Terri Schiavo became the inadvertent poster child for government “meddling” a la the Religious Right when her husband sought to have her feeding tube removed.  The resulting national feeding frenzy dealt a harsh blow to the realities of just how tenuous our own right to control our lives is.

In case anyone was wondering, at least one person learned an important lesson from this: eighty-year-old Mary Wohlford

More below the fold.
The article in the Des Moines Register online summed it all up in the headline: Great-grandma tattoos “DO NOT RESUSCITATE” on her chest.  The subtext reads “Woman hopes tattoo sparks discussions about health crises” — and that it has.

Ms. Wohlford had previously discussed her wishes with her family, and has a signed living will hanging on the side of her refrigerator.  But, knowing that there could still be some confusion, she decided to take it a step further.  She got it tattoed across her chest.

To be sure, there are other options.  She could have also designated a health proxy and power of attorney.  She could have a copy of her living will on file at her attorney’s office in case the copy on her fridge got moldy.  But she wanted to make certain her wishes were carried out.

Why?

She said her decision to enter a Galena, Ill., tattoo parlor in February was the culmination of what she witnessed during her almost 30 years in nursing and during the Terri Schiavo controversy last year.

Schiavo was the Florida woman who collapsed in 1990 and never recovered. She died in April 2005 after a judge ordered her feeding tube removed.

The case divided her family and the country.

Wohlford said she does not want something like that to happen to her.

If all else fails, if family members can’t find her living will or can’t face the responsibility of ending life-sustaining measures, she said, then doctors will know her wishes by simply reading the tiny words that are tattooed over her sternum.

Now ~that’s~ a feisty gal.

She had a heck of time trying to convince the tattoo parlor that she wasn’t nuts.  And her own daughter tried to talk her out of it.  But Mary would have none of that.

“She’s always been a maverick,” said her daughter, Mary Pat Wohlford-Wessels, assistant dean of the medical school at Des Moines University.

Wohlford-Wessels said she failed to talk her mother out of getting the tattoo.

“She said, ‘Remember all those times when you were a teenager, and I said don’t do this, that or the other thing? Paybacks are tough, aren’t they?’ “

Damn, now that is an attitude to be proud of.  She’d make a great blogger with a fount of natural, unadulterated snark like that to draw upon.

For Wohlford, the tattoo represents the next step. Nobody can lose it or claim to forget what she wanted. She said this would solve the problem of what would happen should she become incapacitated in another country.

If Terri Schiavo had a “Do Not Resuscitate” tattoo, Wohlford said, “then her husband could have said, ‘See, it’s right here. This is what she wanted.’ But she verbalized it, so they had this big rigmarole.”

Oh, wow.  You can’t make this stuff up.  We are, indeed, in the good old U.S.A. after all.

And here I’d thought everybody not online had been kidnapped by aliens and replaced with pods.

How much legal force does her gesture hold?  Nil.

“Just having that tattooed on your chest and doing nothing more, I’m not sure that’s going to do you much good,” said William Bump of Stuart, who has expertise in living wills and estate matters.

Oh, well.

The experts do agree that, if her tatt gets folks thinking about end-of-life and healthcare crisis issues, then they are all for it.  

…oh, and the tattoo shop?  She talked ’em into a senior discount.