Pope To Be Fed Intravenously?

From an Inside the Vatican NewsFlash:

...a doctor contacted by Inside the Vatican has revealed that physicians attending the Pope are so concerned about the advance of his Parkinson's condition and his consequent difficulty in swallowing that they are weighing the option of feeding him via a tube, intravenously.

Our source advised: "His heart is very strong. The problem is that, during this last month, his Parkinson's disease has grown more serious. The Pope has difficulty swallowing food. Should this situation continue or worsen, it may be necessary to resort to feeding him continuously via tubes.
...
"The other problem around the corner is not so much the problem of speaking (the Pope should be able to begin speaking again within 10 or 12 days) but rather pulmonary edema. As a result, in part, of his Parkinson's, the lungs of the Pope are no longer able to expell a sufficient quantity of liquids, which accumulate inside the lungs, so that the Pope is at risk of dying, using an example which is perhaps a bit extreme, as if by drowning.
...
It is widely thought now that the Pope will choose between 15 and 20 new cardinals, and create them at a consistory at the end of June this year (2005).

Some say the consistory could come even sooner; other suggest it will be in October.

The names of the new cardinals would be announced, according to tradition, 30 days prior to the concistory, which is a gathering in Rome where the Pope publicly places the red hat on each of the new cardinals.
...
Three men who seem likely to receive cardinal's hats in an eventual consitory this summer are the Italian Archbishop Carlo Caffara of Bologna, the Polish Archbishop Stanislaw Rylko, President of the Vatican's Council for the Laity, and the French Archbishop of Tours, Andre Vingt-Trois, who has just succeeded Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger as the Archbishop of Paris.

Excerpts via E-Mail