Thirst

(Updated below) Historian Nathaniel Philbrick meticulously researched the experience of extreme water deprivation for his book In the Heart of the Sea, the true story of shipwrecked whalers, many of whom died of thirst:

In 1906, W.J. McGee, Director of the St. Louis Public museum, published one of the most detailed and graphic descriptions of the ravages of extreme dehydration ever recorded. McGee's account was based on the experiences of Pablo Valencia, a forty-year-old sailor-turned-prospector, who survived almost seven days in the Arizona desert without water....

Saliva becomes thick and foul-tasting; the tongue clings irritatingly to the teeth and the roof of the mouth .... A lump seems to form in the throat ... severe pain is felt in the head and neck. The face feels full due to the shrinking of the skin. Hearing is affected, and many people begin to hallucinate... [then come] the agonies of a mouth that has ceased to generate saliva. The tongue hardens into what McGee describes as "a senseless weight, swinging on the still-soft root and striking foreignly against the teeth." Speech becomes impossible, although sufferers have been known to moan and bellow.

Next is the "blood sweats" phase, involving "a progressive mummification of the initially living body." The tongue swells to such proportions that it squeezes past the jaws. The eyelids crack and the eyeballs begin to weep tears of blood. The throat is so swollen that breathing becomes difficult, creating an incongruous yet terrifying
sense of drowning.

Finally ... there is living death, the state into which Pablo Valencia had entered when McGee discovered him on a desert trail, crawling on his hands and knees: "His lips had disappeared as if amputated, leaving low edges of blackened tissue; his teeth and gums projected like those of a skinned animal, but the flesh was black and dry as a hank of jerky; his nose was withered and shrunken to half its length, and the nostril-lining showing black; his eyes were set in a winkless stare, with surrounding skin so contracted as to expose the conjunctiva, itself as black as the gums...; his skin [had] generally turned a ghastly purplish yet ashen gray, with great livid blotches and streaks; his lower legs and feet ... were torn and scratched by contact with thorns and sharp rocks, yet even the freshest cuts were so many scratches in dry leather, without trace of blood" (Philbrick, 126-128).

Let's set aside the hunger issue, since that's not what's going to kill Terri Schiavo. If someone doesn't find a way to cut through the sanctimonious red tape and get water to her, she'll die of thirst. Why the graphic description? An LA Times story purports to reveal how positively enjoyable it is to die of hunger and thirst. It's true that the body kicks into a fast mode after a day or two without food. It's also true that people in the last stages of severe illnesses like cancer lose their appetite and may die most easily by heeding their body's strange distaste for food or water.

But this isn't Terri Schiavo's situation. Her body was plump and healthy, not dying. Her brain is injured, yes, but there's heated debate about just how much she is aware of, how much she is sensing. Considerable evidence suggests she may be sensing a great deal. Her husband, Michael Schiavo, blocked Terri's doctors from performing the very tests that could resolve that controversy. Meanwhile, many in the mainstream media seem intent on blocking our understanding of just what it means to die of thirst.

Update: I hope and pray she is feeling none of this; but Kate Adamson has good reason to think she may be.

Update: Some have given up hope. Perhaps it is too late for Terri Schiavo, but it bears noting that the forty-year-old man in the graphic description above, Pablo Valencia, apparently survived his ordeal (In the Heart of the Sea 126).


Update:

Terri Schiavo's tongue and eyes were bleeding and her skin was flaking off, said Barbara Weller, the Schindlers' attorney.

Can she feel this? We hope not, but the evidence is decidedly inconclusive.


Update: One more family testifies about dehydration:

I remember, when my brother, getting moody, insisted that he didn't want the IV fluids, anymore, because the line was annoying him. He was in hospice. Part of hospice is giving the patient choices, letting him or her feel like they still have some power over things. The IV was removed.

He became dehydrated. His tongue swelled and his mouth filled with a terrible foam. His eyes began to sink. Ice chips weren't doing it, nothing helped.

One brother called us in the early hours saying, "please come, I think this is it..." In the middle of all this, the doctor (a great woman who S loved) yelled at S, "this is ridiculous, this is no way to die, S!"

She restarted hydration and he pulled back, and he was on the IV until the day he died, because he had hated becoming dehydrated more than he hated the line. "Bad decision," he'd whispered to me. "I didn't think the IV was that important."



Pray for Terri and pray for our nation.