Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - If you were in Terri Schiavo's shoes, what would you want done?

Gilda · 03-24-2005, 02:29 PM

Here's the thing. Whether or not to teminate the life support of someone with no higher brain functions isn't about the person on life support. Everything about that person that made them a person is already gone. They don't exist anymore.

Teminating life support, like everything that has to do with death, is about the needs or the survivors. If I were to be in an accident tomorrow that caused all my higher brain functions to cease, I would be incapable of caring what was done to me. I would want my lifemate to do what was best for her; I would be beyond harm. She's told me that she would not want to have me around as a shell of the person I once was, so for that reason, I would want her to pull the plug on me, solely because it would be what was best for her.

On the other hand, since it's been brought up in this thread, if I were a paraplegic, unable to breathe without a respirator, but otherwise able to see, hear, and think, and thus decide for myself, hell no I wouldn't want life support terminated. There's too much of life that would still be available to me to want to give that up.

One last edit:

The last line of I Never Sang for My Father

"Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship which struggles on in the survivors mind toward some final resolution...which it perhaps never finds."

03-24-2005, 02:29 PM	#57 (permalink)
Gilda 32 flavors and then some Location: Out on a wire.	Here's the thing. Whether or not to teminate the life support of someone with no higher brain functions isn't about the person on life support. Everything about that person that made them a person is already gone. They don't exist anymore. Teminating life support, like everything that has to do with death, is about the needs or the survivors. If I were to be in an accident tomorrow that caused all my higher brain functions to cease, I would be incapable of caring what was done to me. I would want my lifemate to do what was best for her; I would be beyond harm. She's told me that she would not want to have me around as a shell of the person I once was, so for that reason, I would want her to pull the plug on me, solely because it would be what was best for her. On the other hand, since it's been brought up in this thread, if I were a paraplegic, unable to breathe without a respirator, but otherwise able to see, hear, and think, and thus decide for myself, hell no I wouldn't want life support terminated. There's too much of life that would still be available to me to want to give that up. One last edit: The last line of I Never Sang for My Father "Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship which struggles on in the survivors mind toward some final resolution...which it perhaps never finds." Last edited by Gilda; 03-24-2005 at 02:38 PM..