Feeding tubes and neurological disease

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sbcoral

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Is there a moral difference between Terri Schiavo’s situation and that of elderly people with Alzheimer’s disease? Many end-stage people with AD reach a point where they have lost so many neurons that they can no longer eat; these people can have feeding tubes placed, and they can theoretically live for many years if something else doesn’t take them (they’re old, after all). The vast majority of families of people with AD decide not to stick tubes in them to keep them alive, if they reach that point, and I have never heard that that act is morally wrong or in any way controversial. Schiavo’s situation seems to be very much the same, isn’t it? She lost many, many brain cells, and she can’t eat, and is neurologically not unlike folks with advanced dementia. Why the big deal about her and no fuss about keeping everyone else alive?
 
terri is not in a vegetative state, she is able to use eye blinking to answer yes or no questions from family. many doctors agree with therapy she can be rehibilitated to some degree of normalcy. I myself wonder what the debate is all about she simply should be allowed to live and have the therapys that doctors have suggested, taking the feeding tube is nothing less than murder!
 
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aspawloski4th:
terri is not in a vegetative state, she is able to use eye blinking to answer yes or no questions from family. many doctors agree with therapy she can be rehibilitated to some degree of normalcy. I myself wonder what the debate is all about she simply should be allowed to live and have the therapys that doctors have suggested, taking the feeding tube is nothing less than murder!
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So is it her prospect for recovery that makes her different? If she wasn’t going to get better, then would withdrawal of the tube be allowed?
 
doctors have sugested therapy after therapy that have been refused by michael schaivo, thats what is different! on a different light, michael schavio has shacked up with annother woman, that takes away any credibility he ever had! as far as Im concearned one doesnt make decisions for a spouse while shacking up with annother! this case is open and shut, give terri a chance, put the tube in and start the therapy she should have been getting. very simple. what I dont understand why it isnt that simple to everyone else.
 
The thing that I look at is: There are cases of people that are terminally ill, & even taking in nutrition by a tube, this is painful because their bodies are not able to process nutrients. They get sicker from food. The food is not digested.
This is a different case from one like Terri Schiavo, who could actually be taking liquids by mouth if her husband did not refuse to allow it.
In regard to Altziemers’ patients, many of them are indeed on tubes for feeding. They need “comfort care”…To be kept out of pain, mainly. At some point, they will become terminal, then they would still be kept hydrated in some fashion.
You must also realize that there are two other differences: (1) Terri does not have a terminal, nor a progressive disease, she has a brain injury; & (2) Altziemers people are eventually much, much sicker than Terri, but that does NOT mean that they are not entitled to proper comfort care.
By the way, Terri has not been receiving proper comfort care that should be given to a progressive/terminal case. She is neither. Yet she has received* less* care. The reason? Her husband refuses it.
He also refuses to allow her family to take her home. He would not have to do anything, except step aside. Again he refuses…
 
The vote is through. They had quorum. They ayes have it. The case goes to federal court. Now they have to present evidence to the court before the tube is put back in.
 
There is no earthly circmstance where a suffering victim is to be denied food and water. Medication? Certainly. ADD medication to alleviate pain? Yes. You do not starve them or force them to die from lack of water. Which is what M. Schiavo wants to do to his wife.
 
Ani Ibi:
The vote is through. They had quorum. They ayes have it. The case goes to federal court. Now they have to present evidence to the court before the tube is put back in.
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Oh,no I thought they would put the tube back in before court,I do not have much faith in the black robes at all right now:mad:
 
OK, my two cents worth. If a person can not eat orally – sounds strange and like they are too messed up to live, right? Except there are numerous people who have full mental capacity and “stick tubes in them” so that they can live and not die from starvation or dehydration.

Our daughter, Claire, was born with an incomplete esophagus. It was a complicated bit of the body not differentiating the single tube we start with to the two individual tubes of the trachea and esophagus.

So, Claire would need a major surgery to take part of her intenstine and transpose it in to the area between her two esophagus segments. That also requires a thoracotomy – like when the docs cut open the ribs to remove lung tissue or for bypass surgery. Obviously something we don’t want to do little babies – besides she had had a thoracotomy already to secure the end of her esophagus that was connected to her trachea.

Should we have let this infant who didn’t know any better and couldn’t speak – and was presumed to be retarded just die without intervention?

She was not a “veg”. She could ride a bike and blow bubbles like other kids. So what that she couldn’t eat orally – it is a capital crime – at least until recently.

Sure you want to have assurance that in denying some routine care for a relative that it is OK to just let die and “not stick a tube in them” I can’t give you dispensation – I can’t embrace the culture of death.

