A few weeks ago, in my post "
Death....and the Left", I said this:
How far will Schindler v. Schiavo go in allowing guardians and the government in terminating the lives of disabled patients? Although evidence was presented in court by numerous doctors testifying through affidavits that she was not legally classified as being in a persistent vegetative state and that it was possible for her condition to improve, the order to starve her to death went through anyway. The time where judges won't have to consider PVS for a death order to stand is coming sooner rather than later.
Well, it looks like that scenario did indeed came sooner rather than later.
The LaGrange (Ga) Daily News is reporting on another story where a family is desperately trying to save a 81-year old woman's life after she had her feeding tube taken out.
According to her nephew, Kenneth Mullinax, Mae Magourik hasn't eaten or received fluids since March 28th, and the hospice is keeping her sedated on morphine and ativan.
There's a problem, however (from
World Net Daily):
According to Mullinax, his aunt's local cardiologist in LaGrange, Dr. James Brennan, and Dr. Raed Agel, a highly acclaimed cardiologist at the nationally renowned University of Alabama-Birmingham Medical Center, determined that her aortic dissection is contained and not life-threatening at the moment.
Mullinax also states that Gaddy did not hold power of attorney, a fact he learned from the hospice's in-house legal counsel, Carol Todd
So, Magourik is not terminally ill, and she isn't in a persistent vegetative state, as Schiavo was said to be in. Both World Net Daily and the LaGrange Daily News reports that she does have a living will, that specificially states she can only be "withheld of norishment if she is in a coma or a persistent vegetative state". WND reports she does not suffer from demetia or any other mental condition either.
The person trying to end Magourik's life is her granddaughter, Beth Gaddy, who had been taking care of her for 10 years. When Magourik suffered the aorta dissection, she was treated at LaGrange Hospital. Days later, Gaddy told hospital officials she had power of attorney, and released Magourik from the hospital and admitted her to Hospice-LaGrange.
GHPCO is a committed member and supporter of the Georgia Collaborative to Improve End of Life Care, a partnership of providers, academics, business leaders and community members that has worked together for the past 5 years to improve end of life care in Georgia. The accomplishments of the Collaborative include community education through Georgia Health Decisions' CRITICAL Conditions program; support of physician, nurse and allied health provider end of life education and training; outreach to community organizations; research on current practices and the Emmy award-winning documentary Final Choices: Changing a Culture.
In other words, this is a place to drop your relatives off to die. And this is precisely why I would never want to be placed in one of those rest homes or hospices.
My mom is an assistance living aid, and recently helped one of her patients move back from North Carolina to California. However, the family was told to leave the patient's husband there, because they felt he wasn't capable of making the trip. My mom opposed it, and advised them to make arrangements to take her husband anyway. Why? Because with no family in NC and no one to check up on him, he's just sitting there waiting to die.
I'm doing some research into Wiggins myself as I create this post, and
this is what I found:
Hospice LaGrange was the brainchild of Wiggin's daughter, an architect student, and Ely Calloway. A native of LaGrange, Calloway was looking for a memorial to his parents and sister. Wiggins suggested a hospice, and the memorial committee showed its approval with a $1.5 million donation. The West Georgia Health System chipped in with a $1.5 million match; and land was donated by the Fuller E. Calloway Foundation. "Everything just came together," says Wiggins.
But it all came together because the groundwork had been done. Under the auspices of the West Georgia Health System, the LaGrange Hospice started to serve dying people in their homes in 1982, with Cathy Wiggins as director. The new residential unit grew out of that experience.
So yeah; it's a death ward.
I found this quite interesting as well:
And maybe best of all, people don't have to be rich to die there. Medicaid and Medicare pay for acute and respite care. The $95 daily room and board fee is subject to a sliding scale, with a minimum charge of $5 for those who qualify. "We never turn anyone away based on their ability to pay," says Wiggins. "That means we do a lot of fund-raising."
So, if Gaddy was coming out of pocket, she probably wasn't paying much.
Now here's the dirty part; Gaddy found out that she only had power of attorney of Margourik's
finances, not custodial arrangements. However, LaGrange Hospital transferred Margouik to LaGrange Hospice anyway. The hospice's legal counsel informed Mullinax that his wife, Ruth and Margouik's brother, A.B. McLeod, were the custodians since they were next-of-kin. But when they travelled to Georgia to make travel arrangements to have her sent to Alabama, Gaddy went down to the county courthouse, received an emergency guardianship for the weekend, and had her feeding tube taken out that same day. Only the court can order for her tube to be reinserted.
Based on the evidence given, I'm sure Margourik has been declared a ward of the court. If she has, what explanation has the judge given to not place the tube back in? After all the hoopla over the Schiavo case and the fact that she has a living will, you'd think the judge would err on the side of caution.
Hopefully I'll have some more information on this over the weekend.
