essaysfromtheedge

The MRI From Hell

OK.

All we have been hearing the past few days is that Terri Schiavo has NEVER undergone an MRI on her brain.

Never.

Rush is saying it, Ann Coulter is saying it, Savage, Hannity, Beck, tons and tons of "conservative" websites (just do a Google for "Schiavo MRI" and you'll see what I mean)....

Yet, two nights ago, on the NBC Evening News, there was a picture of Terri's MRI compared with the MRI of a cognizant person.

Was I dreaming?

Maybe, but if you really dig through the Google junk, you'll find a reference to this webpage:

Medical Observations Show Schiavo Cognitive, Alert.

This purports to be "[the actual medical] chart [that] outlines the progress of Terri Schindler-Schiavo from February 25, 1990 through December 2003 as noted by healthcare professionals."

The actual medical chart.

Click on it. Now, do a page search for "MRI".

Here's what you'll find:

"7/24/1990

"MRI Report Dr. Pinkston

"Profound atrophy w/ very atrophic appearing cortex. Mild white matter disease, anoxic/hpoxic injury"

So, there was an MRI done of Terri Schiavo's brain. And a Dr. Pinkston did a report based on this MRI. Why, then, is the conservative media so rabid on insisting there was NO MRI?

Their argument concerns me, because uninformed and passionate people can come away from it with the false assumption that Mrs. Schiavo has never had any imaging done on her brain. This is not true, as the following link will attest:

Analyzing Terri Schiavo's brain.

This is the picture of a CT Scan done on Terri in 2002. The damage is clearly shown, and explained.



After hearing about this case ad nauseum, I've come to the inescapable conclusion that the conservative media is being manipulated by the Schindler family. They're pawns in this case, and the Schindler's are playing them like virtuosos.

Why does this strike me so?

The first inkling was the release of that audio recording purporting to be Terri right after the feeding tube was removed last Friday. Remember? Her Daddy saying "Hi, sweety", and Terri moaning....

Glenn Beck devoted most of the first hour of his show on Friday, March 18 to this tape, complaining bitterly that what we were hearing was Terri in pain, Terri fighting for her life, Terri starving to death.

Turns out the tape is a year old. The Schindler lawyer admitted as much to Sean Hannity on Sean's Monday show, March 21.

So Beck was had. As were all the other conservative media who played that tape over the weekend.

Then there was the Schindler lawyer who went on Hannity on Friday, March 18. She claimed to have asked Terri to just tell her she wanted to live, "then it would all be over." Terri allegedly said, "I waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....."

That's it.

But both this lawyer and Hannity interpreted this as Terri saying she wanted to live! How did they get that? Maybe Michael Schiavo is right, maybe Terri really wants to die. Maybe she was saying "I waaant to die!"

"I waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...." isn't enough to decide either way.

Then there's the issue of the money. The Schindler family has been painting Michael as a money-grubber, who is only after Terri's settlement cash, which he is entitled only after she dies. I even bought that one, and wrote about it last week.

My apologies to Michael Schiavo. NBC News mentioned the money last night. They said that the Schiavos got $1 million in a medical settlement. $700,000 went to Terri, $300,000 to Michael.

But the figure that struck me is this: NBC claimed that only $40,000 of the $1 million remains!

So, why hasn't Michael given up and just handed custody over to the Schindlers? There's no money in it for him now.

Then there's the "coming out" of the nurses. They claim they are doing it on their own. But, my suspicions, given everything else that's been happening, lead me to believe the Schindlers are behind this.

The final straw was Mrs. Schindler, begging on national TV: "Someone please do something to save my daughter!"

How gut-wrenching. How sad.

And the conservative media lapped it up like puppies.

Now, I want to reiterate here what I wrote last week: I don't want to see Terri die. Not at all. It would have been best if Michael had just divorced Terri and handed custody over to the Schindlers. We never even would have heard about this case; it would have remained what it always was: a quiet issue between two families over the tragic injury to an adored wife and beloved daughter.

But, thanks to lies about MRIs, audio tapes, and the law, the Schindlers have shoved this baby right down our throats.

And we just opened up and swallowed.



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posted by Tomás @ 3/24/2005 02:04:00 PM