MY Vast Right Wing Conspiracy

Update on Andrea Clarke

• Posted by Beth on April 25th, 2006 filed in General, Pro-Life    

Andrea Clarke’s sister “Th1onein” (Melanie) posted an update at the DU, which I’m posting in its entirety:

Imagine that you are sick and so you make sure that you are covered by really good health insurance. Your everyday life is a regimen of taking your medications, taking care of your young son, and keeping your appointements with your doctor. You’re not real sophisticated about health insurance, but you know that your health has never been good, because of your heart, so you spend what little extra you’ve got on supplemental insurance policies, because you really need to be sure that, if you get sicker, you’ve got the coverage to take care of yourself. After all, you’re alone in the world, just you and your young son.

So…you do get sick. You have to go into the hospital. The news is not good: Your heart has some damaged valves which have to be repaired and replaced and you have almost no chance of surviving the surgery. But, if you don’t undergo the surgery, you have no chance at all of surviving. And, you’ve got insurance. You’ve got good doctors.

What would you do? You would probably go with the best odds, even though those odds are not good at all. You’d have the surgery. You’ve got the insurance and you’ve got the doctors. You, quite literally, have to put your life in their hands. You trust them.

So…you undergo the surgery. And, miraculously, you survive. Your insurance is still in force. You’ve got good doctors. Everything is rosy.

Then, you get an infection. Because of the infection, you develop complications. You have to go on some medications that cause other problems. You get a bedsore. You get more complications. In the meantime, the insurance costs are rising. The doctors are becoming less optimistic about your chances.

You’re fighting for your life. But the insurance company is still paying and getting mean about it. They start pressuring the hospital, which starts pressuring the doctor. The doctor had a patient who he could pull from the arms of death with surgery and he almost did it, but then these complications occurred. Things are not looking that rosy anymore. Pressure is mounting from the insurance company.

The doctor, caving to pressure from the hospital, which caved in to pressure from the insurance company, finally gets with the family to ask them for permission to pull the plug. But the family talked to you and you didn’t want to give up the fight.

The doctor convenes a meeting with other doctors and they decide to medicate you into unconsciousness so that you can’t say what you want anymore. Once they do that, they have another meeting, with other doctors and make the decision that they can unplug you, with or without your or your family’s permission.

These people, the insurance company that you gave your money to, in the expectation that they would pay for your medical bills; the doctor, who you trusted in and believed in, to have your best interests at heart–these are the people who are bringing about your death, just when you are fighting for your life the hardest you’ve ever had to fight.

Isn’t that one heck of a deal, guys? These are the people whose hands you put your life into and they are going to kill you. That’s the Texas Futile Care Law. And my sister is going to die because of it.

Melanie

You know, that Futile Care Law may have sounded like a good idea in theory at the time to the “ethicists” who helped craft it, but it sure as hell hasn’t been good in REAL LIFE.

As far as the current status goes, Melanie writes:

We have an attorney who is working very hard for my sister. I don’t know if she will be successful or not, because others in her shoes have not been. The courts tend to side with the big corporations in these cases. The law is the law, is what they say.

The Right to Life people are very good at this. They know how to fight this, and they are wonderful. But there is only so much that they can do. These people were called late Good Friday, when we got the notice that the hospital was going to convene the Ethics Committee, to decide our sister’s fate. They immediately went into action. The attorney, Jerri Ward, was up until two and three in the morning working on this. She has been killing herself on this case.
These are good people. They could care less whether we’re Democrats or Republicans; whether we love or hate George W. Bush; they fight for life. Period.

But, as I said, there is only so much they can do. The law is the law.

I don’t know what we’re going to do if they kill my sister. I guess we will go to the hospital and kiss her and hug her and tell her that we love her until she draws her last breath.

At that point, God help them all, because I’m going to take names and I will never, ever, let them forget what they did to my sister.
Melanie

This law has to be changed.

Previously:
Help Save Andrea Clark

See also:
Right Wing News, who reports that WND has now picked up the story.
Wesley J. Smith, an expert in the bioethics madness.
Hyscience, who’s all over this:

Urgent help is needed from bloggers and blog readers (contact hospital and redistribute this story through your email lists). Please, immediately contact the hospital by telephone and email, and advise them of your horror that a faith-based hospital that supposedly respects life would act so irresponsibly as to put dollars before a patients life, etc…. :

St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, 6720 Bertner Ave., Houston, TX 77030
Main hospital telephone number - 832-355-1000
Email (more to be updated later)

UPDATE: Rightwingsparkle has spoken to Andrea Clarke’s other sister, and has a post up at the new blog at the Houston Chronicle, TexasSparkle.

Right Wing News has updated today’s Andrea post, and says that the Schindler family has joined the fight!

Tags: Andrea Clarke, Andrea Clark, Texas, Futile Care Law, futile care, right to life