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March 20, 2005
Terri Schiavo's Bulimia: Not on "The Agenda"
There has been a lot of attention on Terri Schiavo as her formal husband, her parents, and the so-called pro-lifers fight over whether her feeding-tube should be removed so that she'll die by starvation or whether she should continue to be force-fed so that she will remain alive in a persistent vegetative state.
Much less mentioned is the fact that Schiavo had this heart attack at a very young age, causing the current persistent vegetative state, because of her bulimia:
When she finally lost 65 pounds in her late teens, men started to pay attention — including the man who would become her husband, Michael Schiavo, who was tall and handsome.But keeping the weight off was a struggle for Terri Schiavo, and years later — after her heart stopped briefly, cutting off oxygen to the brain — a malpractice case brought against a doctor on her behalf would reveal she had been trying to survive on liquids and was making herself throw up after meals. The Schiavos' lawyer said her 1990 collapse was caused by a potassium imbalance brought on by an eating disorder.
It is a cruel twist lost on no one close to the case: A woman who is said to have struggled with an eating disorder is now in the middle of a court battle over whether her feeding tube should be removed so that she can starve to death.
Terri Schiavo was forcing herself to throw up her food. She was denying herself the most human of activities, nourishment. Bulimia is a very dangerous activity. Stomach acids are not meant to travel back up through the esophagus and the mouth, where they will digest one's insides and rot one's teeth. Bulimia also results in serious chemical imbalances which can cause heart attacks -- as it did in Terri Schiavo's case.
I find it hard to believe her husband is not culpable in her bulimia, either through action or inaction. Her illness had progressed to the point she had stopped menstruating. He knew "she had peculiar eating patterns." He must have known about her discomfort with her body. He either reinforced her self-hatred or did not fight hard enough against it. Terri Schiavo's parents also seem to be in denial about her bulimia. The whole bunch of so-called pro-lifers seem only concerned with somehow continuing to force-feed this unfortunate woman without any pretense at discussing our sick culture that causes women to hate their own flesh. With all these Senate bills and last-minute interventions by the Governor, why not fund an eating disorder awareness fund or two? Even just for show, why not use this tragedy to try to warn the who-knows-how-many young women risking a similar end? Why not use this to examine how culture fosters such severe self-hatred in women?
That might actually save lives, you know...
But, instead, we have a public fight whether to force-feed or starve Terri Schiavo, carried out, it seems, mostly by people who care neither about her or about the myriads of young women who could become her any moment. A fight that would not have had to happen if we had just let her eat.
Posted by zeynep at March 20, 2005 12:41 PM
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» The Tube is My Life from I cite
How is the right wing mobilization around Terry Shiavo possible? How could it happen that Congress gets involved in this sad case, that Bush makes a big deal of flying to DC to sign the bill into law? The link [Read More]
Tracked on March 21, 2005 11:28 AM
» Weekly News from MidtImod.dk - While you're waiting
Endnu en eklektisk række af artikler og indlæg fundet rundt omkring på nettet, i denne uge centreret omkring på den ene side Terri Schiavo sagen, og på den anden (og mere fyldige) side teknologi, open source og videnskab.
Terri Schiavo's Bulimia: Not [Read More]
Tracked on March 29, 2005 03:12 AM
» Terri Schiavo's Bulimia and how it never made the agenda from LEFT WING NATION
Under the Same Sun Blog sheds some light on the eating disorder of Terry Schiavo, and how Michael Schiavo and the Schindlers hardly mentioned it. Read about it here, here and here.... [Read More]
Tracked on April 3, 2005 02:51 AM
» Terri Schiavo: Victim of Slimming Obsession? from Radical Left
If it hadn't been for that moment when the potassium imbalance brought about by her bulimia caused Terri's heart to stop, she might have been the woman in the television ad I just watched, selling the latest weight-loss method. "I lost a hundred pounds... [Read More]
Tracked on April 5, 2005 04:44 AM
Comments
Excellent stuff, Zeynep. Your commentary is totally on point. The most striking situation I've seen reflecting such state of affairs was when I was in Pakistan, in the province of Punjab. There, you'd often see this extreme contrast between males encouraged to be "overly healthy," eat like there was no tomorrow, etc. on the one hand, and females forced to essentially starve themselves. So you get these very obese male grooms with toothpick-size brides, and while this scenario is horrible health-wise for both parties, the discrimination against women is so utterly blatant.
