Hopeless?

For those of you who buy the argument that Terri Schiavo ought to be left to die because you think you'd want the same in her situation, consider the story of Kate Adamson, who suffered a sever brain-stem stroke at the age of 33. Imagine being in her position as they remove your feeding tube, as weeks go by and you starve and dehydrate to death:

"I spent fifty days in ICU. During those fifty days, I was conscious, could feel everything. I could feel pain. But I could not move any part of my body. I was totally trapped in my body. It was terrifying and I was very frightened. I had come to a point in my life where I could do nothing for myself. At 33, I was wearing a diaper. I was fed by a tube surgically placed in my stomach. I could breathe only by using a tube surgically placed in my throat. I couldn't speak. I couldn't drink. I could not move from the rigid, death-like position my body had assumed."

Asked at the beginning to communicate by blinking, Kate found she couldn't even control her own blinking.

With breathing tubes inserted into her throat following a tracheotomy, she began producing an overabundance of fluids. A vacuum device was inserted into the "trach" to keep her lungs from filling up. The vacuum had to be used up to four times an hour. With each procedure, she went into convulsions. "The pain," she says, "was almost unendurable." The treatments continued for two-months.

She now walks. She talks. She can drive. She has testified before Congress.

Kate Adamson received extensive rehabilitation--rehabilitation her family often had to fight for because the medical professionals had pronounced her "hopeless."

Terri Schiavo has had no rehabilitative treatment since 1991. Her husband (the one with the two children now by another woman) refuses to allow it.