(WFIE) - For the first time, we are hearing from an Evansville firefighter, who was seriously hurt in a car crash, one year ago Monday. Beth Csukas was driving on Interstate 69 near Bloomington when her truck slid on a patch of ice and crashed into another vehicle. She suffered a serious brain injury from that crash.

14 News spoke with Csukas, via Facetime, from an apartment in Indianapolis. That apartment is where she spends much of her time these days as she continues therapy. "I don't remember everything that happened but, ta-dah! I'm here now," said Csukas.

Some say her recovery is nothing less than a miracle. That is because, shortly after the crash, doctors told her family that she might not wake up from a coma, and if she did, she probably would never walk or talk again. She did both. CONTINUE

A Permanent Place at Ave Maria University for Learning Terri Schiavo’s Historic Story

PHILADELPHIA, January 18, 2017 // - Terri Schiavo’s 2005 death by starvation and dehydration marked the start of America’s slide toward treating euthanasia generally, and assisted suicide specifically, as if they were forms of medicine. Knowing the true story of Terri’s fight is important for understanding the roots of America’s culture of death.

Since Terri Schiavo’s death, her parents and siblings—Mary and Robert Schindler, and siblings Bobby and Suzanne—have envisioned a supportive, permanent home for the public records that tell the story of Terri’s battle. Thanks to Ave Maria University’s Canizaro Library, the Schindlers have found that home. "We knew that my Terri's death wouldn't be the last time someone was fatally denied food and water," reflects Mary Schindler, Terri's mother. "She had a brain injury. She wasn't terminal, she wasn't dying. She was conscious. We knew when she was killed that she was just the first victim of many yet to come."

It was this conviction that led the Schindlers to preserve dozens of boxes worth of materials that tell the story of Terri and her family's struggle to protect her, with the belief that future researchers inquiring into the history of American euthanasia would need to understand Terri's story in an unbiased and straightforward way. CONTINUE

(AH Herald) – Two years back, I featured Daniel Mignerey, 23, of Sardinia, Ohio, who somehow survived life-threatening injuries on February 6, 2015, after being ejected from his vehicle during an accident in southern Ohio.

Police officers on scene doubted he could survive the airlift and doctors weren't sure if he could survive the traumatic brain injury (TBI) and temporary removal of a section of his skull. In addition, a University of Cincinnati Medical Center orthopedic surgeon said he had never seen anyone survive Daniel's type of shoulder injury.

Yet he survived, and many medical professionals called his recovery “miraculous.” CONTINUE

(1011Now.com) – "Great" is one of the many words that could describe Talia Schaffart, 7, right now. "Happy!" exclaimed Talia. And "happy" is another one. She's come a long way since her accident, back on December 5th, when she suffered a lacerated carotid artery, two skull fractures and a traumatic brain injury.

Jenna Staskiewicz, Talia's mom, said, "We were told a couple times that she may not live, that she would be deaf, she may not wake up, she may not ever see again." But something miraculous happened, just a few weeks later.

"Her first words that we got to hear were 'Merry Christmas' on Christmas," Staskiewicz said. "We didn't expect her to say anything, and they were her words, right when she woke up." CONTINUE

(NRO) – My very first column warning against legalizing assisted suicide was published in Newsweek in 1993. It dealt with the suicide of my friend Frances under the influence of Hemlock Society (now Compassion and Choices) suicide-proselytizing literature. I ran the logic of the agenda and warned that someday organ harvesting would be tossed into the deadly mix.

Of greater concern to me is the moral trickledown effect that could result should society ever come to agree with Frances. Life is action and reaction, the proverbial pebble thrown into the pond. We don’t get to the Brave New World in one giant leap. Rather, the descent to depravity is reached by small steps.

First, suicide is promoted as a virtue. Vulnerable people like Frances become early casualties. Then follows mercy killing of the terminally ill. From there, it’s a hop, skip and a jump to killing people who don’t have a good “quality” of life, perhaps with the prospect of organ harvesting thrown in as a plum to society.

“Alarmist!” my critics yelled. “Paranoid!” others said. CONTINUE

(LifeNews.com) – California residents are feeling the damaging effects of the state’s doctor-prescribed suicide law less than a year after the deadly procedure became legal.

Wife and mother of four Stephanie Packer is one of them. In an interview with Orange County Catholic, the young, terminally ill mom said her state Medicare plan initially refused to pay for her medical treatment but offered to pay for assisted suicide drugs instead.

