Help the sister of a DU'er

Never thought you'd read that headline here, did you? I ask out of principle that we all take a look at this post at Right Wing News. Here is a snippet:

Yesterday, as I was perusing the Democratic Underground, I ran across a very troubling story. I'm reposting it here, so that you can read it just as I did last night (The phone numbers presently are x'd out, although you can read them in the original post)...

Th1onein: KILLING MY SISTER - WE ARE PROTESTING - HELP US

Mods, please don't move this post. I know it's not in the activist section, but there's so little time left now, we need it to reach as many people as possible. We desperately need help.

Fellow DUers:

My sister, Andrea Clarke, is at St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital in Houston, TX. St. Luke's is located at:

6720 Bertner Avenue, Houston, TX. Their phone number is: 832-***-****.

The hospital ethics committee met the day before yesterday and concluded that Andrea's treatment (respirator and dialysis) should be discontinued. We have ten days to move her from that hospital or they will "pull the plug" and let Andrea die. Andrea, until a few days ago, when the physicians decided to increase her pain medication and anesthetize her into unconsciousness, was fully able to make her own medical decisions and had decided that she wanted life saving treatment until she dies naturally. We have learned that this is part of the process, when hospitals decided to declare the "medical futility" of continueing treatment for a patient. But, this is not a Terry Schiavo case; not anything like it. Andrea, when she is not medicated into unconsciousness (and even when she is, and the medication has worn off to some degree) is aware and cognizant. She has suffered no brain damage to the parts of her brain responsible for thought and reason, or speech. She has only suffered loss of some motor control. The reason that the physician gave to medicate her so much is that she is suffering from intractable pain in the sacral region (in other words, she has a bedsore that causes her pain). This is not reason enough, in our books, and we are trying, as we speak, to get Andrea's medication lowered so that she can speak to us.

John Hawkins has done his background homework on this story. It does appear that this woman is going to die because the hospital finds it expedient to halt her medical care. Volumes of blog posts were written on Terry Schiavo last year. I think it may be time to turn up the volume on this story so if the woman is responsive when not medicated, she actually can get the chance to live as long as possible. Bloggers, by all means, be tentative in covering this story that is still short on details, but at least start talking about it. For those of us who wrote on the Schiavo case, it would be irresponsible to at least not look at this story. For those readers who aren't bloggers, you can help with you comments, a phone call to the hospital, an email to the hospital, or just by discussing this around the water cooler so others hear about it.

KHOU covers this story here.