NO-FI "MAGAZINE"
presents

THE LAST DAYS OF TERRI SHIAVO
Well I was a little upset that People Magazine scooped us on this one, but yes they DID do a story in their latest issue as of this writing on Terri Shiavo and her final days of physical life before she passed away after having her feeding tube removed from her "vegetative" body two weeks prior. Before that - this story, which is all you heard about until the Pope died, started 15 years ago when Terri suffered from a heart attack caused by a potasium imbalance brought on by her bulemia. Possibly as far as 10 years ago her cerebral cortex had liquified and was replaced by spinal fluid. Still, despite all scientific knowledge, mercy, and logic, her parents were brave enough to know in their hearts that Terri was more than merely a brain and soul... She was a body too. Going by the "One-Out-Of-Three Aint bad" psalm found in the bible where Abel was kept alive with food mulch shoved down his throat, her parents decided that it would be better to let her lay in bed forever with no realistic hope of any kind of improvement in her condition. Her husband stupidly wanted to honor Terri's wish that she would not be kept alive with feeding tubes or electronic equipment if she ever end up in a state like that. So Jeb Bush made speeches to make himelf look good to the Christian Right and President George Bush even realized that THIS was an issue to fly to Washington during one of his many vacations to sign a bill JUST FOR TERRI (which is illegal by the way, but anyone knows this is a much more important issue than finding his business partner's brother Osama Bin Laden).

I believe pictures speak for themselves. Now we don't actually have any pictures of Terri's body during those final two weeks when her body was deprived of nutrients so that it could find the peace that her brain had already succomed to many years earlier, but we have set up this pretty scientific simulation so you could see what a typical two weeks (and a day) of hanging out with Terri could be like. Each picture repesents a day in the life of Terri









So there you have it. Actually if these were actual pictures from her final two weeks her body would show the effects of lack of food and water, but what you see above was typical of most of the last 15 years of her life every day, every hour, every minute. Even the Pope had the chance to be hooked up to machines and chose not to do it. Look at what he could have missed out on...and in his case, he'd probably be able to think about the situation he was in. His loss I guess.

Anyway, don't send me hate mail or death threats (as Terri's husband Michael Shiavo and several judges who saw her case, most of whom were consevative and appointed by George W. Bush and his father have actually gotten from many peple who side themselves with the "Right To Life" cause). I feel horrible for both Michael AND her parents. I don't know what it is like to have to let go of a child or even he shell of a child or wife and I hope to never have to. So what if Terri Shiavo was used as a poltical weapon of mass distraction to keep our eyes and ear from news out of Iraq or on Tom Delay's ethics violations in Texas. I think in the end we can all agree that People Magazine sucks...and sucks really really hard.



Chris Beyond