Fraters Libertas

Peaceful Easy Feeling

There's a myth floating around out there that Terri Schiavo will die a peaceful death now that her feeding tube has been removed. Without food or water, Schiavo is doomed to die by dehydration and there's very little about that process that can be described as peaceful.

In this Daily Standard piece from November of 2003, Wesley J. Smith has neurologist William Burke's description of death by dehydration:

A conscious [cognitively disabled] person would feel it just as you or I would. They will go into seizures. Their skin cracks, their tongue cracks, their lips crack. They may have nosebleeds because of the drying of the mucus membranes, and heaving and vomiting might ensue because of the drying out of the stomach lining. They feel the pangs of hunger and thirst. Imagine going one day without a glass of water! Death by dehydration takes ten to fourteen days. It is an extremely agonizing death.

Smith's piece also relates the story of Kate Adamson who, like Terri Schiavo, was diagnosed as being in a persistent vegetative state. In Adamson's case, nourishment was suspended to allow doctors to perform bowel surgery. She eventually recovered and had this to say about her peaceful ordeal:

The agony of going without food was a constant pain that lasted not several hours like my operation did, but several days. You have to endure the physical pain and on top of that you have to endure the emotional pain. Your whole body cries out, "Feed me. I am alive and a person, don't let me die, for God's Sake! Somebody feed me."

Soon, Terri Schiavo will echo these silent screams for help. Her cries will go unanswered for days as her respiratory tract becomes dry and her bladder burns. Her functioning eyes will recede back into their orbits, her loosely hanging skin will become dry and scaly and she'll begin to convulse as her brain cells dry out. Her major organs will then give out one by one until the day, maybe three weeks from now, Terri Schiavo will die.

Thank God it's going to be a peaceful death, though. How else could we all sleep at night?