vulturesrow
04-26-2005, 02:05 PM
Read the article here (http://www.ncregister.com/current/0320lead1.htm).
I found this part particularly interesting.
One of the most poignant talks was by Kate Adamson, who spoke about how she suffered a double brainstem stroke in 1995. She spent seven weeks in the intensive care unit, was paralyzed from the neck down, couldn’t speak and had a feeding tube inserted into her stomach, she said.
"They considered me a vegetable, unconscious," she said. "They assumed I was already dead, except for one, pesky detail; my heart kept beating. Stubborn, like me. It didn’t know when to quit."
She said she went through something similar to what Terri is going through — she felt helpless, couldn’t speak and was considered unresponsive — but Adamson pointed out one big difference that helped her to live: her devoted husband, who fought to save her and put up a sign above her hospital bed that said: "This is a human being lying here. Please treat her as a person. She understands everything being said to her."
"Michael Schiavo says starving Terri is a kindness. It’s not," said Adamson, who, after extensive therapy is now able to walk and talk, but is still paralyzed on the left side of her body. "Have any of you gone without food for a couple of days? When I was in the hospital, my feeding tube was turned off for eight days. I suffered excruciating misery in silence. It was one of the most painful experiences you can imagine. If they want to kill Terri, they should have the guts to put a gun to her head. Does that sound repulsive and violent? They should be even more repulsed with the violent torture of slowly and painfully starving this woman to death."
I found this part particularly interesting.
One of the most poignant talks was by Kate Adamson, who spoke about how she suffered a double brainstem stroke in 1995. She spent seven weeks in the intensive care unit, was paralyzed from the neck down, couldn’t speak and had a feeding tube inserted into her stomach, she said.
"They considered me a vegetable, unconscious," she said. "They assumed I was already dead, except for one, pesky detail; my heart kept beating. Stubborn, like me. It didn’t know when to quit."
She said she went through something similar to what Terri is going through — she felt helpless, couldn’t speak and was considered unresponsive — but Adamson pointed out one big difference that helped her to live: her devoted husband, who fought to save her and put up a sign above her hospital bed that said: "This is a human being lying here. Please treat her as a person. She understands everything being said to her."
"Michael Schiavo says starving Terri is a kindness. It’s not," said Adamson, who, after extensive therapy is now able to walk and talk, but is still paralyzed on the left side of her body. "Have any of you gone without food for a couple of days? When I was in the hospital, my feeding tube was turned off for eight days. I suffered excruciating misery in silence. It was one of the most painful experiences you can imagine. If they want to kill Terri, they should have the guts to put a gun to her head. Does that sound repulsive and violent? They should be even more repulsed with the violent torture of slowly and painfully starving this woman to death."