May 3, 2005 Urgent Prayer Request by Julie Smithson.

Bill and Kay McClanahan are great property rights warriors. Many times they have stood up for our property rights (our being every person who believes in property rights), fearlessly and tirelessly, with unashamed love for our Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence.

 

Now Bill and Kay need you.

 

Bill McClanahan, his wife Kay, Bill's doctor, Dr. Shattuck, and the nurses and therapist that work with Bill needs Your Prayers, Please!

 

Bill McClanahan made lifelong vows to a woman of awesome faith and love on April 23, 1974 (please see article below from World Magazine). Kay was twenty-nine and Bill was forty-three on their wedding day. Both said their vows with the sincerity and dedication of two people deeply in love. Neither could know the great depth of that love and the strength of those vows until the spring of 2004.

 

Bill and Kay have a fine herd of horses that they both love. After a day of training horses, Bill had a heart attack on April 27, 2004, just over a year ago. His injuries were such that he was given a tracheotomy and for periods of time was on a ventilator. Made of strong stuff, Bill was able to survive these things, but he was up against a growing problem in America, one that weighs the value of human life based strictly on its viability. BIll suffered more injuries at the hands of some medical staff and had been placed near death's door by those 'caregiving' decisions.

 

Until, that is, the World Magazine article, At Death's Door, was published on April 2, 2005. A connection was made that showed the relationship between what had happened to Terri Schiavo and what way likely happening to Bill. A pastor in east Tennessee read Kay McClanahan's plea for a doctor to help Bill, and told his friend, Doctor Shattuck, at Blount Memorial Hospital, located at 907 Lamar Alexander Parkway (Bill's in Room 410) Maryville, TN 37804

 

Please join me in sending Bill cards, photos and pictures to cheer him up and show him that many folks 'out here' care.

 

Please consider a "two-in-one" and send a card to Dr. Shattuck, thanking him for being a man of faith and allowing God to guide his decision -- and then walking the walk of faith and being so brave to do whatever it took to get Bill moved by air ambulance from South Carolina to east Tennessee.

 

Please keep everyone surrounding Bill in your prayers as this miracle unfolds. Kay is receiving help from all sides in the form of pastors' wives who have been giving her rides, to and from church and to and from places she needs to go for supplies (Kay is living in Bill's room at the hospital).

 

Please pray for Bill, Kay, Doctor Shattuck and all the nurses and therapists who work with Bill, with your prayers -- for we know the power of prayer!

 

Blount Memorial Hospital

907 Lamar Alexander Parkway, Room 410

Maryville, TN 37804

 

World Magazine ran a story (search for McClanahan / Schiavo) about Bill! Bill's Dr. Shattuck is Bill's doctor; please pray for this doctor! Bill and Kay's wedding anniversary: April 23, 1974.

 

Bill's birthday is August 23, 1930. May our prayers help him celebrate his 75th birthday at home with his loving and most loyal wife, who is ready, willing and eager to bring him home and care for him there.

 

***** The World Magazine article about Bill McClanahan:

 

At Death's Door

April 2, 2005

By Lynn Vincent

http://www.worldji.com/images/ed_52.jpg

 

World Magazine

P.O. Box 20002

Asheville, North Carolina 28805

828-232-5415

Fax: 828-253-1556

 

http://www.worldmag.com

 

To submit a Letter to the Editor: mailbag@worldmag.com

On March 23, 2004, William and Kay McClanahan celebrated their 30th anniversary by reenacting their first date: They ate pizza and worked crossword puzzles.

Last week, Mrs. McClanahan marked their 31st by attending a medical ethics board at which a team of doctors told her she may soon have to let her husband die.

On April 27, 2004, after a full day of training horses on his South Carolina farm, Mr. McClanahan, 74, took his wife out to dinner. But after the meal, his heart suddenly stopped beating. Mrs. McClanahan, 60, a retired forensic chemist and law enforcement agent, administered CPR until medics arrived and revived him. Mr. McClanahan remained unconscious, breathing on his own, but aided by a respirator.

In June, Mrs. McClanahan had him transferred to the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), a highly reputed facility where she had once worked as a biochemical researcher.

"I thought he would be safe here," she told WORLD, speaking on the phone from her husband's bedside. But he isn't safe, she said. Mrs. McClanahan contends her husband might already have recovered if MUSC doctors hadn't aligned their care plan with their prognosis that he never would. Instead, he is near death.

Once at MUSC, Mrs. McClanahan said, doctors and nurses began asking her repeatedly whether Mr. McClanahan would want to live in his impaired condition. "I told them, yes!" she said. "He would want to be with me. We did not sign living wills because we did not want to give up. We wanted medical [professionals] to make every effort to improve our condition, then put the result in the hands of God."

Still, she said, medical staff told her she was "in denial" about her husband's true condition, and that he wasn't really "living." One doctor, Mrs. McClanahan said, told her she felt "an ethical duty not to treat" Mr. McClanahan because he would experience an "impaired quality of life."

Against Mrs. McClanahan's wishes, she charges, doctors also put him on a "Do Not Resuscitate" list, though that's illegal in South Carolina, according to Jan Warner, a Columbia elder-law attorney.

The McClanahans may be victims of what is known as "futile care theory," a medical trend in which doctors and hospitals set policies that allow medical staff to withdraw or deny treatment over a family's objections.

Two states, Texas and California, have statutes that allow such policies, but futile care protocols have also turned up in Des Moines, Iowa.

MUSC's legal affairs department did not return calls seeking information on whether MUSC has a futile care policy.

Beginning in May, Mrs. McClanahan began seeing what she calls "small miracles."

Mr. McClanahan regained movement, began opening and focusing his eyes, and blinking "yes" answers.

But Mrs. McClanahan said MUSC personnel dismissed signs of neurological improvement, and some said he couldn't feel pain -- even when he appeared to be writhing in it.

By Christmas, Mr. McClanahan could breathe for 11 hours without a ventilator.

But about two weeks later, his wife said, the doctor in charge of his care declared that Mr. McClanahan had only about three months to live.

Meanwhile, a pre-existing heart problem flared up, but she said the doctor told her that the MUSC administrator refused to transfer her husband back to the main acute care facility.

Instead, she said, the doctor radically changed his medications, a move she believes reversed all progress and sent her husband into sharp decline.

Following that, doctors removed Mr. McClanahan's heart monitor.

MUSC medical director John Heffner did not return three calls for comment.

Meanwhile, Mrs. McClanahan said she contacted at least four doctors outside MUSC who were willing to have Mr. McClanahan transferred into their care.

But she said each changed his mind after speaking with MUSC personnel.

In mid-March, Mrs. McClanahan hired an attorney to help her fight for her husband, who she believes can't last much longer.

"I desperately need a doctor who will get my husband into another hospital in time to save his life," Mrs. McClanahan said. "I need someone who believes in Bill's right to life."

Copyright 2005, World Magazine.

 

http://www.worldmag.com/displayarticle.cfm?id=10477

 

WORLD is a weekly newsmagazine, published 50 times a year. WORLD includes sharp, full-color photographs and offers complete coverage of national and international news, all written from a Christian perspective.

 

WORLD Mission Statement: To report, interpret, and illustrate the news in a timely, accurate, enjoyable, and arresting fashion from a perspective committed to the Bible as the inerrant Word of God