"I have been told daily to please end his suffering by ‘unplugging’ him and denying him kidney dialysis. It is the ‘only solution’ the ‘right thing to do’."

A good friend recently made a comment to me about "his despair" over the Terri Schiavo euthanasia test case. His comment brought to mind MY Despair, when seven years ago my husband was in a "true comatose state."

You are probably aware of the tragic case of Terri Schiavo. Terri, a Floridian, is disabled and has brain damage since being found on the floor of her home thirteen years ago. Her husband wants her to "die with dignity." Erroneous stories have been spread across headlines, and widely reported on newscasts everywhere saying Terri is "in a coma", "a persistent vegetative state", or "terminally ill." The myth has been propagated that this is just a "religious issue." The truth is that Terri’s religious rights have been criminally denied. She was even denied having her family with her and her Priest could not give her the Sacraments of her faith.

Seven years ago my husband and I were a normal middle aged couple. He needed a hernia repair because in 1990 a drunk driver crossed the median and hit his small pick-up truck head on. The brutal wreck left him almost scalped, and it required 257 stitches to re-attach his scalp. He was trapped inside the truck for 3 hours, waiting to be freed by the "Jaws of Life."

Two years later after fourteen operations to save his badly injured leg it had to be amputated due to gangrene. For those two years he endured total body casts, operations, and finally amputation, followed by three years of endless painful therapy learning to wear a prosthesis, and cope with the new reality of now being labeled "handicapped."

A life-time of working since the age of 8 as a paper boy, to holding down three jobs to raise a family, and a mid-life career change from manager to being a self owner-operator of a semi-tractor truck for 10 years made this a traumatic adjustment. The Police, Firefighters, and Doctors all said they didn’t know how he even survived the wreck! We did! - God wasn’t through with him yet!

While going back and forth to Boston, Pa. For therapy and prosthesis work he encountered many people who wouldn’t try to make the transition from wheelchair to prosthesis. Well, my husband doesn’t know the meaning of "no, can’t or never." By his kindness, humor and gentle nature he helped dozens of amputees have the faith and courage to try and succeed at working and living again. To this day we still receive Christmas cards and letters from friends he touched while learning himself how to cope and succeed.

In 1997 the hernia, received in the wreck, was angry and needed to be removed, so he went in for an over-night stay to have it repaired. We did not know that his Doctor was on probation at the time for alcohol and substance abuse. Physicians do not have to disclose this information, and at the time over 200 Doctors in Kentucky alone were being allowed to practice under a law which protected them. The Doctor didn’t fix the hernia properly, but did perforate my husband's intestine without noticing it and sewed him up.

After five days of horrendous fever, projectile vomiting, and infection she removed the staples in his stomach and he lay with an open wound and five deadly infections ravaging his body. In an attempt to save his live she operated again, causing more damage. He continued to hover near death. In a third desperate attempt to save his life she operated again because his intestines had ruptured where they were protruding from the open wound. She came out of surgery and told me she needed me to "be strong for her," because he was in a coma and he was going to die.

While battling for his life, a respirator breathing for him (for 5 months), five infections, kidney failure, heart failure and too many complications to name, the good doctor gave him a medication he proved allergic to a second time, leaving him barely able to hear.

I have a great devotion to Our Lady. I had been desperately praying to her under her title of Our lady of Fatima.

By now three months have passed, and I had been told daily to please "end his suffering" by "unplugging" him and denying kidney dialysis. It is the "only solution" the "right thing to do". Every single specialist down to one insisted on "pulling the plug." Daily I said to them, "if God wants to unplug him he will. God doesn’t read Medical records.

During these weeks and months standing by his bedside, God was accomplishing a work in me that I was unaware of at the time. You would have to have known me back then, a weak, wishy-washy, painfully shy and an "afraid of my own shadow" mouse. God was re-molding me into a lion, not afraid to stand up to the Doctors, fire them, hire them, get power of attorney and fight for my husband’s rights. My own children couldn’t believe their eyes!

I would stay at the hospital till 3 a.m., go home, shower, dress, go to sleep for a couple of hours in my clean clothes, then be back at his side by 5:30 or 6 a.m. It seemed so odd to me at first that just when I was begging God to give me strength, thinking I couldn’t face another moment, the Priest of our Parish would come walking towards me! It was always at my darkest moments, the Holy Spirit, would send him to my side. He would just smile and chuckle and say "someone" told him to come.

