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The case of Terri Schiavo in Florida has been in the papers recently. Terri has been in a persistent vegetitive state (PVS) for several years and her husband wants her feeding tube and hydration suspended so she can die "peacefully". He claims that such a death is "painless." However, we can never be sure that the person is not suffering as evidenced by the case of Kate Adamson who suffered from having food and water withheld for 8 days after a stroke at age 33 and being diagnosed with PVS. In her own words, here is what she experienced: "When the feeding tube was turned off for eight days, I thought I was going insane. I was screaming out in my mind, 'Don't you know I need to eat?' And even up until that point, I had been having a bagful of Ensure as my nourishment that was going through the feeding tube. At that point, it sounded pretty good. I just wanted something. The fact that I had nothing, the hunger pains overrode every thought I had." "The agony of going without food was a constant pain that lasted not several hours like my operation did, but several days. You have to endure the physical pain and on top of that you have to endure the emotional pain. Your whole body cries out, 'Feed me. I am alive and a person, don't let me die, for God's Sake! Somebody feed me.' Despite having been on an on an IV saline solution, Adamson still had horrible thirst: "I craved anything to drink. Anything. I obsessively visualized drinking from a huge bottle of orange Gatorade. And I hate orange Gatorade. I did receive lemon flavored mouth swabs to alleviate dryness but they did nothing to slack my desperate thirst." The time has come to face the gut wrenching possibility that conscious cognitively disabled people whose feeding tubes are removed--as opposed to patients who are actively dying and choose to stop eating--may die agonizing deaths. This, of course, has tremendous relevance in the Terri Schiavo case and many others like it. Indeed, the last thing anyone wants is for people to die slowly and agonizingly of thirst, desperately craving a refreshing drink they know will never come. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Excerpted from a book by Wesley J. Smith "Forced Exit: The Slippery Slope From Assisted Suicide to Legalized Murder." |