Posted on 03/18/2005 10:22:14 PM PST by nickcarraway
TAMPA, Fla. - (KRT) - Two dark scenarios haunt Jay Wolfson even now, a year and a half after his brief appointment to be a neutral arbiter, a guardian, an unbiased observer, the one man asked by the state of Florida to stand in Terri Schiavo's shoes.
One is that the severely brain-damaged woman is in a terrible lightless place, aware of nothing but a yawning, endless hopelessness.
The other is that even though he never elicited a response from her, despite all the pleading and cajoling he did at her bedside, that he might have missed some subtle, nearly invisible signs that she was somewhere in there, aware.
"Imagine not having hope and being aware that's all you had was no hope. The horror. It's like not being, but knowing that you're not," said Wolfson recently in his Tampa-area office. "That's one thing. The other is, what if she's knocking on a door somewhere and I was walking through all the wrong corridors and I missed it. What if?"
Wolfson was appointed by a Florida court in the fall of 2003 to be Schiavo's guardian ad litem, or guardian at law, to deduce Schiavo's best interests and represent neither her husband nor her parents but Terri Schiavo herself.
This makes Wolfson one of the very few people to have spent extended time with Schiavo and gauged her level of awareness without having a vested interest at stake.
In the end, after long hours at Schiavo's bedside and after poring over 30,000 pages of legal documents, Wolfson concluded that Schiavo was indeed in a permanent vegetative state.
It wasn't the conclusion he'd hoped to make.
"You want to weigh in on life as opposed to death," Wolfson said. "You want some way to elicit a response."
Wolfson was appointed Schiavo's guardian after the Florida Legislature passed "Terri's Law" in 2003, a move that allowed doctors to reinsert her feeding tube, despite a judge's ruling that it should be removed. The law has since been struck down as unconstitutional.
Wolfson, who has a law degree and a PhD and is a distinguished service professor of public health and medicine at the University of South Florida, was asked to decide whether Schiavo's feeding tube should be removed and whether more tests should be done to assess her ability to swallow.
He scoured 13 years' worth of legal documents and extensively interviewed Schiavo's husband, Michael, and her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler. His time with Schiavo was spent trying to determine whether she was aware of and interactive with the world.
At first, walking into Schiavo's room, he was struck by her presence, even though he knew in advance that she drifted between wakefulness and sleep.
"She's a person, like you or I, and the first disconcerting part is that she's awake," said Wolfson.
When awake, Schiavo's eyes rolled about the room. She made random noises that sounded like groaning or the start of a laugh or cry.
But court documents said Schiavo's cerebral cortex, where reason and emotions are housed, had degenerated to fluid. So Wolfson set about trying to determine whether Schiavo's noises and jerks were merely reflexive or if they indicated something more.
He played Elton John CDs for her, and Bach and Mozart and music from the late 1980s, when she was in her 20s, prior to her collapse. He held her hands, squeezing them, and stroked her hair and face.
He put his face close to hers and tried to make eye contact, pleading desperately, trying to will her into giving him any kind of sign.
"I would beg her, `Please, Terri, help me,'" he said. "You want to believe there's some connection. You hope she's going to sit up and bed and say, `Hey, I'm really here, but don't tell anybody.' Or, `I'm really here, tell everybody!'"
But Schiavo never made eye contact. When Wolfson visited her when her parents were there, she never made eye contact with them either, he said. And for all of Wolfson's pleadings and coaxing, he never got what he most wanted: a sign.
"I felt like there was something distinctive about whoever Terri is," said Wolfson. "But I was not clear that it was there, inside the vessel."
Wolfson was dismayed to learn Friday that Barbara Weller, an attorney for the Schindlers, claimed that Schiavo tried to speak. "Terri does not speak," he said. "To claim otherwise reduces her to a fiction."
One thing Wolfson never doubted was that for all their intense, mutual antagonism, both Michael Schiavo and Terri's parents love and adore her.
She was cared for incredibly well, Wolfson said. Her hair was always combed, and after 15 years of being incapacitated, she never developed a bedsore. In fact, Wolfson said until about seven years ago, Michael Schiavo had Terry's makeup and hair done regularly, and her clothes changed every day - to the point that hospice staff protested that he was being overly demanding about her care.
Also, Wolfson concluded, Schiavo would never have tolerated the enormous, "omnipresent" acrimony between her husband and parents.
In the 38-page report he wrote afterwards, Wolfson said the best decision for Schiavo could be made only if both sides agreed to fresh, independent medical testing. If the new testing showed she couldn't swallow on her own and that Schiavo had no hope for improvement, then the feeding tube should be pulled.
Both parties were on the verge of agreeing to these new conditions, Wolfson said, but once the Florida Supreme Court struck down Terri's Law his efforts were moot.
Wolfson still refuses to give his personal opinion on whether Terri's feeding tube should or should not have been pulled.
But he will say, as a parent of three sons, that after doing everything one can, sometimes the time comes to let go.
"When it evolves beyond that person into issues that are other people's issues or are broader issues, it becomes less objectifiable," said Wolfson. "It's hard to be objective anyway. This is the kind of thing you don't wish on anybody."
This little piece of screed shows you are indeed dancing with the ghouls on Terri's grave-to-be. Greer picked the date quite cunningly and you rub it in. Anyhow, the courts can't stop a Congressional subpoena if it comes to the president ordering it to be enforced. They can only sit on the sidelines and huff and puff.
"Anyhow, the courts can't stop a Congressional subpoena if it comes to the president ordering it to be enforced. They can only sit on the sidelines and huff and puff."
