Mae Magouirk Update - The Contrarian Edition Version 2 :: BlogsforTerri

This week, I faced some technical difficulties (i.e., Google's usually wonderful system wouldn't allow me to do anything blogwise for two full days, zilch, nada), which wouldn't have been either here or there, except that a glance at the Blogs For Terri website showed that there was another person in danger of being dehydrated to death - and this despite having legal protections in place. By the time I was up and running again and ready to lend my voice to the emergency efforts, the reports from various quarters were so conflicting that I didn't know quite where to start or what to believe. And then the lady got rescued - pulled out of hospice and taken to a hospital. Ah, blessed breathing room.

Today things seem to be starting to sort themselves out nicely. To their credit, the folks at Blogs for Terri are opening up their space to comments by the judge and to both sides of the family in this case. It is looking more and more like the judge thought he'd assured that removing food and water was not an option (which means he got as blindsided as everyone else), and it also looks more and more as though the guardian got temporarily outmaneuvered by doctors who thought Grandma ought to get along a little faster in her dying (which would mean that she got blindsided, too).

Blogs for Terri has background on all of this, and links to other sites that fought for this one elderly woman's life. And, as I said, most people involved in this rush rescue are being careful to give the benefit of the doubt to both the judge and the guardian in this case. Now that Mae Magouirk has been moved to safety, we have the luxury of sitting back, taking a deep breath, and trying to figure out how she got placed in harm's way in the first place.

The old saying "Live and learn" has a new twist these days, it seems like.

Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself or ahead of reality here (call it wishful thinking, perhaps), but I'm starting to wonder if something fundamental is happening here. Is what happened to Terri Schiavo (may she rest in peace) going to result in something good? I am thinking about John Walsh here, and what happened after his son Adam was murdered. That one horrible, inexcusable murder of an innocent little boy has irretrievably altered the world, I think. Adam's father responded to his family's cruel loss by setting about fixing shortcomings in law enforcement and by promoting victims' rights. Whoever it was who killed Adam stole a sweet kid from his family and from his own future, but they also unleashed something. It is much harder these days to be a fugitive. It is less likely, also, that cold cases will just sit there. Murderers have fewer places to run. John Walsh and his America's Most Wanted programs see to that. Even internationally, things have changed, as other countries have picked up on the success of America's Most Wanted and have built on it.

I don't know. It's early days yet. But it feels like something similar is happening in the shadowy land of hospice care, where mercy is sometimes replaced with killing. Here we had a case where family members saw an elderly and ill, but not dying, loved one strangely sent to a hospice instead of to a nursing home, and as far as they could tell she was slated for a cruel death - and they had somewhere to go. They cried for help, and help rained down from the four corners of the world. Total strangers pleaded that the hospice not be allowed to kill a specific somebody, and that specific somebody is now out of the hospice.

How does the old song go? Something's happening here, What it is ain't exactly clear...

I'm proud of the people who saw an emergency and responded to it. I'm glad we have people on standby in the blogosphere, ready, willing, and able to drop whatever else they might be doing to help total strangers, if they can. Thank goodness they, and certain news organizations (World Net Daily, for example), are making a point of looking out for helpless people.

This is not to say that I like all the blogs that are on the Blogs For Terri blogroll. At least twice a week I vow I'm going to take the blogroll off my site, because one or another blogger on the list has, uhm, caused me much embarrassment, I guess you could say. But it is an old truth that you cannot pick either your enemies or your allies, but your allies least of all. And man, what a difference these allies, even the very odd ones, seem to be making. A family thought their beloved grandmother/aunt/sister was going to be killed. And they had somewhere their screams were heard and heeded in time to make a difference. Wow.

I expect things won't sail smoothly on this effort. Scam artists and crooks and weirdos will undoubtedly try to mess things up. (Any Blogs for Terri affiliate who hasn't been attacked, please raise your lonely hand. I'm a little guy, and I got attacked, more than once actually. What is it with these people, anyway?) People will lie, and people will be mistaken, and so sometimes we'll have to apologize or regroup, at a guess. But, in the end, it's worth the struggle, isn't it? Disabled people need help, and as far as I can see, there's no excuse for giving up.

P.S. In case you're unfamiliar with John Walsh and his crusade for justice, http://amw.com/about_amw/john_walsh.cfm gives a brief overview. I don't like everything he does, either, but wow, what a force for good he's been overall.