Thanks for bringing this issue up.
Peace,
Junaid
Posted by: Junaid at March 20, 2005 11:26 PM
To make judgements without knowledge of the facts, to use 'I find it hard to believe' as an acceptable way to slur others is despicable. I suggest you apply for a position with Rep. DeLay, you'll fit right in.
Posted by: Dick Durata at March 21, 2005 01:59 AM
I think you are overly confident about the ability of love and support from a partner/spouse to overcome psychological or behavioral problems. I have not been following this case closely, but unless you have a lot of concrete information that I haven't seen about this marriage, I'd say your assumption of complicity is ungrounded.
Posted by: Rudy Meixell at March 21, 2005 08:25 AM
I do hope that her husband was supportive. I hope that what I find hard to believe is in fact true; that he tried and failed. I had been following this case for a while and earlier reports --before this much publicity-- had suggested that he had told her that he'd divorce her if she gained the weight back.
But, yes, there is much there is unknown about the past -- especially given the current political tug-of-war. I remain disappointed that he is not out there talking about her bulimia -- if it were the case that he tried and failed, his forthright public expression to that effect would be important to many families who might be struggling with these issues.
Posted by: Zeynep at March 21, 2005 11:42 AM
You could make the same argument for her parents being complicit in her bulimia. I find it hard to believe that her eating problems sprung up de novo in her mid-twenties, and that her husband was the problem.
Schiavo reportedly was a compulsive overeater in her early teens, and got up to 250 pounds by age 16.
Posted by: Tara at March 21, 2005 03:37 PM
You "find it hard to believe" because you have never loved and lived with someone who has a mental illness. My wife of 4 years is schizoaffective. No amount of love and support on my part can ultimatly counter the effects of her illness. I do what I can to make sure she stays safe. Ultimatly, though, I can't watch her every second of every day. If she threw herself in front of a bus would that be my fault? There is no cure for most mental illnesses. There are some amazing medicines that can bunt or eliminate the symptoms in many cases, but they are a patch, no more, no less.
Make no mistake, Bulemia is a MENTAL illness. All the love and attention of her husband ultimatly amounted to nothing. She was sick, long before she had a heart attack.
I don't understand why so many are quick to blame the husband. Everything I've read has shown that he has done everything he could do to help her. He went to school to become a respritory technician. After 8 years, with no change in her condition, with all the medical experts pointing to no chance of a recovery, he petitioned the court to follow her stated, colaborated wishes. This was an act of love, not an act of hate.
Read a lot more about the case at the most unbiased site I have found:
http://abstractappeal.com/schiavo/infopage.html
Posted by: Rex Schrader at March 22, 2005 05:01 PM
Very inciteful. I did a search for "schiavo bulimia" and found your essay, which was exactly what I would have written (so was obviously completely correct). It's nice to know there are others who saw this.
Posted by: Marilyn Jones at March 22, 2005 07:42 PM
from the mainstream:
"Like almost every element in the case, whether Schiavo really was bulimic is in dispute. Her father, Robert Schindler, said he does not believe his daughter had an eating disorder and thinks her husband had something to do with her collapse."
a number of other things about this aspect of the case at http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2005-02-25-schiavo-eating-disorder_x.htm (an AP article that was published in USA Today).
Posted by: liz at March 22, 2005 10:21 PM
sorry, the rest of my comment above got eaten somehow by my browswer.
i was saying:
denial of the issue is especially common in parents that have somehow encouraged, condoned, or exacerbated eating disorders. every woman over 30 that i've personally known who's had one has had a family member in childhood that did at least one of those things with their ED.
Posted by: liz at March 22, 2005 10:29 PM
I know for a fact that eating disorders can spring up in one's mid-twenties without the behavior ever having manifested itself in the teenage years. It is easy to keep bulimia a secret from family and loved ones. Mrs. Schiavo's parents and husband should not be blamed. My bulimia started when I was 25 (I'm now 36) and my parents have no idea. My boyfriend would not know had I not told him. He has insisted that I get help, but my recovery is up to me, and if I can't recover, that will in no way be his fault. I do wish the media would talk about what caused Mrs. Schiavo's heart attack because doing so has the potential to help a lot of people.
