Who will live the longest: Terri Schiavo or Pope John Paul II?
That’s the question now before the public. The competition is heating up with the Pope receiving his very own feeding tube and a federal appeals court agrees today to consider an emergency motion requesting a new hearing on whether to reconnect Terri’s.
Certainly Terri has youth on her side but the Pope has the best medical care the Vatican can buy and Terri’s been without nutrition for 12 days now. If her tube is reinserted Terri may hang on indefinitely. She’s certainly proved she has staying power.
While it’s difficult to know who is more brain dead at this point, I predict Terri will muster her meager gray matter and maintain her fragile grasp on life. The Pope on the other hand will certainly decline rapidly. Spare no pity for him though; he’s old and used up and can easily be replaced. Terri, on the other hand, is a legislative darling: Her right to life is written into her own personal law. She would be a fool to abandon it and Terri, with her reasoning power equal to that of a ficus, is certainly no fool.
Props to the Pope for finally realizing the advantage of a feeding tube, though, and he’s tight with the guy who dispenses miracles. I just might be betting on the wrong vegetable.
(If you think the Schiavo story is worn out already, just wait till she gets the tube reinserted. Oy Veh!)
Brock, your taste in shirts should have warned me.
You are sick!