BTW, if you were the birth mother of Claire and you were told that she mulitple birth defects, would you have “terminated” your child’s life then? I don’t have to answer to that question either since we adopted her – I didn’t give her life, I just loved her as the almost perfect being God created.

One of my favorite pictures of Claire is with her “escorting” my nephew and my mom down the aisle. Claire had to sneak up to be with Grandma during my other nephews wedding. At the end, well, she just grabbed my younger nephews arm and recessed. She didn’t think there was anything wrong with her.

I guess Michael Schiavo would disagree, though.
 
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sbcoral:
Is there a moral difference between Terri Schiavo’s situation and that of elderly people with Alzheimer’s disease? Many end-stage people with AD reach a point where they have lost so many neurons that they can no longer eat; these people can have feeding tubes placed, and they can theoretically live for many years if something else doesn’t take them (they’re old, after all). The vast majority of families of people with AD decide not to stick tubes in them to keep them alive, if they reach that point, and I have never heard that that act is morally wrong or in any way controversial. Schiavo’s situation seems to be very much the same, isn’t it? She lost many, many brain cells, and she can’t eat, and is neurologically not unlike folks with advanced dementia. Why the big deal about her and no fuss about keeping everyone else alive?
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We each have a right to food and water, even if it is delivered in an unconventional manner. If one’s body can no longer assimilate nutrition or fluids becsuse they are in organ system failure and near death that is one thing, but if one is not dying to strave them is evil.
 
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fix:
We each have a right to food and water, even if it is delivered in an unconventional manner. If one’s body can no longer assimilate nutrition or fluids becsuse they are in organ system failure and near death that is one thing, but if one is not dying to strave them is evil.
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So, we should keep all patients alive with end-stage Alzheimer’s, you think? Their brains are pretty much gone, but their bodies can live for years if supported by food and water. Do you think that not putting a feeding tube in a 90 year-old severely demented man is sinful? Really?
 
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Zooey:
The thing that I look at is: There are cases of people that are terminally ill, & even taking in nutrition by a tube, this is painful because their bodies are not able to process nutrients. They get sicker from food. The food is not digested.
This is a different case from one like Terri Schiavo, who could actually be taking liquids by mouth if her husband did not refuse to allow it.
In regard to Altziemers’ patients, many of them are indeed on tubes for feeding. They need “comfort care”…To be kept out of pain, mainly. At some point, they will become terminal, then they would still be kept hydrated in some fashion.
You must also realize that there are two other differences: (1) Terri does not have a terminal, nor a progressive disease, she has a brain injury; & (2) Altziemers people are eventually much, much sicker than Terri, but that does NOT mean that they are not entitled to proper comfort care.
By the way, Terri has not been receiving proper comfort care that should be given to a progressive/terminal case. She is neither. Yet she has received* less* care. The reason? Her husband refuses it.
He also refuses to allow her family to take her home. He would not have to do anything, except step aside. Again he refuses…
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People with Alzheimer’s don’t die directly from the dementia. With time, their brains waste away, and no one is home, but their bodies are not affected by the disease at all. A feeding tube placed in a patient with severe Alzheimer’s disease - at the point where the patient is contracted and bedbound, for instance- could keep the patient alive for years, if they don’t have a lot of other medical conditions. I think it’s a very good comparison to Schiavo’s case.
 
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http://forums.catholic-questions.org/images/icons/icon1.gif Re: Nurse: Terri Schiavo Cried When Told She Was Going To Die!
I also noticed the lack of human emotion in Michael Schiavo. It was so chilling to me, I had to turn it off.
Also, I am so disturbed that none of these nurses have been listened to. My sister-in-law lives in Florida and works as a nurse in Clearwater. She was Terri’s nurse for about a week last year when Terri was transported to her hospital for treatment. She knows first hand that Terri is not in a PVS. Anyone who has had a hand in caring for her knows this. It is extremely disturbing how all these people can be silenced and the world is not being given the truth in the matter. Extremely disturbing! :crying:
 
CNN at 8:00 pm today.

40% of persistent vegetative state diagnoses are proven to be incorrect.
 
Alzeimers patients are an interesting case for a couple of reasons. First off, their situation is progressive, meaning it gets worse until they die. Secondly, they are indeed terminal. They don’t die from dementia, per se, but eventually the brain decays to the point that even breathing on one’s own is impossible. General dementia, or “losing it with age”, is not actually Alzheimers.

