I have not commented on my blog at all about Terri Schiavo, simply because it seems to provoke arguments. But working in healthcare I have to say something. First and foremost put down all of your wishes in writting to save your family from this horrible decision that they would have to make. If anything is learned from this then I hope that is it. I have not followed all of the specifics on the case for one good reason in my eyes. It just makes me so damn mad! I am mad for all of the other patients I have dealt with in my career where families have decided that the best interest of the person is to have their feeding tube removed and not one memeber of the media found it to be cruel or "starvation" when the person is geriatric or the family is not arguing. You cannot blame the courts, judges, lawyers governers and presidents for this etheir, they did their jobs. It is the LAW. Your next of kin can and will make healthcare decisions for you if you cannot. The only way I can see for the family to have a right to question a husband is if there was a living will and he was going against it. Now personally I don't know anything about her husband and I have read some of the media reports of how he is this or that, and truthfully that is between him and God. This happens daily in this country and the whole country takes sides and voices their opinions just because the media latched onto it. That amuses me. How much does society really care if it takes a news report to bring out the protestors? What about the 65 year old lady I cared for last year that could talk, communicate basic needs such as pain and thirst but not have enough skills to make any decisons or understand them? Where was the media? My personal belief is that the husband did the right thing, but we all have our personal beliefs. Thank God we live in a country that you have the right to have that personal belief. Thank God we have the right to decide if we want to live or die when we are forced to only have nutrition via a tube. Shame on those ignorant protestors that stood outside of a Hospice Center where I am sure other pts. were living out their last days in a chosen way of dying peacefully and were disturbed by their loud mouths. We should be grateful that we have such an excellent Hospice service in this country. no one should have to die in pain and our wonderful hospice nurses make sure we don't. One last note: if anyone of those ignorant protestors actully suceeded in giving Terri a drink of water then they would have done nothing but given her aspiration pneumonia. Contrary to popular media reports Terri also did not starve. Dehydration would have come before starving. Feel free to look up the effects of dehydration on the dying pt. It has found to be a comfortable euphoric state.