A look at Terri Schaivo's Brain Scan

Janx posted this and I think people really need to see a visual. It may take a while for the bottom scan to come up.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=3292852&mesg_id=3293588&page=


The way it was described to me by a doctor, Terri has a very small part of her brain that works. Because her cerebral cortex is basically gone and filled with fluid she does not have the ability's that make people people, that make us individuals and human. She cant love, cant dream, cant hope and can't feel pain. She is basically like a video game that is powered by her feeding tube.

Some people are saying that a few doctors came to different conclusions. The fact is the COURTS have looked at all the evidence and they have concluded she is in a vegetative state regardless of what FOX news thinks.


Now ask yourself, would you want to be kept alive in this state?

Then they don't care about bombing the hell out of you.

This guy is a fucking low-life - trying to take political shots on this issue - where has this fucking ass-wipe been for the last seven years during the long legal battle in this case. This mother fucker (Delay) has got to be kicked out on the street on his fucking lying weasel ass

the worst kind of political scum

just curious

Hopefully it will get read. It well represents the level my disgust is reaching on this issue.

She will feel as much pain as Chris Reeves felt in his legs after his accident.

because I've heard those opposed (i'm not one) say that she will 'suffer' afterwards and I wasn't sure how to answer.

people who don't think we ever landed on the Moon. You have to go by what the vast majority of experts say. Even still, sometimes the experts can be wrong. Its possible but I wouldn't bet on it. That is a lot of empty space in her brain scan IN the area that feels pain.

their #1 priority is comfort. Teri will get all the painkillers and relaxers she needs. However, I don't think she will need them.

...if all stated here is true (and from every reliable source it is), my experience tells me NO.

Symptoms of Dehydration

If all food and fluids (nutrition and hydration) are removed from a person -- whether that person is a healthy Olympic athlete who takes food and fluids by mouth or a frail, disabled person who receives them by a feeding tube -- death is inevitable. That death will occur because of dehydration.

As a person dies from lack of food and fluids, his or her

* Mouth would dry out and become caked or coated with thick material.
* Lips would become parched and cracked.
* Tongue would swell, and might crack.
* Eyes would recede back into their orbits.
* Cheeks would become hollow.
* Lining of the nose might crack and cause the nose to bleed.
* Skin would hang loose on the body and become dry and scaly.
* Urine would become highly concentrated, leading to burning of the bladder.
* Lining of the stomach would dry out and he or she would experience dry heaves and vomiting.
* Body temperature would become very high.
* Brain cells would dry out, causing convulsions.
* Respiratory tract would dry out, and the thick secretions that would result could plug the lungs and cause death.

At some point within five days to three weeks, the person's major organs, including the lungs, heart, and brain, would give out and death would occur.

[Source: Brophy v. New England Sinai Hosp., 398 Mass. 417, 444 n.2, 497 N.E.2d 626, 641 n.2 (1986) (Nolan, J., dissenting).

She won't feel a thing.

Let me get this straight....It's OK then to place an opium suppository in her anus on regular intervals to alleviate the symptoms of dehydration, but yet it's NOT OK to simply leave a feeding tube in place and let her breathe on her own?

And people wonder why we are losing this electoral war....

try again.

What sort of a lame-brained, back-to-front lament is it that "... (she) can't feel pain". Oh, wow! The poor girl!

Did you notice, His Nibs didn't say she can't feel "joy" or "happiness"! No! Why? Because, of course, there's none so blind as those that will not see. And unfortunately for you dozy characters, there are photographs of her beaming with joy and love! Any of you smart Alecs got an explanation for that? Perhaps our neurosurgeon friend? No don't tell me. I can imagine. Just chemical reactions!

What comes round goes round. You may people yet live to regret your summary dismissal of the value of that young woman's life.

bush stole the election.... this women is braindead, I dont think you understand what that is.. you think you do... but I fear your sources of information tell you she is thinking and felling. Imagine your asleep, forever... do you want to make your family take care of yopur body for decades? She will NEVER wake up... most of her brain is gone!

I sure wouldn't want to live in a state like she's in, but starving her to death seems inhuman.

I had to have my dog put down a few months ago. I pet her while she was given an overdose, and was peacefully gone in a second.

I can't believe we'd treat this woman worse than a dog.

How can we watch her starve to death?

painful, why are thousands starving themselves intentionally? It appears that the idea of no food bothers you more, then actuality. This was the very reason Terri is in this condition. An eating disorder.


