(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

Pope John Paul II said Saturday the removal of feeding tubes from people in vegetative states was immoral, and that no judgment on their quality of life could justify such "euthanasia by omission."

Fantastic. Does that mean the Vatican will be helping families pay the catastrophic medical bills of keeping a person alive, for years or decades, when there is literally no hope of recovery?

The Pope called for more money for a "cure," but there is no "cure" for massive brain damage. Small amounts of damage can repair themselves over time, amazingly enough, but if the prefrontal cortex is destroyed, there's no one home and there never will be.

Why is our culture so afraid of death? Death is part of life. Death is fore-ordained at the moment of birth. To be honest I am not afraid of being dead, I am not afraid of the thought that who I am will one day disappear into oblivion. It's the process of dying itself I'm afraid of. All that pain and panic.

Comments

[qilora.livejournal.com]

i have brain damage because of a seizure disorder and a tumor in my left amygdalo-hippocampal(sp) region ... they didn't find my tumor until i was about 27 (i think), but they think i may have had it my entire life....

i had just absense seizures as a small child, and then partials when i hit puberty (around 16 or so)... and in my mid-20s i started having the grand-mals and that is where i lost the time...

to this day, i am *still* hearing about friends i had (that i have no memory of), and i have a horrible time of recognising names and faces (and it doesn't matter how much i like/love a person, they can still be gone from my memory)....

i lost a lot of english too, from the damage done by the seizures, and it took me a couple years to relearn some of it... and i am still slow to talk if i am having a "bad head day"... i can *type* faster than i can talk actually...

brain damage, EVEN THIS LITTLE BIT I HAD is a very very scarey thing.... i can remember the first time my little sister asked me about a friend of mine in NC, and i didn't know who she was talking about, and she said "that gay kid, Nick, Christ you two went *everywhere* together"...

apparently he and i were inseperable.. for the 6 months or so that i was living in Wilmington, we were constantly on the fon and going out together... but when i left NC, i had cut off all contact with him, and never spoke to him again, and forgot he EXISTED even until this day... because even though my sister has told me a lot about him, i have no memory of ever being with him, and i can't remember his face....

when i first heard about him, i just got the chills.. and i sat and shook for almost a half hour because it just seemed like such a horrible thing for me to do, to cut someone off like that... but before i started on meds for the seizure, that was just life for me...

i've lost a *lot* of people this way...

once i started on the meds (once they found something that *worked* for me), i can remember going into the bathroom one day, to pee, and just glancing into the mirror and nearly screaming... because i was a 30 year old woman.... i hadn't had any conscious memory of my face for at least 6 years or so... so i had not seen my face gradually aging, in my memory... all i knew was what i looked like younger, and so when i looked into the mirror, *that* is who i expected to see...

and yes, i know, a lot of people have a sudden eureka moment like that, where they will look into a mirror one day, or a foto of themselves, and realise how they've aged... but this was different... i have little memory of any of those years... i was lucky to go through the motions of living while i was sick with the grand-mals... i'd have 2-3 a day.. and in-between, i might eat or sleep, or *maybe* try to talk with a friend... but nothing else... its just really scarey....

and whenever i hear about coma patients waking up after so long, i just get the chills and think "god, i'm so sorry".... i know it sounds evil, but sometimes i just think it is better for people's bodies to be allowed to die, than to have to suffer through a life with brain-damage...

when i was last talking to my neurologist, we were discussing the brain-damage that i would recieve when the tumor is removed... and i was doing pretty good for a bit (i.e. no crying) ;-) but then i had one question to ask him, that made me get very shakey, i said:
"do you know how many times i have died?........ can you tell me who is going to wake up from the surgery?"
and he couldn't answer me, (of course!), he just looked at me, a little sad... and i added "Dawn is dead" (Dawn is our birth-name) "I'm Julie now.... is *Julie* going to wake up from the surgery, or will *she* be dead too?"..... and he said "honestly, sweetie, i can't tell you that... nobody can."

blech.

(sorry for rambling so much in your LJ)...

Juju & Co.

It may be hard to hear this, or even to believe it...

[publius-aelius.livejournal.com]

...But even your damaged life is precious--because it is SO obvious that you are still able to love.

Re: It may be hard to hear this, or even to believe it...

[qilora.livejournal.com]

oh yes, i agree, that in my case i am lucky enough to have enough of my brain to be able to function as a human...

but there are people who are not lucky to have as much of their brain as i do... and once my amygdala is removed (if/when i get the amygdalo-hippocampectomy), i really don't know what sorts of emotions, functions, that i will be able to access... that is a really terrifying thing to think about...

i come across all this research on rage disorders and impluse control corresponding with damage to the amygdalas(sp)... it makes me evaluate again and again, what is meant by quality of life...

Juju & Co.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

No need for you to apologize at all.

I can't imagine facing what you have gone through, the decision you are facing now. You seem to me a very strong person, despite the illness... I believe you will persevere.