Will never happen. Wishful thinking on your part.
> Sedation is a better explanation. It is merely a theory,
Which seems plausible.
> and one that seems consistent with the facts. ... Michael may have ordered the sedation, who knows?
He is a registered nurse.
A declaration by one of the nurses who attended to Terri reported that when Michael used to come see her, he often locked the door and was alone with her for a noticeable period of time.
> What other explanation is there?
Florida neurological specialist Dr. Hammesfahr spent a good many hours with Terri. Among other observations he reported about her is that she is legally blind.
You and your snippy little ones will always carp and dance with ghouls.
"will always carp"
It's no carp. It's a statement of fact. You'll see.
Bump for reference. A very interesting read. Two areas of concern. The fact that the court accepted the potentialy biased word of Schiavo and HIS relatives that she stated she wouldn't want to be kept alive. if she felt so strongly about this, WHY were her family members unaware of her feelings. That doesn't pass the smell test. Also, the fact that there was not an updated workup including MRI, new swallowing evaluation, cerebral blood flow studies. And a new set of reasonably unbiased neurologists to re-examine her. They should not be advocates of euthenasia like the mini-Kervorkian MD from the University of Minnesota/Hennepin County.
You call for self fulfilling prophecy and then smugly smile when it comes to pass? Have fun with the ghouls.
George Bush don't need no stinkin' court okay to bring Terri to Congress now (and once out of Florida, to feed her); he only needs cojones. This is a part of the process of government that the courts have no more say about, than the Texas courts had when the Rat legislators went AWOL and the Sergeant at Arms ordered their arrest if found in Texas.
Exactly right except Michael got the court (judge) to do it for him.
"This is a reflex response," testified University of Florida neurologist Melvin Greer, not related to the judge. "The muscles of the facial area will react to sensory and auditory stimulation."
So what is to keep some perverted "scientist" or "doctor" in the future from saying all of our behaviors are "reflex response"s?
I see the day coming, indeed it is here: Go ahead and do what you want with that non-person. Those so-called behaviors you see? Ignore them. Merely reflexive responses.
Are the state and federal legislators aware that judge greer is BLIND and unable to view the video evidence before him?
No. They said there was indication in the videos that she could respond and did but because she couldn't do it consistently, they ruled PVS. Good grief this woman is brain damaged, hello? If she could "consistently" respond everytime she wouldn't have brain damage, would she? Has anyone's BRAINS ever concluded that she is responding vaguely and only occasionally because that is all she can do? DUHHHHHH
I've looked these things up.He might say what level of care she receives beyound just the basic no frills care but hospice still has to act within some medical ethical guildlines. If they just did whatever he said then maybe whe would be dead already.
Then explain how Terri is ILLEGALLY in a hospice?
You need to fight to have the law changed.
Only when the brain coordinates those responses. The facial muscles have no mechanism to detect auditory signals, so cannot respond to them by themselves. And they can only respond to sensory signals by sending a message to the brain and receiving a message in return. This is not reflex--reflex only happens when there is physical stimulation (such as by a sharp tap directly on a nerve) of the nerves, causing inappropriate release of neurotransmitters into the muscle. Reflex movements are jerky and rapid.
It really makes me angry when so-called experts like this make statements like this. They're using the fact that most people do not have the necessary scientific background to assess these statements in order to promote an agenda. (This kind of misuse of science happens all the time--look at the proponents of fuel cells, embryonic stem cell research, etc.)
So, basically, when Terri was last aware, she was starving herself to death?? How ironic... and sad.
***(This kind of misuse of science happens all the time--look at the proponents of fuel cells, embryonic stem cell research, etc.)***
So, you are an expert in fuel cell technology? And, I suppose you think they're a hoax?
NOW??? That's been the pattern in this case since the get go. And many people on my side would agree wiht you.
The solution is available for the house and Senate, if they would only find it.
Wolfson is a courageous man who went to heroic efforts to find common ground amongst the Schindlers, Michael, and Jeb Bush. Because he wasn't able to successfully do so he is vilified by many.
I forgot about those insulin vials, but I think the signs of insulin shock would have been too hard to miss even for Mr Wolfson.
I heard Tom DeLay last night on Michael Reagan's talk show, and he and others are working all this weekend to resolve the differences between the House and Senate versions of the Bill, so that when they vote on it that it will be passed into Law. They are meeting on Monday to vote on it.
But he also said something very chilling: He said that Terri will probably not last as long this time and that she could be dead within 2-3 days. They are monitoring things closely, it sounds like, and if Terri becomes critical the president can call an emergency session of Congress to vote on this Bill.
It's important that we let our legislatures know TODAY that we are expecting them to get their act together and work out their differences between the House and the Senate and pass into Law immediately the Bill that will not only save Terri but will also stop this horrendous tide of euthanasia that is going to sweep our country if they don't stop their partisan monkeying around and bowing to this arrogant Judge Greer and all his cronies.
Use this link to contact your Senators and Representatives; it's VERY easy to do:
http://www.capwiz.com/nrlc/mail/oneclick_compose/?alertid=7260151
And once you send it to them, use the form to send that page too everyone you can think of that will also contact their legislatures.
THEN write to President Bush at president@whitehouse.gov and urge him to call an emergency session of Congress this weekend to get this Bill voted on and passed into Law.
And MOST OF ALL, let's pray fervently like we've never prayed before.
There's way too much at stake here to sit on our hands and just let this all happen.
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