I Will Never Forget the Look of Horror on My Sister Terri Schiavo’s Face the Day She Died

By Bobby Schindler

terrischiavo2On March 18, 2005, my sister, Terri Schiavo, began her thirteen day agonizing death after the feeding tube – supplying her food and water – was removed. Terri was cognitively disabled and had difficulty swallowing and therefore needed a feeding tube. Terri was not on any “life support”, nor was she sick or dying. Nonetheless, she received her death sentence ordered by Circuit Court Judge, George W. Greer of Pinellas County Florida.

Greer’s order to remove Terri’s feeding tube was in response to her estranged husband and guardian, Michael Schiavo, requesting permission from the court to kill his disabled wife. This was after Schiavo began cohabitating with his fiancée and stood to inherit Terri’s medical trust fund, which at the time was close to $800,000.

However, more disturbing was that the judge ruled to kill Terri, despite her mother and father pleading with Schiavo, and the court, to allow them to take her home. In fact, a guardian ad litem urged Judge Greer to refuse the dehydration request. Instead, this legally-required protector of Terri was dismissed from the original case by Greer and no replacement was ever appointed.

March 31st marks a very sad day; and this year, it will be the ten year anniversary of Terri’s death. Rush Limbaugh described it this way, “the day our country hit rock bottom”.

Terri’s case divided the nation and it will be discussed in high schools and college medical ethics classrooms for years to come. It is the anniversary of the death of a young woman who simply had a disability and needed basic and ordinary care to live, and a family who wanted to love and care for her just as she was.

With it being the 10 year anniversary, calls from the media have increased. Most of the articles are excoriating Governor Jeb Bush for his defense of Terri when he was the Governor of Florida back in 2005. But I have noticed one question has been asked more than others – “What, if anything, has changed since Terri’s death?”

Yes, things have changed – they’ve gotten worse. Exactly how many persons are being killed like Terri every year is difficult to know, although I think the numbers would shock us. What we do know is that we have a very active and aggressive right to die movement.

There are many dynamics involved to successfully convince our general public that it’s “okay” to dehydrate and starve a human being to death. If I had to point to one of the major accomplishments, it is how the right to die forces have been able to reclassify feeding tubes as “medical treatment”. However, just as effective is how they’ve influenced the masses to buy into the notion that some persons are in fact, not persons. Consequently, these human “non-persons” have no “value” and can be killed.

This should be frightening to read. But it is true. Even more frightening is how this ideology has impacted and been accepted in our culture, in particular, our health care community.

This, along with changes in public policies, now puts life and death decisions in the hands of physicians, hospitals boards and ethics committees – basically strangers – in the place of family members.

After Terri died, my family’s experience, contesting this powerful right to die movement, led us to establish the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, which seeks to raise public awareness of the looming culture of death, and to educate the public about care potentialities. Most importantly, however, is to help families in situations similar to what we experienced – loved ones in danger of being killed, like Terri.

Indeed, the calls from families for help have increased, and increased significantly, as the years have passed.

Why is this? How has the right to die agenda been able to efficaciously shift our attitudes to the point that is has become everyday practice to starve and dehydrate a person to death. The issue may see complex, however it seems to me that the answer is very clear. It is because they lie.

terrischiavo7

I saw it in my sister’s case and I see it in the stories from the families who call us. And one of the most pathetic lies out there is that killing someone by denying them food and water is a “peaceful” and “painless” experience, and the patently absurd notion that it is a “death with dignity”.

It’s important to differentiate that Terri’s condition, and countless others like her, is quite different from a situation where it may be medically appropriate to withhold food and fluids because a person is actively dying and their bodies are shutting down, no longer able to assimilate their food and hydration.

Terri as seen on day of deathNonetheless, the never-ending propaganda about the peaceable nature of forced dehydration compelled me to make public this image of my sister created from my memory. This (right) is what Terri looked like just before she died. It was horrible to see.

And yet, Schiavo’s attorney falsely told the public during a press conference, just days before Terri’s death, that she looked “beautiful”. This is what they want you to believe, not the harsh truth about the madness of what we permit in the rooms of hospitals, nursing homes and hospices every single day across this country.

These are the hard facts my family and I will have to live with for the rest of my life: After almost two weeks without food or water, my sister’s lips were horribly cracked, to the point where they were blistering. Her skin became jaundice with areas that turned different shades of blue. Her skin became markedly dehydrated from the lack of water. Terri’s breathing became rapid and uncontrollable, as if she was outside sprinting. Her moaning, at times, was raucous, which indicated to us the insufferable pain she was experiencing. Terri’s face became skeletal, with blood pooling in her deeply sunken eyes and her teeth protruding forward. Even as I write this, I can never properly describe the nightmare of having to watch my sister have to die this way.

What will be forever seared in my memory is the look of utter horror on my sister’s face when my family visited her just after she died.

Those pushing this agenda will certainly deny this, they have to. But there was a reason the court ordered that no cameras or video be permitted in Terri’s room while she was being killed. They claimed privacy issues. My family knows otherwise. And they do too.

