This was a reflection paper our Critical Care Nursing professor asked us to submit. This is an ethical dilemma most health professionals encounter in the hospital setting. A battle between life and death in the face of paternalism. The Terri Schiavo Case.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp058062

Upon reading the article above, certain questions made me wonder whether what happened deserved to happen.

To preserve or to let go?

Terri is a vegetable. Her incapacity to rationalize like a normal human being makes her dead beyond the aid of ventilators and machines yet her right to live remains intact. Preserving her under the aid of expensive equipment would be like a hungry dog being tied six inches away from infected food. Though the act of saving the dog from eating infected food seems noble, tying the dog in front of the food and having nothing to feed the dog in the first place, sounds more like torture. Just as Terri’s family wants to keep her from facing death, keeping her alive without the whole essence of living may seem selfish, and senseless. On the other hand, letting her go would sound a lot like murder. Which is more painful? In this case, I may have to acquiesce with John Rawls’ philosophy of accepting the lesser evil in the face of having no good option. Letting her go would seem more considerable if I were asked. Holding her back from death is like holding her back from salvation. It is selfish and by all means as the court have decided and as the husband heard her once state, she does not want to be kept alive on a machine, she wanted to die a natural death in God’s time. She had a predisposed perspective about being chained to a machine and that is good enough to view what she would’ve wanted.

Who deserves the right to decide for Terri?

The husband is a blabbing moron. Deciding for her wife and fornicating with another woman. All this cheating while his wife lives the sad life of a wood piece. He doesn’t have a right to stand up and decide for her. She wouldn’t want his say on this if only she was faking her condition on a reality show to expose her cheating husband. The family members on the other hand, as the author of the article said, are selfish. They wanted to keep her breathing because they are too weak to let her go. The Florida Supreme Court was the only competent persona for paternalism.

What would Terri have decided?

Terri due to her critical medical condition could not sign a DNR sheet nor tell everybody “Hey, keep me breathing.” But if she were awake for even 15 minutes and can fully understand her condition, what could she have chosen?

It is not for me to guess what runs in Terri’s mind, if there was something at all, seeing everybody debating over her life. All I can say is that, Death is inevitable. It is something that comes either suddenly or gradually. It’s the last thing every living creature experiences yet the thought of it as the end of everything gives more essence to living. Death is always unexpected because only God knows the time for everything. Human as we are, if we have the power to save lives, we must also have the courage to let go and trust that we’re freeing somebody from worldly pain into eternal happiness.