People when dying dont eat or drink, their body shuts down. Terri's body was forced to carry on when it should have shut down naturally years ago.

Hospice is a wonderful organization, all attempts in making Terri as comfortable as possible will be taken. She will not suffer.

as pain. But no, patients who are conscious but who have lost the ability to cough and swallow due to stroke have reported no pain when a tube becomes dislodged. It just slips out and they notice it because they start feeling wet.

Reinsertion of the tube after an hour (or two, if you're lucky) requires surgery, since the tract closes up very quickly. Immediate reinsertion is also a painless process, although they say it does feel icky.

(she alleges) circumstance.

and VERY SOON! Perhaps a cerebral hemorrhage? A stroke that would leave him totally immobilized and unable to speak? He could live in a bed, diapered and attended by people who would make fun of him, and he would not be able to do anything but cry pathetically.
Am I being too mean?

This is meant as a fate for Tom DeLay.
Meant to be an answer to post # 2.

You're assuming that he didn't write in his will that if something happened to him this similar, then tey should pull the plug.

the fundie religion?

you're assuming that all fundamentalist are against the right to die with dignity, also your assuming that Schiavo husband is a fundy.

If he was in Terry's shape, he would be completely unaware that anyone was in the room, much less able to cry pathetically.

Tormenting him would make as much sense as insulting a rock.

This is the one thing my RW mother and I are united on. We're both disgusted by the politicizing of such a painful issue for the families. It's time to let her go.

Ah, the RW mind....

Her feeding tube has already been removed once for a week, no? Cant we ask the doctors and nurses whether she experienced any pain or suffering at that time?

http://www.sptimes.com/News/021200/TampaBay/Judge__Schiavo_s_life.shtml

<< If it is removed, Mrs. Schiavo would die painlessly in a week or two. She does not feel hunger or thirst, and she would just drift away, doctors say. >>

The people who feel that this is cruel and inhuman (and also the ones who debate whether Terri Schiavo is actually PVS) might feel otherwise if they knew she already went through this once and didn't feel anything. Right from the mouths of the medical people who were there the first time.

Geoff Fieger, Dr. Kevorkian's former lawyer, was on the Ron Reagan show today. He was saying how ironic it is that the people who wanted Dr. Kevorkian put away for providing people with a more humane way to die are the very same people who are responsible for, and decrying, the present "dying by starvation" law we have.

I saw my mother shrivel away through small strokes associated with her illness. As time progressed, her color turned more pale, the smile a little less sharp and so on. It's like a light that slowly fades out...and the changes that happen to a loved one can be shocking. So much so that only the brave few bothered to even check in during the last days...most just waiting for "the news". There's so little we are taught about dying.

These mental midgets think she's still sitting up, playing cards with a tube in her belly. I heard her mother say she was still like "an 11 month old baby". Dare we put up a brain of a healthy 11 month old and let people decide which is healthier?

The distortion in this case is the religious dogmas and people's own fears of death. Nothing fixates organized religions more than that topic...and each religion and person appears to have their own definition of what a soul is. In a civilized, human society, we need some guideline, in a legal sense, to what life and death is just for the implacations it has on the living, let alone the dignity and wishes of the dying.

I have some mixed feelings that I'd like the corporate media to show not just these X-rays, but also the pictures of her bed sores (she surely must be covered with them) and then a shot of her hands...curled up almost as if she's in-utero. The wingunts love to show the abortion pictures for their shock effect, why can't we?

:kick:

be used on someone who actually has a chance of getting better and resuming their lives.

to be kept alive in a vegetative state. Whether she should live or not in this state, in our opinions, is beside the point, isn't it?

In my profession (clinical neuroscientist that works in the field of Alzheimer's disease research), I have seen hundreds of neuroimaging scans of patients with significant atrophy and Schiavo's is among one of the worst that I have seen. Her ventricles are showing what is termed, "ex vacuo," changes...a finding common in hydrocephalic children, late-stage Alzheimer's patients, and severe brain damage.

What's most notable about her scan (i.e., axial plane image) is the COMPLETE loss of gyral ridges in the parietal and occipital lobes. In the picture this shows up as a smooth region on either side of the brain. I find this significant because it means that she has LOST ALL PHYSICAL MATTER known to control visual processing, long-term memory storage, complex visuospatial processing, and working memory. She still has some gyral structure (though severely affected and showing what is termed "knife blade" atrophy) in the frontal and superior temporal regions, suggesting their may be some rudamentary simple stimulus detection remaining but no capacity for comprehension of this stimuli. In effect, she probably only retains the brain/functional capacity of a lower organism with rudamentary stimulus detection skills (e.g., worms, flukes, etc.).

