Terry Schiavo

Everyone knows who the title of this entry means. My first thought about the woman is I hope she dies soon. Hunger is not a pretty way to go. I'm sure she would want to die, given the choice. However, I don't think any of us would choose to go by starving, given a choice of another way.
Which brings me to my point. Why is it we allow criminals who are executed to go "easily" by lethal injection. We allow dogs to be put down when they no longer have a good quality of life. Yet when people are in the shape Ms. Schiavo is, she has no alternative but starving to death.
Would we take a man on death row, throw him in a cell and deprive him of food and water until he died? Too inhumane? Yet that's how we treat humans with no criminal past.
I worked many years in the hospice field as an office worker. I heard stories of many good hearted nurses who would give more morphine than recommended to a dying patient just to ease the suffering and let the person go on. I pray when my time comes, one of those angels will be caring for me and let me go too. Now I don't mean angels of death who go through hospitals killing people. Hospice patients are going to die with no intervention. But I don't want to see anyone die in pain when it can be prevented. Morphine dulls the pain. Enough morphine also stops the heart. There's a fine line between them. Some people straddle that line. Some people cross it when it's a choice of living a few more days in pain, or going now. That's humane, folks. Terri Schiavo would love to have a few morphine patches applied so she could ease on out of this world. And like any common criminal, she deserves better than she's getting. We all do.