I have been waiting, and thinking and pondering, waitiung to make sense of the proximate CAUSE of Terri Schaivo's heart attack which plunged her into this vegetative state: bulemia. Here is a heartfelt analysis that gets right to the guts of the situation. Bulimia is often about control, an effort to excape controlling parents:

It is reported that this "simple girl with ordinary dreams" lost 100 pounds shortly after her high school graduation. It is further reported that she did this by means of bulemic vomiting (estimate: how many times would a girl have to vomit to lose 100 pounds? Where were her loving parents then? Was treatment attempted?). Those who work with eating-disordered patients are not unfamiliar with family dynamics of control. What is unusual about the Terri Schiavo case, among that of other bulemics, is that the patient's parents are being assisted in their control war by the United States Congress, the President of the United States, the Governor of Florida, the Religious Right, talk radio, the media, praying crowds outside Schavio's hospice, and just about everyone but the cavalry and the Marines. As for poor Terri, she no longer controls anything, and her tragic situation is traced to the bulemia. So now we have her father, denying both his daughter's self-starving history and its terrible outcome (and you can just bet he would also deny the family dynamics), while her mother cries "Please help my little girl! She is starving to death!" and the nation weeps for the poor parents. It seems that the whole "Terri Schiavo story" has ironies and convolutions worthy of Shakespeare, but I doubt they will ever really be a part of the inevitable coming made-for-TV movie. We would rather believe pretty fictions than search for ugly truths.




washingtonpost.com Talk #2995.1