Other times I would have a strange feeling of being "lifted above myself in spirit," I didn’t realize at first that this was me, feeling the prayers of others and being spiritually lifted up. I was talking to a friend one night and told her that two nights before I had felt this phenomenon and she said "was it at 8p.m. Sunday night" and I said "yes." She then told me that at Choir practice everyone was in a circle holding hands and praying for my husband. Then I knew that their prayers were giving me the grace to endure. That same woman would leave "care packages" of food for me on my back steps, so that when I came home at 3 a.m. I would find a hot bowl of soup or a salad.

Then came the day my husband "awoke" from the coma. The nun who faithfully visited me every evening at 6 p.m. to pray for us asked me if I would like her to watch my husband while I went to the Chapel. I said "no, not now" but she insisted telling me gently, "Don’t you know what today is dear? It’s the feast of Our Lady of Fatima." With all the days, running into one continuous blur, I had forgotten. But Our Lady had not forgotten.

My husband’s right eye was half open, but he wasn’t responsive. He was paralyzed, and the doctors said to me. "See, we tried to tell you, if he survived, he would be A VEGETABLE, now find a nursing home for him."

Well, he had a huge open wound, was paralyzed, on a respirator, had five infections, had a stroke while he was in the coma, was nearly deaf, and had dozens of deep-vein blood clots, a damaged heart, kidney and liver to mention some of the things he had to overcome. He had last rights 3 times. God (and Our Lady) saw him through rehab, learning to walk, talk again, and write but he was still bed-bound. When he came home he was on tube-feeding and 24 hour care. God and his mother continued to guide me, give me strength and heal my husband.

Christmas time came and we were struggling to keep afloat financially. The Doctors' and hospital bills had reached over 2 million dollars for his 6 month hospital and rehab stay. Our car had been repossessed and I had to quit my job and dissolve my 40lK to care for my husband. Several years earlier I had been in the core group to add an outreach ministry to our parish. That year God gave me the grace of humility as we were on the receiving end of that ministry.

A few months later he developed throat cancer. As weak and ravaged as his body was they said he would never make it through a surgery, so they opted for radiation. For 3 long months we traveled every morning at 6 a.m. to the Cancer Center of his treatments. There was a young girl there the first week, she was only 12, and too afraid to go into the radiation room alone (no one is allowed in). My husband simply made her his little girl and soon they were allowed to go in at the same time and they let them see each other in rooms side by side so she wouldn’t be afraid. God again used Ron as an instrument of peace, healing and love. They are both now 5 years in remission.

When my husband was able to go out in a wheelchair my brother decided we would visit St. Martin of Tours for Christmas Eve Midnight Mass to give thanksgiving to God and Our Lady at the church where our Father had been baptized in 1898. It was cold and snowy and we almost didn’t get my husband & his wheelchair up the ramp into the Church. Once inside we all felt as if we were in Heaven itself. We knew we had been called to this place.

The next Sunday my husband said he wanted to go back to St. Martins with me. So we loaded up the wheelchair and away we went. After a few more Sundays he decided he would try to use a walker so it would be easier on me. You guessed it, before a year was up he was using a walker and now sometimes uses nothing at all.

Last year he became very ill again and was diagnosed as having a leaking valve in his heart, a completely blocked artery and, we were told, the bottom half of his heart wasn’t pumping at all. Fr. Crotty came to visit my husband on the day of surgery. He prayed over him and laid hands on him and held relics of his order on my husband’s heart. Fr. Crotty’s face looked as if he were not of this earth and was in total communion with God. It was a sight I will never forget. When my husband went down for the final procedure before the surgery, the blockage was gone, and the bottom part of the heart was pumping. What showed up was just a small blockage in an unimportant artery.

A couple of months ago his intestine ruptured again. For six years we had been told that he would never survive surgery. Now we were facing life-threatening surgery or imminent death. Fr. Cousins came to the hospital to pray with us and we gave everything over to Mary and her Son. My husband survived the 11-hour surgery and the open wound is closed after six years. Many Doctors who were non-believers now believe in God and his mercy. The mercy of Jesus is my constant comfort, my source of strength. The graces he gives are countless. Maybe there are countless lessons in love and fountains of Mercy flowing from Terri Shiavo. She has the right to stay alive until God calls her home, not when men (or one man) decide.

I pray that my husband’s story will be a witness for souls to trust in god’s endless Divine Mercy.

PRAYER:
Eternal God, in whom mercy is endless, and the treasury of compassion inexhaustible, look kindly upon us, that in difficult moments, we might not despair, nor become despondent, but with great confidence, submit ourselves to your holy will, which is love and Mercy itself. Amen