ANDREA CLARK'S SISTER'S UPDATE ON MS VO

I was in Austin this weekend and asked Jerri Ward (the lawyer who represented my sister, Andrea Clark, and who is also representing Mrs. Vo) if I could go see Mrs. Vo. She thought it was a good idea and she met me up there Sunday morning. We were escorted to Mrs. Vo's room by her husband, Mr. Tran.

Before I was allowed in the room, a nurse stopped us at the door and demanded to know who I was. I told her I was a friend of the family. She wanted to know what "kind" of friend I was. I told her I was an "important"
friend of the family. She said if I was media she couldn't let me in. This didn't seem right to me, but I didn't argue the point since I wasn't media. I assured her I was not media. We washed and gowned and went in to see Mrs. Vo. The nurse hovered in the room and about the door for most of the visit.

We weren't there five minutes and another hospital official along with a security guard came into the room and handed me a business card. She told me I'd have to call the administrator on the card and identify myself. Is it just
me or is this sounding Gestapo to you too? I asked her if she was telling me I couldn't visit the patient if unless I called this person. She started crabwalking a bit..."I'm just saying you are to call..." I demanded to know if she was telling me I couldn't visit the patient. Then the security guard interrupted and said he thought there was some kind of misunderstanding and he drew the woman back out into the hall to talk in low tones--after a few minutes they disappeared down the hall.

By this time I was fairly livid. I wanted to visit with Mrs. Vo and they kept interrupting. After another five minutes, here comes ANOTHER hospital official to verify that I was not
media. I don't know what's wrong with those people. Are they stupid or something? Are they calling me a liar? How many times do they have to be told I am not media? And even if I were, it's none of their business if the family wants me there! I mean, is Mrs. Vo a patient or a prisoner?

Mr. Tran loves his wife so much. The entire time we were there he rubbed her skin with oil, did range of motion exercises on her, cleaned her mouth, suctioned her mouth and vent. Oh...the nurse was mad about that...she was so rude.

Mrs. Vo is much healthier than Andrea. She's nice and fat and her skin is beautiful--not all broken down like Andrea's. She watches you with her eyes--despite the nurse telling us that "she can't track." Nonsense. She
probably is uncooperative with the hospital because she knows they don't care about her. She was "tracking" her husband, me, and Jerri just fine. The nurse got mad when Mr. Tran swabbed out his wife's mouth. The nurse
said, "I just did that." He ignored her and continued to care for his wife, so the nurse started complaining to us about it. Jerri asked the nurse if it would hurt if he cleaned out his wife's mouth. She hesitated, then she said, "Well, she doesn't like it." Sure enough, Mrs. Vo was making an ugly
face as her husband swabbed her mouth. Well, apparently, the patient has preferences about having her mouth cleaned. To me, this says she is responding to her environment. And even the nurse admitted that.

No one can convince me that Mr. Tran isn't experiencing a feeling of love as he cares for his wife or that Mrs. Vo isn't experiencing the feeling of being loved as he takes care of her. Those are the most exquisite of all human experiences--if Mrs. Vo still has access to the best of all human experiences, how can it be anything other than pure murder for them to remove her life support?

This is all becoming very surreal to me...how is it that hospitals seem to feel a sense of entitlement when it comes to killing off patients? How is it that they have so much resentment towards those who believe in a patient's right to life? Are they so comfortable with the God-like power attributed to them by the law and families that they become apoplectic at the very notion that someone might question their authority?

That kind of power is very dangerous to anyone who could possibly become a patient. Texas isn't the only state with medical futility laws. We all need to be fighting this battle.

Thanks for posting this,
Lanore Dixon