Posted by: Carol at March 23, 2005 11:46 AM
Amen. And a thousand more. I myself am a Church going liberal(I know, strange). But I would have to agree with you. So much time and money is being spent on trying to keep her alive or kill her. I dont know the answer. Wish someone did though. But eating disorders are so easy to keep secret. I do disagree about blaming her husband. If he knew, and reinforced it, then it is partly his fault. But being a bulimic myself(recovering) trust me, its EXTREMELY possible to hide it from the people you live with and there is nothing that they can truly do for you. As the person with the problem, predominately, you have to take the first step. I agree with Carol that there is not much people can do. But So much is being wasted on this case. It is cruel to not give her water, and at times I dont know what to think. I guess the real question that someoone has to ask themselves is, "Would I want to live like this?"
Posted by: Erika at March 23, 2005 02:42 PM
Psychology related factors contributing to bulimia are complex, which include having aggravated family issues driving one to seek an extreme sense of control over something they can access, such as one's body. Women reinforce unrealistic body image values, just as much as men reward them, and just as much as society as a whole perpetuates them. Nonetheless, something was incredibly wrong in her life -- and she was not handling her problems responsibly. Were it not for Terri Shaivo's adult actions, none of us would know who she is, just as we are not now engaged in a national debate over every individual in a vegetative state near expiration. And lest anyone feel so impassioned to neglect reading what is a matter of public record, the source of this national debate does not stem from removing her tube. This debate stems from the conflict between her parents who refuse to stop interferring with her husband's legal authority via marriage. Doesn't anyone realize he is NOT the one who determined her tube should be removed. A very competent, qualified, and educated guardian ad litem spent a lot of time studying Shiavo's medical state. The removal of the tube has been granted with the authority of the court's guardian ad litem. More so, a huge medical malpractice and charitable giving fund is the source of conflict between her parents and her husband. They seek to remove him as her legal heir so that they can become her legal heirs. Their conflict began when Mr. Shaivo did not "share" the medical settlement with her parents.
Posted by: Dee Gable at March 23, 2005 03:22 PM
My sister has eating disorders. When she was 19, she started exercising incessantly. It seemed that she could never run enough miles or lose enough weight. Shortly into this constant exercise program, she began to starve herself from food. She would drink SlimFast shakes 3 times a day. I told my parents that my sister needed help because I thought she was anorexic. But my parents were in denial. It was only when my sister started experiencing scares with her heart that she admitted to my parents she needed help for her disorder. It is now 5 years later, and she has not gotten any better. She has been in and out of treatment facilities. She has attempted suicide, and she has "yo-yo"ed between anorexia and bulimia. She continues to eat low-fat, low-carb, diet foods, and continues to exercise constantly. She vomits at least twice a day, but nothing her therapists or doctors say to her makes any difference. My parents are very supportive of her, but my brothers and I have almost had it. She doesn't want to get better, and she talks about dying all the time. She thinks if she could leave this world of pain behind, then it would be better. If my sister refuses to get better even though she has the love and support of my whole family, then how can we fault the Schiavo family? My family is not in denial about my sister's eating disorder. We don't make her feel she has to be skinny for us to love her. In fact, she is one of the most hateful people I know, but I love her anyway because she is my sister. The bottom line is that my sister is the one that makes herself feel that she has to be skinny to be loved. After 5 years of therapy and 3 treatment facilities with extended stays of several months, the only solution I am left with is that on some level my sister is happy in her misery. And she is the one that chooses to remain sick.
Posted by: Kim at March 24, 2005 12:05 AM
He either reinforced her self-hatred or did not fight hard enough against it.
I will choose to believe that you are fortunate enough to have never loved someone with an eating disorder, rather than as unrealistic as this suggests.
It would be nice if I could cure the people I care about, but you can't force people to get well if they don't want to try.
Posted by: M. at March 25, 2005 12:18 AM
Can you imagine the guilt the parents must feel hearing that their daughter's medical problems are a result of her actions ... activities that they may or may not have been aware of but actions they probably believe they might have been able to change had they intervened.
Posted by: Michael at March 25, 2005 09:15 AM
I am not pro life, pro choice, left, right, liberal, conservative, pro husband, or pro parents. I just have an observation to I feel I must make.
