Posted on 09/16/2006 8:44:44 AM PDT by Jawn33
Perhaps the last word should go to Pat Flores, the mother of George Melendez, the 31-year-old coma patient who reassured his parents that he wasn't in pain after taking Ambien, as zolpidem is known in the US. He was starved of oxygen when his car overturned and he landed face down in a garden pond near his home in Houston, Texas, in 1998. "The doctors said he was clinically dead - one said he was a vegetable," says Pat. "After three weeks he suffered multi-organ failure and they said his body would ultimately succumb. They said he would never regain consciousness."
He survived and four years later, while visiting a clinic, Pat gave him a sleeping pill because his constant moaning was keeping her and her husband, Del, awake in their shared hotel room. "After 10 to 15 minutes I noticed there was no sound and I looked over," she recalls. "Instead of finding him asleep, there he was, wide awake, looking at his surroundings. I said, 'George', and he said, 'What?' We sat up for two hours asking him questions and he answered all of them. His improvements have continued and we talk every day. He has a terrific sense of humour and he carries on running jokes from the day before.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Al Gore?
Of course he's right, he certainly turned the Rutgers program around.
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A lot of FReepers seem to have personal Schiavo-related issues, and will be along shortly to assure us that starving and dehydrating her to death was really a great and human Final Solution to the problem she posed.
Always, always err on the side of life.
But then, the Schivo case was never about Terri.
This is astounding that a sleeping pill could have this effect on people and makes you wonder about any decision to let someone be starved. Starving someone falls into the category of cruel and unusual punishment IMHO and should never happen in this country.
Where there is life, there is always a flicker of hope!
In America, where everyone has a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness except those who threaten others by their complete innocence. It is so sad what we have become.
I just want to go on record "DO NOT UNPLUG ME"
I suspect it's the same sort of reasoning that keeps many women from opposing abortion ... a deep-seated fear that admitting that it's killing will damn them, because they've had one.
The one's whose organs weren't harvested?
AMBIEN?? That is amazing!!
Would you add me to the ping list?
What a nice Orwellian, convoluted way of saying she didn't want to kill him.
Maybe I missed something here, but I'm interested in learning just how these parents administered Ambien to their seemingly comatose son.
bttt
Shiavo had his wife killed and he should be charged.
"I crushed it up and gave it to him in a bottle with a soft drink," Sienie recalls. "He couldn't swallow properly then, but I helped him and sat at his bedside. After about 25 minutes, I heard him making a sound like 'mmm'. He hadn't made a sound for five years..."
Yep, the death flock should be here shortly, attempting to badger everyone into submission. Interesting, isn't it? Guilt of that manner must be a horrid thing to live with.
There's no question that Terri Schiavo was murdered, with the help and support of liberal politicians and judges.
It wasn't just that a judge ordered her to die of thirst, a most painful form of death. It was also that her husband refused to allow her to have any treatment or proper medical supervision during the years she was in the hospice. She wasn't even allowed to have the blinds up or to have the nurses talk to her.
This poor, brave woman survived for years despite being condemned to what amounted to an isolation cell by her husband. Obviously there was someone in there who wanted to live, or she would have died much sooner of pure sensory deprivation.
Not to speak of the fact that her husband may well have put her into the hospital in the first place. And of the fact that he abandoned his wife for another woman, yet refused to hand over the guardianship to her parents, because he wanted to inherit her money, which he had fraudulently refused to spend on her health care.
"I crushed it up and gave it to him in a bottle with a soft drink," Sienie recalls. "He couldn't swallow properly then, but I helped him and sat at his bedside.
In my understanding, swallowing anything is difficult to impossible for patients in a genuinely comatose state. That's why I asked, not that I hadn't read the article.
Thanks for posting this. A neighbor's daughter suffered a seizure, and stroke as a child. I wonder if this would offer promise for someone like her, as it has for some of the stroke victim's in the article.
The article said it was a pill. He must have been able to eat, or possibly they could have crushed it and put it in his feeding tube if that's how he received nutrition.
Reminds me of the movie "Awakenings" (1990) with Robin Williams and Robert De Niro. Great movie.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099077/
Trailers here: (Don't get turned off by the first 25 seconds. Trust me.) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099077/trailers
(chirp-chirp-chirp)
Try starting here http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/infopage.html so you can get educated.
-Traveler
Miraculous, just miraculous.
Done. Welcome.
MORE GOOD NEWS!!
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Ok, now when are Terri's husband and his lawyers going to be charged with murder?
>>How many here have had to walk that lonely path that Mike....<
I have with my mother.
Is "Mike" a personal friend of yours?
Let's face it, Mike was far from alone. New woman, new children. He should have NEVER been allowed to make the decisions for a woman that he divorced by his actions.
My deepest condolences, as I too had to make the same decision about my father six years ago. His brain was destroyed by a stroke and he was in the same condition as Terri.
He should have NEVER been allowed to make the decisions for a woman that he divorced by his actions
NEWS FLASH!!! Terri made the decision.
Oh, the news didn't report that??? Gosh, the media must have slipped that day. Try reading it here: http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/trialctorder02-00.pdf
All Mike did was ask the courts to respect Terri's wishes AS SHE STATED THEM.
But, as I said before, few if any people here actually read all the court document involved in this case because it doesn't fit their perceived notion of how they "feel" it should have ended. Judge Greer did a superb job of keeping his emotions out of his rulings and used the letter of the law AS IT IS INTENDED!
-Traveler
We're approaching this from the wrong angle, it's got nothing to do with whether the person has the right to be killed but whether the state has the right to kill.
I thought they were Terri's wishes as MICHAEL STATED THEM.
According to National Right to Life, at age 45, one in three women will have had an abortion.
I agree with your reasoning.
Here we go. FR's weekly half hour of hate.
Maybe Michael Schiavo got wind of this.
My aunt Wanda went into a vegetative state in 1962 giving birth to her second son. My uncle Bill did divorce her and get remarried... in 1984. He spent 20 years alone.
Michael Shiavo spent, what 2 years, before falling into bed with another woman.
Bill died in 2001, Wanda in 2002. Every single day he could, from 1962 to 2001, Bill visited Wanda in the Nursing Home and sat with her for uncounted hours. That is 39 years.
Michael first tried to kill Terri after 6 years.
Do I have some perspective on this? I think so.
Typically in a court of law hearsay statements are not admissable. Only three people aknowledged hearing this statement from Terri, Michael, who stood to profit from her death, his brother and sister-in-law.
There were as many hearsay statements that contradicted what Michael was saying, and they had maintained that from the beginning, Michael changed his story when money became available.
I have read the court documents, just as I have read the court documents for Dred Scott, Roe v. Wade, and Kelo. I see yet another judge classifing a group of citizens as second class, based upon the flimisiest of evidence. It is important to take into consideration the representation each side could afford. Michael spent money intended for his wife's rehabilitation on legal counsel. Her parents weren't so dishonest and had significantly inferior representation.
I fully believed God blessed your Uncle Bill in ways unknown to others for his devotion to Wanda and for his selflessness.
Bill was a very blessed man. His second wife and his kids were a great blessing to him in this world.
Well said.
WOW this just made my day!!!!! Good campaign material!
Yep, they'll be here fast enough!! Thankful that this miracle has happened to show us that just because a person can't speak or communicate, they ARE most often aware.
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