There is an incredible story in today's
LA Times. It is the story of two mothers, each with a child that ended up in a "persistent vegetative state."
When Edwarda was 16 years old her oxygen starved brain began to shut down following a diabetic coma. She can breathe on her own and cough. Five months after her brain shut down, her mother brought her home where she continues to care for her hour after hour of every day. Edwarda will be 52 years old tomorrow. Her mother is 77.
Randy was 25 years old when he suffered massive brain damage in a motorcycle accident. His mother watched him in a nursing home for 12 years, and finally asked his doctor to stop feeding him. "In the nursing-home bed, `he was living, breathing, pulsating, but it was a life sustained only by technical means,' his mother says." "There was energy, but there was no life."
Judge Greer has just denied the last request to reinsert Terry's feeding tube. Amen.