I hate the phone, and talking on it makes me irritable.
This is me. I don't want to talk to anyone on the phone. DH calls me a dozen times a day if we aren't working in the same office, but he has learned to keep it brief. I glance at the caller ID. If it is "toll free number" or "unknown" I pick it up and hang up so I don't have to listen to it ring. The phone is a necessary evil.
Terri's tube has been removed. May it stay that way. Her husband has never come off that well to me, but the facts of the case support him. He did go through extraordinary effort to care for her including personal medical training. He now works in an ER. He could have easily given up and let the parents take over. I don't know if I could have fought this as long as he has.
It is still very sad. I hope all of my family can spend their time comforting each other and not fighting with each other if I get incapacitated.
There's a Swedish process (just being tested) where they freeze-dry you, pulverize you, and use you as fertilizer. Much less wasteful than cremation.
I would LOVE to do that. Plant an apple tree over me, for preference.
Yes, this! Amy and I were talking about this. I want a maple tree.
In other news, I am highly suggestible, and now own the Flogging Molly cd that Connie was listening to earlier.
Wow! I get a Flogging Molly toaster!
Not sold in Williams Sonoma.
makes mental note to eat a handful of Aimee before she's scattered, just to weird everyone out
Pfft. Like you're invited.
I like the fertilizer idea! A lot.
Bella Donna please.
Pfft. Like you're invited.
Like I wouldn't totally crash your wake.
Like you totally won't already be dead. You're MUCH older than I am.
it's only Michael Schiavo's word that his wife didn't want to be kept alive
The lesson here is that every single one of us should sit down right now and write a living will, if we haven't already, detailing exactly what we do and don't want done in case of catastrophic illness. Ask your legal next of kin--all of them: spouses, parents, children--to witness it and sign it.
Cool, necro-smack-down.
edit: in re: Sean and Aimee, of course. Smack downs with living wills is not cool.
A vague disclaimer is no one's friend.
I like the fertilizer idea! A lot.
Me too.
Back when I had a grass front yard right outside my front door, I used to take my fingernail and tonail clippings and toss them on the grass (no one ever used that lawn) so they'd fertilize the lawn instead of staying in a nonbiodegradable garbage bag forever.
Um, is that TMI?
My reaction is that the husband fought for his wife's recovery then, in the early 90s, admitted to himself that she was never going to recover. His parents have never made that admission.
She was injured in February of 1990. He won his malpractice settlement (there were a few, and I think his was the last) in November of '92, and started refusing her rehabilitative care as of February of '93. It may well be as you've said--that it was evident to him, but I think it is ethically objectionable to withhold food and water from someone who can't feed and hydrate himself. The reason for that objection doesn't live too far off from the reason why I believe in food stamps, WIC, support soup kitchens, and got up at 2:00am to feed newborns. Living things need to eat, and if they can't do it for themselves, other living things should do it for them. I would see this entirely differently if she were dying of anything, or if she'd left written instructions. I supported my mother ordering a DNR for my father, and nodded at her when she looked to me, before she slipped his 02 tube out from under his nose, to hasten his passing. I also understand someone has to win. I am not comfortable that the right person is winning here, even though I am nodding like mad at everyone who wouldn't want to live that way. If this were a respirator the husband wanted to remove, I would think her parents clearly in the wrong. Mostly, I just think this is a sad, sad mess, and I hope the poor woman passes quickly and easily.
