I think her parents were heavily infleunced by the people who started latching on to Terri as some kind of symbol for their cause and were using them all.

I would like to see Frist called on his "diagnosis" .

I want to know, does it really take weeks and weeks to do an autopsy, and if it does in that county, can you guys remind me not to be murdered there?

Or was it supposed to be a secret, and somebody finally cracked and sold out to the National Enquirer?

Parental unreality regarding their children is not a new phenomenon, but the unsurprisingness doesn't make it any less excruciating. I was unfortunate enough to listen to some of a Dateline show about that girl who disappeared in Aruba. They interviewed her mom, and she was like, "I have faith that [name] will be found alive." On an island the size of a driveway, two weeks after disappearance. Uh huh.

Public grief is something I loathe, but determined public denial is worse.

Oh, you want cheery stuff?

I wouldn't describe bad chai lattes as cheery, so no.

Which is why I place that power in my brother's hands. She wouldn't kill him, and he'd respect my wishes.

This is a stroke of brilliance, Allyson. I remember when this got my mother and I talking. I told her she'd better not dare do something like this to me, and she said that she could understand them, as a (liberal, totally not religious) parent. That if there were any hope at all, it would be hard to let go.

My brother would be more grounded in reality, and I don't know that there's anyone I'd trust more.

What did other people learn or discover?

I learned that the 1949 version of The Secret Garden is very good. Also, I don't want to be at work on such a gorgeous day. But I already knew that.

I don't think the people who were opposed to her nutrition and hydration being removed were claiming she didn't have either massive or irreversible brain damage though (well, at least not the non-nutters). In fact, one of the contentions was that, sometimes, when there is a Mis-diagnosis of PVS, when the patient is blind.

I'm not sure this is quite how I remember it. For one thing, I don't think you can say that "there's often misdiagnoses of PVS when a patient is blind" at the same time as you say "look - she's tracking the balloon - ergo, no PVS." I know there were some people, such as yourself, who were very thoughtful and caring in your discomfort with what was happening. But a lot of the argument being thrown around elsewhere was troll logic.

I've discovered how to use the ForceType Apache directive to clean up my URLs.

What did other people learn or discover?

That seeing the "Check Engine" light pop up on my dashboard four days after spending $2000 to replace the damn engine can really PISS ME OFF!!

Ahem. Sorry about that.

My folks and I have all made it clear to each other that we don't want to be kept alive under those sorts of conditions. My feeling is, in the extremely unlikely event that I was fully aware and conscious while being unable to move or communicate, my thoughts would be a constant loop of "put me out of my misery already, fuckers!"

I learned that the secret to making the bad weather go away is to get my hair cut extremely short the better to withstand the soul-crushing heat. Pre-haircut, 90º. Post-haircut? 76º! Brilliant!

Oh, and I learned that goat is more popular than ever in the US.

[eta: Oh, and just now, I learned the HTML entity for the degree sign. ]