So when will this heartlessness end? When will the lies end? When will the American people decide this insanity has to stop?

I don’t know. But I do know this – the lies will never end.

Full Article & Source:
I Will Never Forget the Look of Horror on My Sister Terri Schiavo’s Face the Day She Died.

The Icy Chill

Photo by: Carrie K. Hutchens

Photo by: Carrie K. Hutchens

The icy chill of winter, clinging beyond its time, mocks and dances against the lonely night of darkness where no friendly voice speaks and no hopeful hand rests.

The chill… the darkness… the hopelessness embraces and suffocates.

Cries begging for mercy race to the heavens, as man drags still another unwilling soul into the pit of vile corruption that seeks to crush and devour.

The chill… the darkness… the hopelessness embraces and suffocates.

A hopeful challenge sings against the confusion, with no one to listen and few to remember the days when the world was not encouraged to sink into the incomprehension of utter insanity.

The chill… the darkness… the hopelessness embraces and suffocates.

Madness and rage erupt into boiling lava of confused hate and lost reason, as the masses seek to feast upon the spirit of all others not they or theirs.

The chill… the darkness… the hopelessness embraces and suffocates.

A dream, or a nightmare, there was a moment… a moment somewhere within time… a moment touched with a vague sense of humanity and good purpose.

The chill… the darkness… the hopelessness embraces and suffocates.

Where… where did those moments of a dream go?  Did they travel far or just beyond the glimpse of a horizon hidden?

Did the chill… the darkness… the hopelessness embrace and suffocate all hope of a tomorrow to be as once was? 

The answers await within the night not present.  Only in a distant tomorrow will the truth be revealed to survivors of the icy chill that dances within the darkness where no friendly voice speaks and no hopeful hand rests. 

The saved or the damned?  Only they shall know as they emerge into whatever has become.

(c) 2015 Carrie K. Hutchens
All Rights Reserved!
No Reproduction Without Permission

Krauthammer’s Take: Bergdahl Black Eye Obama Can’t Escape

Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer sounds off on the largely self-inflicted embarrassment Pres. Obama and the White House have suffered in terror prisoner swap for accused deserter Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl

Full Article, Video & Source:
Krauthammer’s Take: Bergdahl Black Eye Obama Can’t Escape

A senseless death…

St. Louis Police Officer Don Re wrote this blog post about the March 11, 2015 shooting death of a 6-year-old boy.

We arrived at the Children’s Hospital Emergency Room at the same time.

He and his partner parked and I pulled up to their left and did the same.

I got out of my car and watched as the officer hurried from his seat and opened the back, driver’s side door.

When the officer grabbed the boy from the back seat of his police Tahoe, I knew almost instantly.

Marcus Johnson

Marcus Johnson

There was a split second though, before instantly I guess, where I didn’t know. For that split second, the officer looked like any dad grabbing his sleeping boy from the car and putting the boy’s head on his shoulder to carry him inside to sleep comfortably in his own bed.

For that split second, it was a sweet moment.

The officer, an around fifty year old white guy, clutched the little boy over his left shoulder gently, but with a clear purpose. The boy was small, a black child with his hair in corn rows and dressed as a typical five or six-year-old dresses.

He reminded me of my own six-year-old son.

The sudden, pained look on the officer’s face and the fact that the boy wasn’t crying or yelling or doing anything other than appearing to be asleep made the split second fantasy fade away fast.

We hurried into the emergency room where we were met by the trauma team and hospital staff. I’m always in awe at how these emergency room doctors and nurses and staff are so able to get to working on a patient so fast.

There was some sliver of hope that the boy would make it, at least that’s what we all wanted to believe.

The truth, and I think we all knew it, was that this boy would never fall asleep in his own bed again. When the officer laid the boy down on the gurney and stood back upright, any wind that may have been in my sails quickly faded to nothing.

His shirt said it all.

STL officer in Marcus Johnson caseWhere the boy’s little heart had laid so close to the officer’s own heart, was a mess that told us things would not end well.

The three of us officers, with nearly fifty years of city police experience under our collective belts, waited not so stoically outside of trauma room two as the doctors and nurses busted their tails to save this little guy.

We paced and exchanged awkward smiles with each other and the nurses and staff who were passing by. There were several times when one or all of us was close to tears, but we held it together.

It was hard for the officer, because he did the best he could and it wasn’t going to be enough. It was hard for me, because I have a son about that age at home and couldn’t imagine anything like this happening to him.

It was awkward because we were all hoping, but we also knew that it was going to take a miracle for that boy to live.

He was not granted that miracle.

Just like that, at a couple of minutes after 8pm, a five-year old boy was gone forever.

The sheet of paper, which I’ve seen way to many times, verified it. It’s the one with a line printed on it. When it’s completely straight, you’ve died. You’ve straight-lined, as they say.

I was done with being in the hospital. I wanted to leave.

To go back to my car, I had to walk past the same group of people who were in the waiting room when we walked past them earlier with the dying boy. Three little boys grabbed at me and asked me if that boy we carried in earlier was dead.

“Did he die, officer? Was that boy dead?” They asked me.

