When I named my health care proxy, I gave her a typed up version of guidelines for my care should I become severely disabled--things like letting her know that prayers are appreciated (but NOT rosaries recited in a dull, dead monotone), and that Mozart is always a good choice for ambient sound... I thought that a feeding tube was a really invasive thing, and didn't really want that. (That was before the Vatican determined that feeding tubes are not extraordinary; it had seemed so to me before, but even the papers now are demonstrating that it is not as complicated as I had thought.) What I am saying is that I have had to do a lot of thinking about this matter lately. The report that Terri made sounds like "AAAH WAAAH" when the lawyer said she needed to say "I want to live" has really gotten me thinking more and more about the mystery of our mind/brain connection.
The doctors in general are saying that the brain tests show no activity in the areas of the cerebral cortex associated with what we call "mental" activity; that the action is all in the brain stem.... But what if the "AAAH WAAAH" is the result of the mind (which is, after all, a dimension of the soul)amazingly and magnificently using the brain stem, which is all it now has access to? I mean, thinking does not happen IN the brain, but WITH the brain. The studies Dr. Penfied did in the 50's demonstrated the distinction between the person, who in some ways was "remote" from the brain, and the action that was provoked by an electrode to the brain of a conscious patient. So could we be experiencing the way the mind, the soul, the person, is "breaking through" as best as can be with an instrument that is not apt for the task at hand, a task (communicating) that requires higher brain function, but that in this case is being attempted with whatever function is available?
The question of the mind/body connection may be critical here. It is certainly requiring me to rewrite some of the directives I set down for my own care.
Sunday, March 27, 2005
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Hi Sr Anne,
That's a very good observation about the possibility of the soul using the brain stem. I hadn't thought of that but it would make sense. After all, the soul is not the brain, although it depends on the functioning of the brain to manifest its workings through the body.
Also, in reading about Terri's case, there are so many unanswered questions about her real capacities. Her parents have gotten testimony from over 30 doctors, including 15 neurologists, who say she's not PVS but in a minimally conscious state. Her husband hasn't allowed her to even have an MRI, and without that, it's very difficult if not impossible to make an accurate diagnosis of PVS.
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