Neither of these apply to Terri, who is certainly brain-damaged, but will not get worse, and therefore will not die from brain deterioration. Since food is a normal requirement of any healthy person, and requiring to be fed, even by tube, is not in itself indicative of a potentially terminal circumstance (infants and people with no limbs require assistance eating, for example), feeding is considered ordinary care due to all human beings. Breathing, on the other hand, almost never requires assistance (in the form of ventilators) in situations that are not potentially terminal, so it’s considered extraordinary care, meaning it can be reasonably refused in circumstances in which it won’t actually save the life, but merely prolong the death, such as the Alzheimers patients. Again, this doesn’t apply to Terri because her condition is not, in itself, life threatening.
 
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Ghosty:
Alzeimers patients are an interesting case for a couple of reasons. First off, their situation is progressive, meaning it gets worse until they die. Secondly, they are indeed terminal. They don’t die from dementia, per se, but eventually the brain decays to the point that even breathing on one’s own is impossible. General dementia, or “losing it with age”, is not actually Alzheimers.

Neither of these apply to Terri, who is certainly brain-damaged, but will not get worse, and therefore will not die from brain deterioration. Since food is a normal requirement of any healthy person, and requiring to be fed, even by tube, is not in itself indicative of a potentially terminal circumstance (infants and people with no limbs require assistance eating, for example), feeding is considered ordinary care due to all human beings. Breathing, on the other hand, almost never requires assistance (in the form of ventilators) in situations that are not potentially terminal, so it’s considered extraordinary care, meaning it can be reasonably refused in circumstances in which it won’t actually save the life, but merely prolong the death, such as the Alzheimers patients. Again, this doesn’t apply to Terri because her condition is not, in itself, life threatening.
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I don’t think that’s true. Alzheimer’s disease primarily affects the cerebral cortex - the part of the brain responsible for higher-level functions like speaking, remembering, interacting with the environment, voluntarily moving, “perceiving.” It doesn’t affect the brainstem, which controls “automatic” functions like breathing. The parts of the brain affected by Alzheimer’s disease are quite similar to the parts of the brain that are affected after prolonged cardiac arrest, like in Terri Schiavo’s case. That’s why I think it’s a good comparison.
 
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sbcoral:
People with Alzheimer’s don’t die directly from the dementia. With time, their brains waste away, and no one is home, but their bodies are not affected by the disease at all. A feeding tube placed in a patient with severe Alzheimer’s disease - at the point where the patient is contracted and bedbound, for instance- could keep the patient alive for years, if they don’t have a lot of other medical conditions. I think it’s a very good comparison to Schiavo’s case.
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Alzheimers patients are terminally ill. The dementia is a part of their terminal illness. We see the dementia more often; the physical part of the illness is seen largely by family, friends,& health care workers.A patient who is more & more rapidly sinking into a state where their bodies will no longer be able to breathe or digest food, among other things.
This is end stage Alzheimers.There is no comparison with Terri Schiavo. Terri could take liquids & soft food by mouth if Michael Schiavo would allow it. If she were given therapy, she might be able to take all her nourishment by mouth.
It is also worth noting that Alzheimers patients are in their condition because they have a disease. They are not as they are because of a brain injury.
Alzheimers is a very tragic condition. It is very sad that the reward for living a long life may be the inability to enjoy it. It is, however, in no way comparable to a young woman like Terri, whose brain injury may well have occurred as the result of the abuse suffered from her husband. The same husband who keeps trying to kill her.
 
End stage Alzheimer’s does indeed inhibit the ability to breathe and function on even the most basic, life-sustaining level, but I’ll see what I can scrounge up on the matter for you to peruse.

I’m speaking from experience having worked with Alzheimer’s patients, and literally watching them die when their bodies stop functioning. It’s a very different situation from Terri’s, not least of which because it’s progressive and unstoppable. If you get Alzheimer’s, you WILL die from it, barring other factors. Terri is stable, and could conceivably outlive all of us.
 
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Ghosty:
End stage Alzheimer’s does indeed inhibit the ability to breathe and function on even the most basic, life-sustaining level, but I’ll see what I can scrounge up on the matter for you to peruse.

I’m speaking from experience having worked with Alzheimer’s patients, and literally watching them die when their bodies stop functioning. It’s a very different situation from Terri’s, not least of which because it’s progressive and unstoppable. If you get Alzheimer’s, you WILL die from it, barring other factors. Terri is stable, and could conceivably outlive all of us.
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Thanks for the information Ghosty!

sbcoral seems intent on convincing us that Terri’s life is “no big deal” and wonders “why the fuss”?
 
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