Doggedly searching for the crux of the biscuit.
...I do not think it means what you think it means.
Emilio is 17 months old and has a rare genetic disorder that's ravaging his central nervous system. He cannot see, speak, or eat. A ventilator breathes for him in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit at Austin Children's Hospital, where he's been since December. Without the ventilator, Emilio would die within hours.
The hospital contends that keeping Emilio alive on a ventilator is painful for the toddler and useless against his illness -- Leigh's disease, a rare degenerative disorder that has no cure. Under Texas law, Children's has the right to withdraw life support if medical experts deem it medically inappropriate.
Emilio's mother, Catarina Gonzales, on the other hand, is fighting to keep her son on the ventilator, allowing him to die "naturally, the way God intended."
Um, what?
Sad story. So is this.
That first story has been in the news constantly here in Austin, and everytime she says that "the way God intended" line, I cringe. It's terribly terribly sad, and I'm sure she's debilitated with grief, but she really really needs to let her child go on into the heavenly afterlife she apparently believes in..
Posted by: M/tch M/lls at April 27, 2007 07:51 AMThe third best part of that second story:
So if you are looking to muster a lot of sympathy, this is an uphill battle. Skateboard was a reckless, homeless drinker who, after any number of close calls, finally got run over. Frankly, he was probably living on borrowed time. So it goes.
The second best part of that second story:
"Skateboard is gone!" Thomas [Skateboard's wife] wailed. "I ain't never forget this day."
The best part of that second story:
That Skateboard was married.
What's most sickening in that second story is the placid acceptance of large amounts of long-term homelessness, as if it were perfectly okay that Skateboard had to sleep on a sidewalk or that street people are commonly seen "chattering to unseen companions" (and not getting treated for obvious mental illness). Just a routine human interest story, like they were covering the death of somebody's beloved family pet.
Posted by: Doctor Slack at April 27, 2007 09:16 AMI am not reading the story.
Not being aware of the details, it might be one of two: the kid is like someone in an iron lung from the days of polio, and still has a fighting spirit with a will to live. In which case it would be inhumane to not let him fight longer. The people who want to see him dead are wicked.
Or on the other hand, perhaps he never had a chance, has no will to live, has no mind to speak up, and just is hooked up to tubes that keep his grey-ish colored skin from reaching room temperature and decomposing. In which case, his parents are wanton and cruel, and in total denial, and do not understand the basic concept that all who are born must die someday.
Either way, a sad story, and my sadness quotient fills up a little more easily these days...so no read today.