Please stop trying to assess blame to everyone besides Ms. Schiavo. Stop blaming the husband, stop blaming the doctor, stop blaming the courts, stop blaming the politicians, stop blaming society, stop trying to blame anyone besides the ONE person who made the choices that bring this story to where it is today. Each and every one of us is born into a world of imperfection, beauty, ugliness, kindness and cruelty. Our "circumstances". Each and every one of us has two responsibilities to ourselves and to our fellow humans. The first is to choose carefully how we react to our circumstances.
Ultimately, millions of people are born into the same or worse circumstances and yet manage to take that responsibility on with success. Some do not. Yes, we should all be better people, more understanding, less vain, less cruel, and more helpful. Any of these things would have helped Ms. Schiavo. None of them would have saved her from her responsibility to choose an appropriate reaction to her circumstances. There are so many people today who expend more energy blaming others for their circumstances than they do in reacting and overcoming. Just as the person stated earlier, so much is now being wasted on this that, with the right choice, could be spent on preventing it by educating people in an effort to help them make the right choice. But no one can ultimately save us from our first responsibility.
I am sickened at the people who, whether born into privilege or poverty, choose to blame their circumstances for choices they have made. MILLIONS are born into similar or MUCH worse circumstances and yet they do not slaughter their parents, starve themselves to death, mutilate their own body, steal to prove their power, kill to get attention. Choices made by the minority of people.
On the other hand, there is such hope in the young child born into abject poverty in a violent home who grows to be a caring, successful, compassionate adult. Here is the twist. We blame everyone except the person for the bad, but when the person succeeds we attribute it to them personally. If success is personal, how can failure be otherwise? A society of rampant irresponsibility however reward those people who fail with attention, money, celebrity, book deals... it goes on and on. Instead, we should be positively reinforcing those who do what is expected of the human condition, making the lesson to value your own life, make your own decisions, and examine yourself when you fail. Seek these people out who succeed. Emulate them. Discover not what was bad about the failures, but what was good about the successes. This is the knowledge that is worth sharing. Instead we fill our televisions with the failure, blindly guess at what might be done differently, and expend huge amounts of resources trying to decide who is to blame.
I do not blame Ms. Schiavo, I am sad for her because the poor choices she made cost her life. We all make poor decisions, fortunately most can be overcome if we learn from them by examining ourselves and moving forward. But each day we are all faced with choices, and any one of them could put us in Ms. Schiavo’s place. I truly hope that whatever happens to her is blessedly comforting, and that we all learn something from it. A lesson of responsibility. Her parents, her husband, you and I all need that lesson from time to time. I am so sorry it should come at her expense.
Your reward for this personal responsibility will be a great satisfaction in having done what few people seem able to do. Take responsibility for yourself and successfully manage your own life. Stop blaming. Do something positive. Walk away from the blogs, the bile and hatred at the water cooler conversations, turn off the television, put down the newspapers and take responsibility for you're inaction – your first responsibility. Go do something helpful – an ACTION that makes progress. Your second responsibility.
Posted by: bb at March 25, 2005 10:15 AM
Thank you, Michael, for that commentary on responsibility. I couldn't agree more.
I'm a recovering alcoholic with 21 years sobriety after 8 years of drinking. My sister is a recovering (I hope) bulimic. None of my family -- and we are close -- had any idea about either condition until we admitted it ourselves. No one could help us until we admitted it and helped ourselves. Support from loved ones is a great thing, and our family was and is tremendously supportive. However, there is nothing they could have done had my sister and I not chosen to take responsibility for ourselves, and taken the steps to get treatment ourselves, and stuck to that treatment, again, ourselves.
I find the entire Shiavo situation appalling: that the parents could be so very deeply in denial about her past and present conditions, that the husband has to make this choice and then defend it against half the nation, and that strangers who don't know any of the individuals would insert themselves into a private tragedy, and do it, apparently, to further their political goals. We've become a nation of voyeuristic control freaks.