Packer said she was diagnosed with autoimmune disease scleroderma, a potentially fatal condition, in 2012. Recently, when she talked with a Medicare representative about covering her treatment with a new clinical trial, she said she was refused. CONTINUE

(The Corner) – The radical Washington DC City Council legalized assisted suicide–in a poor city where many lack adequate access to quality health care. Now Congressman Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) plans to block the bill from becoming law. From the Washington Post story:

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said Monday he’ll use rarely invoked congressional authority to block a new law passed by the D.C. Council to allow doctors to help end the lives of terminally ill patients in the city. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) signed legislation in December that would have made the nation’s capital the seventh jurisdiction to authorize doctors to prescribe fatal drugs. The bill was transmitted Friday to Congress for a 30-day review.

Good. Washington DC is federal territory. In that sense, the DC poisonous ordinance is not ”local” but impacts all of us. CONTINUE

(Tom’s River Patch) – The family of a Toms River police officer has shared details of the uphill battle he faces following a serious off-duty crash on the Garden State Parkway in Brick last week.

Brett Hansen, 28, who has been a patrol officer for the Toms River Police Department since August 2015, was suffered life-threatening injuries Jan. 4 when his Dodge Avenger hit the rear of a tractor-trailer in the right lane of the Parkway as he drove toward his home in Brick, New Jersey State Police said.

Hansen suffered a head injury, state police said. Police said there was no evidence indicating Hansen was drunk or high while driving. CONTINUE

(Wesley J. Smith / National Review) - We have lost a great writer, civil libertarian, free speech absolutist, jazz , historian and pro-life advocate, Nat Hentoff, who died today at 91.

As an atheist, Nat took much heat from his fellow liberals and rigid fundamentalists among the “free thinking” crowd for standing against abortion, euthanasia, and opposing protocols that would leave babies with spina bifida and other disabilities to die without attempts at curative treatment.

In fact, he may have lost prime writing gigs in the Village Voice and other prominent liberal newspapers and magazines, he believed, because of his apostasy from liberal cultural orthodoxy. Nat was a good friend–his decision. When he was named a Great Defender of Life by the Human Life Foundation in 2005, he asked that I introduce him. Here is .... CONTINUE

(KMOV.com) - A teenage brother and sister are proving hard work pays off, especially when you're in it together. The Strebe siblings suffered serious brain trauma in a car accident in Salem, Missouri. It happened on October 25 when their car flipped on a country road.

They were flown to St. Louis Children's Hospital and have been there ever since. "I was probably the most horrific thing I've ever seen," said the siblings' mother, Julie Strebe.

Kirsten Strebe ,16, and her 13-year-old brother Elias were in comas with skull fractures, bleeding brains and other traumatic injuries. But they also had hope. CONTINUE

(Nancy Valko, RN ALNC) – I first saw this tactic in the mid-1980s when Missouri was considering a “living will” law to allow a person to refuse “death prolonging procedures” if a person became terminally ill and unable to speak for himself or herself. Some of us warned about a broader agenda, citing court cases involving feeding tubes and seriously brain-injured but non-terminally ill patients like Paul Brophy and Claire Conroy in New Jersey and Massachusetts.

In response, “right to die” activists (as they were known then) added the ”safeguard” of not allowing the withholding of food and water to the Missouri law and the bill was passed.

Not surprisingly, Missouri soon faced the Nancy Cruzan case involving the withdrawal of a feeding tube from a non-terminally ill young woman in a so-called “persistent vegetative state”. Soon after that, a Missouri Designated Health Care Decision Maker Act was passed that would allow a person to designate someone to make health care decisions (or a relative if there is no document) including withholding or withdrawing of feeding tubes when the person was incapacitated whether or not they were terminally ill or even in a so-called “vegetative state”. CONTINUE

(NorthJersey.com) – The New Year is often about losing weight, finally taking a meditation class or perhaps launching a new job search but here’s a resolution to add, compliments of David Musicant – find miracles in the worst moments.

The 51-year-old Franklin Lakes man is an admitted Type A, nailing it in private equity and completing several marathons and Iron Man competitions all over the United States and abroad. One of his training regimens includes waking at 3:30 a.m., driving into Manhattan and bicycling 80 miles in six loops around Central Park before a full work day.