I got no help from their mom, as she was tending to a clearly sick kid of her own.

6-year-old Marcus Johnson Family photo

6-year-old Marcus Johnson Family photo

“Boys, he’s fine. He’s a strong boy, just like you guys.”

I felt bad lying, but it seemed easier than having to explain death to three strange kids all under ten years old.

I went to my car and grabbed a bunch of Dum-Dums from the bag I carry around. Mom was cool with me giving them suckers, and they left me alone about the dead boy they still thought was alive.

I couldn’t tell them that the boy who was about their same age had straight-lined.

Five-year olds shouldn’t straight line.

Why did this one?

Because of gun violence in the city.

The weather was nice so the people were out.

Some people were out with their guns.

Why did this boy have to die?

Was it disrespect?

Drugs?

A woman?

Money?

All stupid reasons to fire a gun anywhere near another human being, let alone children, but here we are again, with another child lost to violence.

We tried to save this boy.

The officer showed up and there was a hostile crowd of people, most of whom had nothing to do with the shooting, and most not even sure what they should be angry at. The were just angry because anger is easy. Patience is hard. Kindness in the face of adversity is hard. Understanding is hard.

Some chose to be angry at the police while others were taking video on their phone. Meanwhile, nobody was helping a child as he lay dying on the sidewalk from a bullet that had torn through his little body.

The officer fought through the angry crowd and put a dying boy he didn’t know in his car.

Did he have to do that?

No.

EMS was coming, but they were too far away. It was too risky to wait for them, so we raced that little guy to the hospital in record time. We had all sorts of cars shutting down the route to the hospital, just like we would were a fellow cop shot and in need of medical care. That’s about the highest honor we can give a person, and this boy deserved it.

Still, it didn’t matter on this night.

I truly believe that when it’s your time, it’s your time.

Five years shouldn’t be anyone’s time, but that’s not my call.

It’s queer, but I left hospital and went back in service to handle more calls. I had to handle some subsequent calls with a little dead boy freshly on my mind.

That’s the thing with policing. It never ends. You have to carry on, so I pretended to care about a car accident and a stolen bike when I just wanted to shout in their faces, “AT LEAST YOU DIDN’T DIE AT FIVE YEARS OLD FROM A BULLET THROUGH YOUR CHEST!!! I HAVE NO INTEREST IN YOUR BULLSHIT PROBLEMS RIGHT NOW!”

But that’s not professional.

I’m wrapping this up having finished a six pack of Bud Light Lime and I just kissed all three of my own sleeping kids as well as my wife. I also laid on the ground and wrestled my dogs at 2 am, even though one of them is dying and has no interest in playing, and I have to work in the morning.

I’m still thinking about a boy I never met alive, and hoping he’s in a better place.

I’m looking at my own six year old’s homework folder and wondering if this dead boy has a homework folder in a backpack never to be turned in again. Will his mom see it when she gets home and cry? Did he have a lunch packed for the next day that will still be in the fridge this weekend to remind his family of a lunch that was never taken to school?

Did he go to kindergarten?

Will somebody have to explain to his classmates that they’ll never see this little guy alive again and why?

This is all too sad and it needs to stop.

Someone please figure out how.

Printed with permission of the author:
don of all trades

Sheriff: Obama ‘Took the Lazy Way Out’ With Tweet on Ferguson Shootings


As seen on The Kelly File

Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke tonight slammed the tweet that President Barack Obama posted following the shooting of two police officers in Ferguson, Mo.

Obama tweeted today:

“That might score him point with hipsters, but it’s not going over real big with me and it’s not going over real big with the American law enforcement officer,” Clarke told Megyn Kelly.

“He took the lazy way out, he issued a tweet,” Clarke said of Obama. “He didn’t have the decency to put on a suit and go to the East Room or the Rose Garden and issue a heartfelt condemnation of what’s going on in these assaults against officers.”

Clarke said that “the assault on the American cop continues,” and he said it’s unfathomable that America has gotten to this point. Clarke explained that his biggest fear came true when Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio “trashed the reputation of an entire profession.”

Full Article, Video & Source:
Sheriff: Obama ‘Took the Lazy Way Out’ With Tweet on Ferguson Shootings

Black Sheriff: Ferguson Desecrates The Legacy Of Martin Luther King

Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke is challenging the radicalized Democrat Party to tolerate, rather than to destroy, dissenting local leaders.

The hard left and Michael Bloomberg want this strong black voice “taken out,” as he describes it in this two part video interview with The Daily Caller. Yet, he recently won his fourth term for sheriff in a liberal Democrat country, winning with higher percentages each time his name has been on the ballot.

With his unique views, this 36-year law enforcement professional has been dubbed “The People’s Sheriff.”

Clarke starts out this video interview by condemning those who would elevate the death of Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin, “people engaged in criminal behavior,” as icons of a new civil rights movement. He says this would “desecrate the legacy of Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr.”

“None of these people deserved to have been killed, but they were co-conspirators in their own demise.”

(Continue Reading)

Full Article & Source:
Black Sheriff: Ferguson Desecrates The Legacy Of Martin Luther King