The portrait I had drawn from what I recall reading about Terri’s saga was that after Terri’s “incident”, Michael went to nursing school so that he could take care of Terri himself, which gave me the impression that he was being a devoted husband. I then surmised that at some later point, he despaired that Terri would not recover, and at that point the breach between him and Terri’s parents developed, which then progressed over the years to become an abyss. This rendition was the source of my previous comments.

In your indictment above, you have presented a damning (in the Biblical sense of that word) bill of particulars that is totally at variance with that rendition.

Did I read wrongly, or did I encounter someone crafting a rewrite of history?

Terri was placed into a therapeutic program shortly after her “incident: that led to her condition. But it was costly. And her husband took her out of that program, a rehab center and admitted her to a nursing home where therapies didn’t happen. He did this in an effort to make himself look “poor” enough to get her on the Medicaid roll. All this, as he prepared to sue the hospital. After he got the money, he placed Terri into a hospice type nursing center. He promised Terri’s family he was going to use the money to get her treatments and therapies and every test in the world- to help her become as least dependent as possible. He never allowed even ONE test…the results we all see were court ordered.

Her husband:
Took away her wheelchair and demanded she stay bedbound
Refused to allow nursing staff to reposition Terri every two hours, or even 4 hours, which led to bedsores and muscle contractures.

No dental care was allowed. Which led to tooth decay and cavities, which led to teeth falling out and gum disease. No oral care was allowed to be done either.

Terri would get UTIs and other infections. He refused any antibiotic treatments and would call to see if she was near death YET…many times. The nurse (RN) who blew the whistle on this was fired from the nursing center (which was owned by the very Judge who signed the order to remove Terri’s g tube) The aides who were forbidden to talk about this stuff were written up and later fired when they voiced concerns to the state inspectors who came by on the yearly visits.

Her husband also tore down every picture on the wall of her room; insisted the shades be kept closed at all times; no music. No TV, She was not allowed to participate in any activities the center (by law) had to provide for all it’s residents…Terri was not allowed to be exposed to any sensory stimulation. At all.

Terri’s parents had to get her husband’s permission to come visit their own daughter. Same with her sister and brother.

Her husband remarried and started a family shortly after Terri was admitted to the nursing center. He wasn’t allowed to spend Terri’s money on anything except services for her…once he saw this in writing on the court order, we started hearing how Terri wouldn’t want to “live like this” and would not “want to be on life supports”…6 years AFTER her initial incident. 6 yrs.

His actions spoke and continue to speak much louder than any word.

I’ve followed Terri since 1997. It’s been a long road and two yrs ago I blogged over 50 posts in one month about Terri…overall, 109 posts in the three months prior to her death. It made me sick. While we can take away from this the heart wrenching saga of her family, her husband has no heart and never did. For him it was all about the money.

SR- you’re comments weren’t purposely held up…we have set it up here so any comment with a link is moderated. We were getting some blog spam that was huge in volume.

You said:
Raven: I am realistic. I dont see life as a mysterious, magic, mystical force which must be protected for its own sake. I need to see a reason to protect it.
Why do you need a reason to protect life? Life is a gift. Everyone should view it as such…it’s not a biological accident or result. And if you believe it is such, it still deserves to be protected.

You also said:
I rank life. Human lives are valuable, but not infinatly so. The fish life is not worthless, but its worth much less than a human life. An embryo is worth nothing on conception, and nothing until its brain first achieves some level of basic function – and then increases over time from that point until a point some time after birth.
This is a perfect example of the EuropeOn thought process, the ranking of a life. A life has to meet certain standards in order to be considered worthy of living; a life must meet expectations of others and not the living person (animal) whose very life is being “evaluated: for such worthiness. Who gave you and people like you the power, the authority to do these things? Of course you can have your own opinions…but to push this into justification to end someones life is walking across a line of ethical proportions. Europe is not only crossing this line, it’s drawing it.