Don
Posted by: Don at March 25, 2005 04:33 PM
I hear what many the commenters are saying about responsibility. I do understand it may not have been possible for her husband to do more before she collapsed. Perhaps; I concede facts are hard to come by in this case. But I still think the least he could do is talk a lot more about what happenned, about eating disorders, about his own helplessness if that were the case. More in my later post, at http://www.underthesamesun.org/content/2005/03/more_on_eating.html
Posted by: Zeynep at March 25, 2005 05:04 PM
I am so glad that this issue has been brought to the light of TRUTH! I find it hysterical, if not flat out sad at the behavior of her family, as is always the state I find myself with the pro-lifers. I believe they are acting in their own rather trite skin, foregoing truth, for the sake of just needing a cause to make their own lives feel worth something. When it comes down to it, this woman orchestrated her own demise. I feel deeply sorry that bulimia was her drug of choice, as it is a wretched one, but none the less, her actions were the cause her current condition. Her parents, family, and pro-lifers seem to want to skate around this issue like twiggy on the cat-walk, and not face the fact that this woman has had an issue with food for quite a substantial part of life. First over eating, then finding the oasis of acceptance awarded those who are thin and acceptable in today’s society leading to bulimia. This makes me think, if she could speak her mind concerning the current state of affairs, would she even now want to feed? Some in society are so high and mighty that we can, in all our indignation, stand on our soap box and protest she is a human being and worth saving, even if that same human being never asked or desired to be saved? A clever smoke screen so easily beset those who are lacking in wisdom, missing the real message that if they want to save someone, bring to attention the dysfunction of the sickness (bulimia) and not on the individual for whom it consumed.
Posted by: Andre Gray at March 25, 2005 06:23 PM
everything you say is incredibly insightful and i only wish it were not so rare to read such clarity on the issues of women and eating disorders links to cultural visions of what we are to be. but as a recovering anorexic and bulimic ( 4 yrs after 8 in the disease with heart attacks and seizures that thank God left no permanent damage,) i must argue the comment made ab the husband's acts or inactions. an eating disordered person will not get better or even truly try to just because a concerned love one intervenes. oftentimes, this such intervention only excasserbates the disease and causes more secretive and manipuliative means to practice the e.d. it is quite horrendous to look at the root of what has terri in this position and eating disorderawareness should be the headlines and forefront of this entire ordeal. yet blaming husband for a woman's eating disorder?! unfortunately, the root of many such disorders spawn from that being the one thing a woman believes she can control and may go to all lengths--deady or not--to preserve this pseudo sense of power. so yes yes yes! let's put thee damned dime towards educating people. the only mention in media of bulimia go on and on about thinness. eating disorders are about self-loathing and denial. skinny or the seeking of such is a mere symptom of a hurting soul.
Posted by: india at March 26, 2005 01:14 AM
I believe, with that murderer in the white house continuing to kill hundreds of our U.S. soldiers and thousands of innocent Iraqi citizens just so his friends can get richer, it is a travesty of the highest order that all we can focus on is the PERSONAL medical affairs of a woman in Florida. It is NOT our business and quite frankly it's none of her parents' business either. That is a difficult decision made by her husband and he is the only one qualified to make that decision since he is the only one who truly knows her wishes. Why not stop all the idiocy and concentrate on what really matters. This country has indeed become a bunch of voyeurs who do nothing but create mountains out of molehills while they ignore the real mountains.
Posted by: Lorraine at March 28, 2005 12:49 PM
Lorrain, why shouldn't we focus on her personal medical affairs? What we have here is a woman who left no "living will" stating how she was to be treated. The courts, in the absence of a law limiting a guardian's rights (as occurred in the Supreme Court case of Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dept. of Health [497 US 261 (1990)]), have done the right thing. However, this does concern us. It is possible in Florida, unlike Missouri, for a guardian or even a hospital to make a decision not motivated by the best interests of the patient.
You state that the husband is the only one who knows her wishes. And how is that, if she lies in a comatose state? Do they mind meld? Do we believe a person who now has interests so contrary to those of Terri that he would be severely inconvenienced if she were to awaken today?
To the contrary, as everyone who has posted here knows, including yourself, this IS a public issue.
And it's so easy for you to dismiss her parent's interest in their child's welfare; I have to assume you are pro-abortion too.
Finally, I and my friends who voted for Bush outnumber you. Get over it.
Posted by: anonymous at March 28, 2005 10:36 PM
Lorraine,
And you've got blood on your hands. Please don't preach to people about life when you voted for a guy who murdered more Iraqis than Saddam, not to mention 1,500+ american soldiers based on a LIE
Get off your high horse. You're like all the other morons who voted for Bush, love the fetus hate the LIFE.
