done over the last 15 years, I'll just hit the major systems and tell you what they don't do now.
Musculoskeletal - Obviously, Terri lacks the ability to walk. Due to 15 years of disuse syndrome (where she doesn't use her limbs), if you see a picture or video of her now you will see that her arms are drawn up very tightly and contracted against her chest, crooked at that. They don't move, they don't function. They might have an occasional spastic motor neuron that fires and they twitch, but that's it. If you tried to straighten her arms now or do range of motion on them, you'd snap them because of their fraility and the lack of tone of the muscle. The muscle is dead effectively. Same thing with her legs. They aren't as drawn up because the doctors and nurses have kept those realitivly straight with boards, but they are bad and only going to get worse. Once this starts happening to the MS system, it isn't fixable. So to review, Terri can't move shit...except her neck. She can voluntarily move her neck..not her head but her neck to rotate her head.
Cardiac - because of her previous damage, her heart occasionally would have flutters or arrythmias. She had pacing wires placed some years ago for external defibrilation, but those have since been taken out since she is in hospice (will get to that later).
Respiratory - from the initial heart stoppage and ensuing coma, Terri could not voluntarily breathe. She had a tube down her mouth and later as she regained the ability to breathe, a tracheostomy was placed (tube in your neck). When she went hospice, that was removed, but by that time she could breathe on her own, but she still requires oxygen therapy and respiratory therapy all day.
Renal - her kidneys were damaged from the inital heart stop and ensuing coma. I don't remember which one, but one of her kidneys only operates at 10%, and the other isn't quite 100% itself. She will need fluid replacement (IV fluids) and things like sodium and potassium suppliements, to say nothing of possible dialysis until she dies.
Bowel/Bladder - she lost function of this some time ago..she's incontenent..which means she shits herself/pisses herself at will...skin integrety suffers because of this. Plus since she's on tube feeds, she has nothing but liquid diahrrea.
Brain/Cognitave function - This is the biggest area of debate/misinformation right now. Terri is NOT in a coma. Terri is NOT a veggie. She's close, but she exhibits signs, albiet small, of independent cognitive function that prevents the state and a doctor from classifying her as a vegitable. With audible stimulation, Terri opens her eyes, makes eye contact, occasionally grunts/moans, has a smile perminatly on her face (since her muscles and muscle control is gone, she can't change her disposition). EEG studies (brainwave scans) have shown the minimalist of activity in Terri's brain. A vegitave coma state would have a level of next to nothing. Nothing is brain dead, at which time life support is removed. Vegative coma is a low low low level that will probably never improve, but might get worse, but stays the same at all times...consider it the step above braindead. Terri is like 3 steps above braindead, where you and I are 100 steps above. The biggest way to understand this is to put yourself in Terri's place for a second...you can't move, you can't do anything voluntary, you lay in bed. You have eyes and see, you have ears and hear, you have a nose and smell...you have a brain and think...however it does not function the way that yours or mine functions right now reading this post. Being in her place would mean you see things, hear things and smell things, but do not interpret them the way we do, they carry no meaning, no attachment, no analysis, no connection. Cranial nerves and old reflexes enable her to respond to stimuli and such.
Basically, Terri isn't sitting there in a shell with her brain going a million miles an hour thinking "God, this sucks. I love lamp. I hate my husband. This whole thing is silly. I wish I could commicate with them, I wish I could let them know...." ...none of that is going on, just this ....."sound........person.......sound...."
The biggest issue...
Nutrition - Terri has lost the motor function to swallow. If she had something down her mouth like idiots trying to bring her water/food, she'd aspirate and die right there. Bad idea. She has a tube, a jeujenostomy tube which is a 13 inch or so long plastic tube that goes from the top portion of her transverse colon and intestines and leads to the skin on her abdomen, where a plug is that you connect the tube feeding to. Terry is in hospice, which by national requirements means that you go there when a physician certifies that you have less than 6 months to live given your present condition. If you're still kickin' at the end of 6 months, they just re-certify you. At some point, Terri was bad enough/family agreed to place her in hospice. You don't go to hospice to get better, you go to hospice to die. Hospice is end of life care, they do comfort measures and such, but when you go they don't intervine, they don't do CPR, they just watch you die (in dignity of course). Hospice has certain requirements like no IV's or anything. So Terri doesn't get nutrition or hydration from TPN or IV fluids, but from Tubefeeds. With the feeding tube pulled, a person that can't swallow and has no IV has absolutly no intake into their body, no hydration.
So what will happen?
If the courts intervine, we'll talk about this for years because that's how long this will last. If they don't, she won't last long. Her body has already been damaged. With no intake or hydration, her electrolytes will become inbalanced and she will become dehydrated. Most people in the media and those that stand outside the hospital are screaming that she'll "starve" to death. Nothing could be further from the truth. She'll die from heart arrythmias when her electrolytes become imbalanced enough with her potassium and sodium that she'll just die. Painlessly.
****FHEW****
Goddamn. Now that was all pure medical jargon, sure, but it was without personal opinion, just the facts.
There is a website, Terrisfight.com i think, that has videos of Terri, most of which were on ABC or some shit not to long ago. What the media and these pro-Terri sites don't tell you, is that they spent hundreds of dollars having Terri's hair fixed, colored, makeup put on, normal clothes, ect. The family did some form of coaching, and then went in and took a video camera. (which is VERY VERY illegal, BTW, without Terri's consent thanks to the new national HIPPA law....I'm waiting for someone to bring this up)
Anyway they shot footage for 4 days and got maybe 3 minutes worth making it look like Terri is responsive and aware of people, oriented x3 to person place and time and able to accept and respond to stimuli. Liars. She can't, as proven by lack of brain activity. She has common motor movements and sounds, that just happen to coincide with a mother sitting by her face saying "How's your cold?" 30 times, or "I love you, give me a kiss" 30 times, and they freak out when she goes "UuUUUUUUUUUUHUH" because that clearly translates from retard to "I LOVE YOU TO OMG MOM".