You said:
Terri ranks somewhere between the fish and an intact adult human – but closer to the fish. My estimation of the value of a life includes measures such as inteligence, memory and individuality. Terri had little of the first two, and no capability to express the last.
THAT is just pathetic. Using your standards, newborn babies rank low on the deserves-life standard. Using your standards, a person with Alzheimer’s disease ranks as low. Using your standards, someone in a coma doesn’t deserve any time to heal and go on living.

I totally disagree with your standards. And I really hope you don’t have a stroke or get into an accident some day where your own standards will come back to haunt you. Ask many stroke survivors– they will tell you…YES, it was hard to not remember anything for awhile. It was hard to lose all the education they got, but regained enough skill to live for decades after recovery, as a productive member of society. Ask a veteran of this war, who was brain injured…and in a coma with half their head gone…ask them how they can walk now, drive a car, go to work, earn a decent living for their family. Going by your standards, they would met the criteria for being a victim of euthanasia.

As for Terri and others like her…why do your standards only involve the three measures? Have you ever spent any time with someone like Terri? Until you have, I really don’t think you have any business judging whether they deserve life or not.

What makes this case so wrenching for me to think about even two years later is the non-medical components, the dispute over who should speak for Terri, and behind that, the horrendous breakdown in relationship and trust between and her spouse and her parents that ensued. Not to mention the pathology that preceded her oxygen deprivation incident, and the uncertainly surrounding her oxygen deprivation that casts a retrospective shadow of distrust on her spouses.

As I followed the case, I found that the intensity surrounding this case was only partly on the life or death issue, and that as much or more of the emotion arose from people’s judgments as to the motives and character of the principals. That is…

Many people on the life side were claiming that Michael was an evil person who wanted to do away with his diabled wife for some ignoble purpose – such as that she was an inconvenience to his sex life or that he wanted her money – coupled with suspicions that he had been an abusive spouse and/or her injury was the result of his trying to kill her — and that her parents were saintly people devoted to their daughter.

Many people on the death side were claiming that Michael was nobly trying to fulfull Terri’s wishes, and that her parents were uniformed about her wishes and in denial about her condition and possible bulimia.

In the absence of convincing evidence to the contrary, I would refuse to condemn any of the principal players as acting with evil or criminal intent and would as a default presume that her parents and her spouse were acting in accordance with genuine belief and non-malice – mixed with pride, stubbornness, and other primal human traits. Tragically, the public polarization of positions over the question of whether she should have been allowed to liver makes it too easy for us on the outside to choose a villain rather than deal with the complexity that arises when we assume that both were acting in good faith (by their own convictions) towards Terri.

I for myself, and I think all of us, would earnest beseech that we not find ourselves in such a situation.

I rank life. Human lives are valuable, but not infinatly so. The fish life is not worthless, but its worth much less than a human life. An embryo is worth nothing on conception, and nothing until its brain first achieves some level of basic function – and then increases over time from that point until a point some time after birth.

Terri ranks somewhere between the fish and an intact adult human – but closer to the fish. My estimation of the value of a life includes measures such as inteligence, memory and individuality. Terri had little of the first two, and no capability to express the last.

This is the ‘culture of death’? I find it far prefable to the ‘culture of Life at All Costs’ in which even thinking in comparative terms is forbidden.

Here is a question for you Raven: Given a choice between sacrificing one 60-year-old human and a newborn, which do you choose? You are having a very hard time, I would guess, because you are incapable of sacrificing either one. Your high-horse moral system locks up at the dilemma. While I have no problems – the newborn goes, because while it posesses the qualities I consider protected, the 60-year-old has them in far greater quantity.

And how convenient that those videos show her in druged form. Do you have any evidence for this, or is it only rumor? As the website was devoted to campaigning to save Terri, I would have thought they would have mentioned this fact.

Terrifight.org appears to be nothing but advertising. It appears the domain has, like Terri, expired.

You are the very essence of the Culture of Death SR; everything Terri’s brother wrote of, above in quotes, IS YOU. Do you see that in yourself??

Have you watched the videos linked at Terrifight.org??

She’s a totally different person.