Posted by: betty at March 29, 2005 11:05 PM
Although you are probably well-intentioned, I think that you are desperately naive if you think that her husband could have helped her with her eating disorder and was, in some way, helping to perpetuate it. No matter how much love, care and concern you give to someone with an eating disorder, you cannot stop their behaviour if they do not want to stop. First, the victim has to accept and admit they have a problem and then allow themselves to be helped by qualified medical professionals who would most likely involve them with cognitive behavioural therapy and talking therapy. You clearly have not the slightest comprehension about the complexities of an eating disorder and your comments are typical of someone who neither understands nor has even the slightest experience of this problem.
Posted by: Millie at April 1, 2005 02:15 AM
All this talk of personal responsibility makes me want to, forgive me for saying it, throw up. Yes, we all bear responsibility for our actions and decisions. And yes, we are all products of our upbringing, environment, and social norms and pressures. As I man, I can't fully relate to the kind of societal pressure that a woman feels to be thin, but you'd have to be deaf, dumb, and blind not to see that it exists in our society and exerts a powerful force on people, men as well in their typical attitudes toward "fat" women. This blog commentary is right on target.
Posted by: Fred at April 2, 2005 06:00 AM
To understand the social causes of bulimia will actually give us a better sense of how individually and collectively we can prevent this problem. Merely blaming the individual, or consigning the problem to the realm of psychology blinds us to the social context that creates the conditions for this disease in the first place. Remember - bulimia is most common in the US - women in many other cultures do not suffer from this problem. Bulimia and anorexia are best viewed not as psychological problems, but rather practices at the extreme of a continuum that includes dieting, including the very dangerous atkin's diet, exercise, deprivation - all driven by a desire to conform to ideals of femininity. Most Americans have dieted at one time or another, many have taken unhealthy or dangerous measures to lose weight - including liposuction. Why do some become suicidally anorexic or bulimic? this is best answered by understanding both social factors that pressure women be thin, as well as intermediate factors such as peer pressure, family, school etc.
Posted by: John Devon Leslie at April 2, 2005 02:29 PM
Mental illnesses are merciless sometimes, they don't care if the person is loved or valued, they eat you alive anyway.
I do wish that her parents would, instead of going gonzo with this crusade to make "Terri's Laws" nationwide, would say a word or two about the danger of bulimia.
Terri's story is sad and should be shared, but not for political gains. It should be shared so that other girls out there who are driven mad by the pressure to be thin at all costs can see themselves in Terri and perhaps get help so they don't end up just like her one day. THAT would be a use of her legacy that might do some good.
Posted by: Laura at April 4, 2005 09:15 PM
I find this site beyond sick. A pox upon you, each and everyone for your self righteousness. Speak what you know, not what you think! You do not possess wisdom and should not speak as though you do.
Posted by: maizie at April 6, 2005 01:38 AM
I have been anorexic for seven years. I am sixteen years old. I weighed forty-two pounds at age 14 and have been put in recovery centers countless times. Though I am a lot better off now, with the help of hundreds of specialists, my parents, and my friends, I know it is truly up to me. Upbringing and reinforcement can have an impact on the eating disorder or pull the trigger on an already susceptable and vulnerable person, but never are they truly the "reason" why someone is sick. I understand what all you angry people are saying, but if you read her essay carefully you'll see that she stated just this - that Mr. Schiavo was "culpable". how was he culpable? how were Terry's parents culpable? because they refused to acknoledge and act on a truly destructive truth: she was bulimic. I know my parents are so happy they know and help as much as they can. Yes, they do things wrong but at least they came out of their denial within a year (there always is some) and put their all into my life and health. It matters, it really does.
Also, I agree that we could highlight the eating disorder to make positive changes in the recovery life today. Anything that the government is made aware of helps fund the effort today.
I suffer, and I always will, I know that. But who I am, what I am, and why I am are up to me and no one else. Every stride I take is for a cause, personal or worldly, and I hope to God someone will give me a hand in changing the hate people have aimed at themselves. Can't you all see Terry is a person, who suffered long before death and was indeed making her way there all her LIFE? can't you see the irony in that we are discussing pulling a feeding tube from a woman who would have wanted it gone anyway and could feed herself to begin with?
Posted by: michelle at January 8, 2006 11:25 PM