Health Care Reform: Protecting the Disabled (Part 2)
July 21, 2009
[Editor's note--Below is the second part of the interview I conducted on July 19th with Bobby Schindler, the brother of the late Terri Schiavo, whose untimely and unnecessary death in 2005 drew nation-wide attention to the issue of how Americans believe we should care for the disabled in our country. Since that time, Bobby has spoken around the United States about the issues and misinformation surrounding his sister's condition and her painful death and the bigger issues of properly defining what kind of health care needs to be provided for the disabled and providing assistance and support to the families caring for these disabled children and adults.]Question: If you can summarize it briefly, what were some of the major misconceptions that were the result of reporting by the traditonal media then or of course now? What are some of those areas where, that you didn't get the truth reported to the American people? (continued)
Answer: Also, the meida would describe Terrri as being on artificial life support, without explaining what artificial life support meant in today's day and age. When people hear of artificial life support, the first thing that comes to their mind is that Terri's on all kinds of machines, a ventilator or other type of apparatuses that are keeping her alive, when in fact artificial life support now are food and water [and] defined as life support. So, when they would describe Terri's artificial life support, they never would specify that that meant in Terri's case that it was only food and water that were keeping her alive--basic care--because it's been redefined by the medical community, it's been redefined by our laws. Artificial life support now means medical treatment, now means, I'm sorry, food and water now means medical treatment, artificial life support, extraordinary care. It never did, and this has been changed recently. So there's just some of the things that are, and they're very dangerous, because when you describe someone this way, [when] in fact it's not their true condition, people get very confused.
Question: So this mischaracterization was very fundamental?
Answer: Oh, yeah. Terri was, and I say it over and over again, [different] . . . . I am here to address the issue of people like my sister, those that are not dying and only need food and water to survive. I don't get into the whole, is it proper to remove someone's artificial ventilators if they're given no hope of recovery. I say, look, we not talking about people who are dying and only receiving basic care, food and water, to be able to live. And people like this, these type of conditions, people like my sister and others like her, are being killed every day by the removal of their food and hydration. Terri could be here with us right now, if she was still alive. all she needed was a wheelchair. she did not have to be confined to the bed. If Michael [Schiavo] had allowed her, ...[had] permitted her to be taken out of her room, . . . she could be sitting here right now, going, having this interview with us. it would have been difficult to bring her here, it wouldn't have been easy to do, to bring her here, but we could have. That's my point.
Question: There's been some diagreement, from the sources I have read, about whether she was able to communicate and whether her wishes were communicated or even considered. What's your view on that?
Answer: No, nobody knew. Terri never had a living will or advanced directive. she was 26 years old when she collapsed. her wishes--her so-called wishes--surfaced eight years after her initial collapse, and there's all kind of circumstances surrounding the surfacing of Terri's wishes that would take a lot to get into tonight, but we never believed for one moment that Terri ever made any wish that she would want to die if she ever became incapacitated. We simply did not know, and subsequent to her collapse, if she did suffer this profound brain injury, there was no way of knowing for sure. Terri was never able to communicate on a consistent basis, or respond on a consistent basis, to commands, to know exactly what she would want, but she was communicating. Regardles of what some of the doctors who were hired by Michael Schiavo to examine Terri, to say that she was unresponsive and unable to communicate, there's not a doctor in this world that would tell me, convince me, that Terri wasn't able to communicate, because we visited her and we saw her communicating and responding to our family. So there was doctors, as I said prior, there was doctors that sumitted affidavits with the court that examined Terri and testified in front of the court that they wholeheartedly believed that Terri was trying to communicate.
There were 40-50 people who attending the viewing of the documentary [at the Rose Garden in Wausau, Wisconsin on July 20th] that chronicled the life and circumstances surrounding Terri's death through withdrawal of food and hydration. Before the showing of the film, Bobby expalined about the circumstance surrounding the film's production, including the health reasons that prevented his father from being interviewed along with the other family member's. After the film was shown, Bobby Schindler answered questions from the audience, before one other speaker,a Catholic brother from St. Paul, Minnesota, shared his experiences in dealing with the Schindler family during their ordeal and about the foundation that the family started after Terri's death in order to assist other facing the same type of legal and medical issues they faced.
What followed was scheduled to be a forum with medical professions and me speaking to the issues of the proposed health care reform legislation now under consideration by the United States House of Representatives and Senate, bu that's not what happened . . . .
Tomorrow, part 3 of my interview with Bobby Schindler, and more on what happened during the health care forum panel discussion on the 20th in Wausau. You won't want to miss it.
Until then, be blessed.
From the Editor's Desk ArchivesHealth Care Reform: Protecting the Disabled (Part 1) (July 20, 2009)
And Liberty and Justice for All (July 13, 2009)