But that was the easy part of Musicant’s life. Then on June 25, 2015, bicycling alone along Skyland Drive in Ringwood at 30 mph preparing for the Iron Man competition in Hawaii, he checked his watch to monitor his racing time – and woke up in a hospital. CONTINUE

(By Judie Brown/American Life League) – With all the fluff and noise about the elections, two reports came to my attention recently that may have missed your roving review of the news.

We have learned that in the Netherlands the government will kill you at your request, even if what you’re suffering from is alcoholism or depression. One report reveals that “More than 5,500 individuals were euthanized under the euthanasia laws of the Netherlands last year, including a man who considered himself a hopeless alcoholic and another who suffered from chronic depression after having been a victim of sex abuse.”

So what’s it to Americans if another nation’s government has sanctioned this sort of erratic acceptance of imposed killing? The answer is that healthcare in the Netherlands is a function of government programs and everyone is required to have it! The Netherlands is a much smaller nation, and of course the Dutch healthcare system has drawbacks, but let the patient beware. What happens in the Netherlands does not have to stay there. CONTINUE

(Live Action News) – De De and Joe Fasciano were awaiting the birth of their first child when doctors gave them a difficult diagnosis. They were told that their little boy had Harlequin ichthyosis, a genetic condition that creates hard, thick, scaly skin. Two days after receiving the news, doctors delivered the baby boy via emergency C-section with a team of specialists standing by. His parents named him Evan.

“He was given his name due its Celtic meaning, ‘Young Warrior’, and which he has lived up to from the moment he was born,” his mother wrote on her blog.

Harlequin ichthyosis is the most severe form of ichthyosis and can alter a person’s appearance since their skin is being pulled. It can affect ear development, the limbs, and the joints, and restricted movement can cause respiratory failure. Because of cracks in the skin, a person with the condition is at risk for life-threatening infections. In the past, the condition was considered fatal. But advances in care and knowledge about the condition have helped people survive, and recently a woman with the condition became the first person with Harlequin ichthyosis to give birth. CONTINUE

(The Republic) – The next Indiana General Assembly and Gov.-elect Eric Holcomb’s administration begin their next month. Investments will be prioritized and probably limited based upon predicted tax revenue. One investment that should make the list is the medical care of our veterans.

Traumatic brain injury/post traumatic stress injury (TBI-PTS) is the most significant issue facing veterans today, and thousands of Hoosiers suffer from it. The current Veterans Administration care is not working. How can we change this?

Nothing supersedes evidence, good data and science. We need $2 million in funding for a world-class hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) treatment program, conducted in existing Indiana clinics. The Indiana Veteran Recovery Plan, a clinical trial, treats and gathers scientific data so the treatment can become a standard of care for everyone. The military and Veterans Coalition of Indiana is trying to get the Indiana to initiate this statewide clinical trial. CONTINUE

(The Corner) – This year, I took my mother into my home for the last five months of her life as she was dying. Was I providing her with “unpaid care?” NO! I was being her son.

Yet, in our technocratic era, it seems that family members caring and providing for each other is increasingly perceived as a monetized activity. From the Reuters story:

Millions of U.S. children with special needs receive care from family members that would cost billions of dollars if it was instead provided by home health aides receiving minimum wage, a recent study suggests. Researchers examined data from a nationally representative sample of about 42,000 parents and guardians of children with special needs surveyed from 2009 to 2010. CONTINUE

(The Star) – It is a reminder of how boxing can go horribly wrong. On September 12, 2014, the Sheffielder suffered catastrophic head injuries in a fight against Serge Ambomo. He underwent surgery, was placed temporarily in a coma, and his recuperation continues. Today, Jerome, 31, answers questions about his life.

How are you?

I have regained most physical functions but it hasn’t come easy. Hard work, determination and advice from my team at the Sheffield Head Injury Rehabilitation Centre has got me where I’m at: I’m now able to do more. CONTINUE

(CBSNewYork) — A 12-year-old boy nearly died in a ski accident, but nine months later, he and his family are celebrating a Christmas they didn’t think they would have.

Twelve-year-old Jack Guthrie is full of life, but in March, he was just holding on to it, CBS2’s Ali Bauman reported. “I slipped on a patch of black ice and I hit a tree, at least that’s what I’m told,” he said.

After a ski accident put him in a coma with a traumatic brain injury, a fractured skull and with blood seeping into his lungs, doctors didn’t know if the boy could be saved. “It was clear that they weren’t sure they could save him, so they were just trying their best to do anything,” Jack’s mother, Sari, said. CONTINUE

On behalf of the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network and my family, a very blessed Christmas and a joyous New Year.

