I just spoke to an R.N. whose husband has frontal lobe impairment. Her husband walks, talks and functions. She looked at the autopsy report last night and and noted one of the findings that I wrote about here: “The frontal temporal and temporal poles and insular-cortex demonstrated relative preservation”What this tells us is that her cortex may have retained some function and that her brain was more normal (correction: though badly damaged) in the area that controls higher-level thinking (the IQ part of the brain, people!). Can they really tell us the cortex had absolutely no viable function as relates to consciousness given this?

That part of the brain is where:

Frontal lobes have been found to play a part in impulse control, judgement, language, memory, motor function, problem solving, sexual behavior, socialization and spontaneity. Frontal lobes assist in planning, coordinating, controlling and executing behavior. People who have damaged frontal lobes may experience problems with these aspects of cognitive function, being at times impulsive; impaired in their ability to plan and execute complex sequences of actions; perhaps persisting with one course of action or pattern of behaviour when a change would be appropriate (perseveration).

Is it possible that she remained cognizant of sounds and other things without being able to communicate? According to my nurse friend, her husband’s frontal lobe impairment might be worse than Terri’s was. (Update: According to some of my medical commentators—this is in all probability not the case because of the missing larger pyramidal neurons in Terri’s brain)

If the nurse is correct, we should all consider the possibility that Terri was aware of everything being done to her at some diminished level—yet could do little to make people aware that she was there!

Also, go look at this part of the autopsy report on page 5 of the report about possible causes of her original injury (not the neuropathologist’s report):

f. What other etiolologies are possible?

Subtle trauma related to commotio cordis or nontraumatic asphyxia is also possible, but no evidence of this exists….

Commotio cordis is a good old hit to the solar plexis:

What Is Commotio Cordis?

Commotio Cordis is a syndrome that results from a blunt impact to the chest which leads to cardiac arrest. It is a poorly recognized and underreported event that happens to healthy young athletes as a result of a low-energy, non-penetrating blow to the chest. Commotio Cordis does not result solely from the force of a blow. It is largely the result of the exquisite timing of the blow during a narrow window within the repolarization phase of the cardiac cycle, 15 to 30 msec prior to the peak of the Twave.

If that happened—is it possible that no evidence would exist after the passage of time, and/or any evidence would have been masked by CPR efforts undertaken after she was found in extremis?

And what about nontraumatic asphyxia? How much evidence would a pillow or big hand held over the face by a huge man leave that could not also be explained away by the fact that she was found face down on the floor?

This autopsy report does not rule out the above possibilities. Conversely, it finds no evidence to support an event caused by an eating disorder.

No person involved in rushing her to death is exonerated by this report.

Update so that I can trackback to Michelle Malkin. Michelle—look at the descriptions of what is actually damaged. Then go here to here and here to see possible holes in the MSM’s claims that the report means that Schiavo had no consciousness.

Michelle says:

You do not need a medical examiner’s license to see that the report raises many more questions than it answers, though from the (once again) misleading media coverage, we are led to believe that the matters of Terri’s life and murder are resolved. They are not.

Michelle is right.