She is no longer human or alive, if one subscribes to the Descartian theory of consciousness/awareness as the defining characteristic of being human. From decades of neuroscience, the PHYSICAL EVIDENCE is clear that Schiavo DOES NOT have the necessary materials for consciousness or understanding of her surroundings. Period.

JB

It clears up a lot of questions for me at least.

Could the autonomic responses to stimuli she seems to display include swallowing if liquids were given to her? I'm just curious because my father was in a PVS for 2 years before they allowed us to pull his feeding tube. After the tube came out, he seemed able to swallow small amounts of water, which caused my mother to second guess her decision and gave her a lot of emotional anguish. He passed peacefully after 8 days.

Schiavo is decades from her injury. As a general rule, if any rehabilitation efforts are to show benefit they should occur within the 2 years post-injury. Attempting to "teach" Schiavo a new skill, like swallowing, assumes that she has the capacity to learn...something I highly doubt. But, even if she could attempt it, she would be a VERY high risk patient for aspiration pneumonia and other DEADLY complications from dysphagia (i.e., condition where swallowing is impaired).

JB

You support starving a person to death but oppose efforts to try and feed her orally because she might choke to death?!? I can't even begin to get my mind around that....

People with severe dysphagia or complete inability to swallow are at a very high risk for death from respiratory problems secondary to aspiration of food/fluids.

My point is that even if the deluded want to hold onto the false hope that Schiavo can be fed orally, these same folks don't realize that their solution will also most likely lead to Schiavo's death (or at least the creation of serious medical problems).

JB

and for providing some sanity to this entire debate.

What I want to know is this: is her soul trapped in limbo and are the fundies who are keeping her alive actually torturing her soul?

Sorry, I imagine that's out of your area of expertise. But that's what I keep coming back to. I would hope that her soul left long ago. The thought that she's been trapped in limbo is horrifying.

If the mind is the necessary predicate for the "soul," then one could reason that the absence of her mind (meaning the capacity for conscious awareness and understanding) also indicates an absence of the "soul."

JB

that the soul would exist without the mind, which houses everything that makes us uniquely us, let alone human.

JB

to be Terry. Not you. Not I. Not the COURTS. Not the doctors. Not her husband. Not her parents. So...it's all guesswork. Don't treat it like it's cut and dried. We don't know.

decision maker in this sort of circumstance, and that person is her husband.

You would have to dismiss a whole lot of science to accept that conclusion. Terri has no cerebral cortex left.

Is that it is legal to quit giving her nutrients and water, knowing she will die...
but they can't give her medicine that would kill her because that is murder?

What hypocrisy. I'm not saying we should euthanize people but if we are doing something we know will cause death, why the pretext? Because then our hands are clean?
It's not like she'll have a chance to live, they have long forbidden anyone to attempt to give her food or water by mouth. She is going to die...why take the chance that she will suffer.
I know they feel she won't...it's just I know they haven't interviewed anyone with her brain function who has been starved. We might be assuming. (If infant boys could talk we might think twice about how we circumcise them)

DeLay was saying this is illegal to do to dogs. OK, but they could put the dog to sleep.

Putting her lovingly to sleep would be much more humane. This is stupid.

The talk about animals and death row inmates brings up what is really the heart of the matter--that pulling a feeding tube is the only option. I am for people dying with dignity.

I also think the brain scans show clearly that there is no chance for a recovery. She cannot grow a new cerebral cortex. Terri's not there, Terri cannot recover. She cannot be "cured."

I pray for her, that she goes quickly. Hopefully this whole situation gets people to realize how important it is to have a living will.

As a side note the guardian report to the governor stated that in 13 years she had never had a bed sore, because of Michael's care to her. There's nothing about the last two years, but I doubt that has changed.

And a second side note, to everyone that brings up Michael's girlfriend and children...also included in the guardian report it states that Terri's parents encouraged him to date other women, even meeting girlfriends. To take what was encouraged and then turn it against him, boggles my mind. I really think that Michael does love Terri, that's why he is fighting for her. It's not about money, there's no money.

Sorry if this is rambling a bit.