Remembering Terri

SkyePuppy rules, as always. I was there reading a story about the man who recovered consciousness after being in a vegetative state (no, not Arkansas) for twenty years.
http://skyepuppy.blogspot.com/2006/07/man-recovers-from-permanent-vegetative.html

In a new medical study sure to remind the world of the debate surrounding the forced dehydration death of Terri Schiavo, researchers found the injured brain of a man in a "vegetative state" for 19 years rewired itself, permitting him to renew communication with his loved ones.

I saw this story on TV some time last week, and the most striking part of the experience was the assured enthusiasm with which the reporter explained to her audience that this was a completely different situation than the Terri Schiavo case. Completely different. Completely. Different. Different in a very complete sort of way. A most complete difference, and completely, amen.

The man's doctor probably told the reporter this, or possibly the reporter looked until she found a doctor who would tell her this.

I would wager my left leg that this man's doctor told his family that he would never recover, and that the only difference between the man and Schiavo was that he didn't have an estranged spouse that wanted him dead.

When I started working with doctors, what impressed me most was how smart they were, and how utterly clueless they were about the human body and its healing. It's 2006, and the medical community has much more to learn about healing than it has learned thus far. They work hard and try sincerely, but they are still operating in the Bronze Age of medicine. This man's story is an illustration of modern medicine's ignorance.

The right to die is an interesting concept. But Terri's inconvenient life was not slipping away. She was not dying. She was dehydrated and starved to death. And all the assuring in the world will not convince me that what doctor's learned from this man's recovery will not lead to better methods of treatment... methods that might have one day brought Terri a clearer relationship with her world.