Judge not

Cincinnati Post:

Mike's high school football photo and his senior portrait are among the many photos in his room at Drake.

"Mike was a real handsome, popular kid," said his mother, who still visits him every other day.

He was a captain of the football and wrestling teams at Loveland High School before going on to Wilmington College, where he was class president his freshmen and sophomore years.

But in 1987, when Mike was 20, he severely injured his left foot when his motorcycle was struck by a car. The other driver did not stop and has never been caught.

Several weeks later, during a surgery on his foot, Mike's heart stopped beating for about 20 minutes, cutting off the oxygen supply to his brain.

Since then, Napier has dealt with the question that has caused so much national debate: Should she do what Michael Schiavo has done with his wife, Terri, and remove Mike's feeding tube?

The answer is not simple, she said.

"I wish I could. I wish I had the courage," she said. "There's a lot of guilt. A parent wants to pray for their child to get well. But in Mike's condition, after so long and seeing what it's doing to him and to the family, you pray for him to die, because he would be in a better place."

Also from the article:

"All these people who don't know anything about what it means to be in a permanent vegetative state, they are jumping to their own conclusions and they are reading into it what they want," she said. "Unless you've been through it, you don't have a clue."