Please know how grateful all of us at the Life & Hope Network are for your prayers and support of our mission as we strive to defend the rights of the most vulnerable brothers and sisters among us.

May God bless you for your kindness and generosity.

Bobby Schindler

(Highland Park News) – His football team was trailing, so Amir Fakhari played his hardest, running and tackling each quarter to help his team fight their way back. Despite his efforts though, Highland Park High School lost the game that night in September, and Amir walked off the field not feeling well.

According to his mom, Batool Shaker, he told her several times that evening that something was not right, and he couldn't even bring himself to shake hands with the opposing team. Then he collapsed on the sideline.

An ambulance immediately was called, and Amir was rushed to Advocate Condell Medical Center in Libertyville, Ill., the only Level 1 Trauma Center in Lake County, because the paramedics suspected his injury was severe. They stabilized Amir and notified Advocate Condell's trauma services. CONTINUE

(Star Tribune) – I remember feeling that way several months before I became severely disabled. In 1980, I had taken a group of teenage girls to see a young quadriplegic named Joni Eareckson Tada, who painted beautifully by holding a paintbrush in her mouth. Though inspired by her talent, I remember telling the girls, “I could never live like that.”

A few months later my neck was broken in a car accident, and I became a quadriplegic, paralyzed below my shoulders. I would spend the next year and a half in various hospitals and rehabilitation centers, dealing with medical problems and learning to live with a spinal cord injury.

Reality hit after four months, when the hospital let me go home for a few days. I saw the piano and realized I’d never play it again. The kitchen reminded me I could no longer fry an egg for myself. Simple tasks like taking a shower were now major productions requiring lots of time and lots of help. My independent days were over. CONTINUE

(SBS) – Former Formula One world champion Michael Schumacher's life completely changed gears on December 29, 2013, after suffering a traumatic brain injury in a skiing accident in the French Alps.

As an act of gratitude for all the love and support received since, Schumacher's family have launched an initiative to help others inspired by the former Ferrari driver's career and character to 'keep fighting' in the face of adversity.

"We would like to encourage others to never give up," the stricken German racer's wife Corinna said in a statement presenting the not-for-profit movement at the weekend.

The Keep Fighting Initiative aims to spread the positive energy that supporters of Schumacher have expressed to him and the family. CONTINUE

(Washington Examiner) – District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser signed into law Tuesday a bill that would make assisted suicide legal in the district, if it gets through Congress.

If approved by Congress, the district would join six states that allow assisted suicide for the terminally ill.

The bill, which the D.C. Council approved last month, would enable someone 18 years or older who is mentally capable and terminally ill to end their life. CONTINUE

(The Washington Post) – Euthanasia has been permissible in Belgium and the Netherlands since early in the 21st century, and the practice has expanded rapidly beyond cases of terminal physical illness, such as cancer, to encompass non-terminal illnesses including psychiatric conditions such as depression or bipolar disorder.

Note that this is far different from physician-assisted suicide as practiced in U.S. states such as Oregon, which can only involve physicians prescribing lethal doses to patients suffering from physical ailments certifiably expected to cause death within six months. In the Low Countries, doctors themselves administer the lethal dose, usually by injection — and, to repeat, upon a request for alleviation of “unbearable suffering” caused by any disorder, terminal or non-terminal, physical or mental. CONTINUE

(Houston Chronicle) – Doctors in Baton Rouge said Nick Tullier would never recover. The Louisiana sheriff's deputy had survived a bullet to the head — one of six officers shot in 10 minutes by a gunman this summer — but the damage to his brain appeared irreversible. Tullier, physicians said, would likely spend the rest of his life in a vegetative state. Eyes open, staring at the ceiling, never to regain consciousness.

His family didn't believe that, and last month they brought him to TIRR Memorial Hermann, one of the nation's premier rehabilitation centers. Doctors here offered a different outlook. Within a few days, they determined that, not only was it possible Tullier could recover, but that he was already conscious and had been for weeks.

For his loved ones, it was as if Tullier, 41, had been brought back to life. "A miracle," his father, James Tullier called it this week. Such stories are routine at TIRR, said Dr. Sunil Kothari, director of the hospital's disorders of consciousness program and a professor of rehabilitation at Baylor College of Medicine. They hear it all the time, he said, a variation of the same line: "But, the doctors told us this could never happen." CONTINUE