Terri Schiavo Court Cases Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

Terri Schiavo Court Cases - Essay Example Many argue that it might have been, but then there were many arguments in this case. Not all of them were ethical or logical, and not all of them played out in court. The story of Terri Schiavo is so much more tragic than people stop to realize. When a situation is so easily preventable, how does it get so terribly out of hand, and how are even the most basic decisions of care handled? The bottom line, Terri Schiavo should have been alive today, and possibly even alive and well. Terri Schiavo suffered a cardiac arrest due to an eating disorder on February 25th, 1990. She was without oxygen for several minutes and then lapsed into a coma. Her coma then evolved into a Permanent Vegetative State. For fifteen years, she remained in that state, until her feeding tube was finally removed for the last time on March 18th, 2005. She died thirteen days later, ending a fifteen year battle with so many players, and yet so few concrete, satisfactory, answers (Quill, 2005). Terri Schiavo was in a Permanently Vegetative State, also known as PVS. While experts tried to argue that she was in a Minimally Conscious State (MCS), at her autopsy, it was confirmed that she had been in a PVS. The difference between the two conditions is slight. Those patients who are in a PVS are unaware of self and environment; they may make gestures, sounds, and eye movements. These behavior, however are involuntary. People in a MCS are aware of self and environment, but can only express it so much. They cannot speak, but their gestures, eye movements, and vocalizations are a deliberate attempt to communicate with those around them (Winslade, 2007). While Schiavo’s state was considered irreversible, there is much more that may have been learned from her had she survived. Studies have shown that some patients in a PVS can regain some level of consciousness. Some may live for decades in a PVS and begin to recover some consciousness. Simply put, it really is impossible to say