By ALLEN G. BREED Associated Press 10/25/2003
Diane Meyer can recall only one time her best friend, the future Terri Schiavo, really got angry with her, and she remains haunted by that 1981 episode.
The recent high school graduates had just seen a television movie about Karen Ann Quinlan, who had been in a coma since collapsing six years earlier and was the subject of a bitter court battle over her parents' decision to take her off a respirator. Meyer made a cruel joke about Quinlan, which set her friend off. "She went down my throat about this joke, that it was inappropriate," Meyer said. She remembers her friend wondering how the doctors and lawyers could possibly know what Quinlan was feeling or what she would want.
"Where there's life," Meyer recalled her saying, "there's hope." By contrast, Schiavo's husband, Michael, and members of his family have said Schiavo told them she would not want to be kept alive artificially if she were incapable of getting better. She has not been fully conscious since collapsing in 1990 at age 26 from what doctors have said was a potassium imbalance that stopped her heart.
Theresa Marie Schindler had been born Dec. 3, 1963, into a well-to-do family in the Philadelphia suburbs. The oldest of three children, she was always shy and retiring. Her mother, Mary, says the girl would spend hours in her room, arranging her more than 100 stuffed animals into a private zoo. Always heavy, she hated sports, except horseback riding, which fed her love for animals. The girl never said anything about her weight, but her mother always sensed it bothered her. "She cried a lot when she went to get clothes," Mary Schindler said. He daughter didn't go to school dances, not even her senior prom. Instead, she and her friends would go to the movies. Meyer remembers they went to see "An Officer and a Gentleman" four times in one day. She was a huge fan of the television show "Starsky and Hutch." Sue Pickwell figures she and Terri Schindler wrote hundreds of letters to co-star Paul Michael Glaser, and "I remember the excitement when they finally wrote back, or their people wrote back." Father recalls a gullible girl Terri Schindler was naive and somewhat gullible. When she couldn't get her Christmas tree to stand up straight one year, her father, Bob, told her to take it back to the lot and have them put it in the "tree straightener." "She called me about an hour later and said, "What did you do to me? They all laughed at me.' " She has always been very tenderhearted, especially when it came to animals. She came home crying one night, saying she thought she had run over a rabbit or squirrel. Knowing she would be devastated if she saw the animal the next day, her brother Bobby went out and threw it in the bushes, then assured her he had found nothing.
In the girl's junior year, Mary Schindler took her to a doctor to ask about her weight, which had ballooned to more than 200 pounds on a 5-foot-3 frame. The doctor told her Terri would lose the weight when she was ready. After graduation from Archbishop Wood Catholic School, she was ready. On a structured diet program, she initially got her weight down to 140 to 150 pounds. College leads to romance She enrolled in Bucks County Community College with the goal of working with animals, and there she met Michael Schiavo.
Mary Schindler says her daughter went head over heels. "It was the first guy who ever, ever paid any attention to her," she says. Meyer says her friend talked about how gorgeous Schiavo was and how he was always telling her she was beautiful. He was the "Officer and a Gentleman" to a chubby girl who had lived vicariously through Danielle Steele romances, Meyer says.
After a little more than a year of dating, the two were married in 1984. Terri Schindler wrote to John Denver, her favorite entertainer, to ask him to sing at her wedding, but he never replied. By a year later, Terri Schiavo had gained a little of her weight back. Meyer says her friend told her that Michael Schiavo had seen her high school graduation picture and warned her "if she ever got fat like that again he'd divorce her." "I said, "He's probably kidding,' " Meyer said. "But it was upsetting to her."
Scott Schiavo, Michael's brother, says the Schindlers were the ones who rode Terri about her weight. He says her brother sometimes showed one of the woman's old driver's licenses for a laugh.
Friend airs talk of divorce In 1986, the couple moved to Florida. Michael Schiavo managed restaurants, and his wife got a clerk's job at an insurance agency. Jackie Rhodes, who worked and socialized with Terri Schiavo, says Michael Schiavo frequently called his wife at work and left her in tears. She says she and Terri Schiavo had discussed divorcing their husbands and moving in together. But Scott Schiavo, Michael's brother, says he wasn't aware of any trouble in the marriage. And when the couple went to his grandmother's funeral, Scott Schiavo says, Terri Schiavo told him she would not want to be put on a respirator, as the grandmother had been. "Terri turned around and looked right in my eyes, and I can still see her sitting there on my left- hand side," he recalled, repeating testimony he gave in court. " "If I'm gone, just let me go.' "
Bobby Schindler says his sister began talking about leaving Schiavo in 1989. "She said she wished she had the strength or the energy or the know-how to get a divorce," he said. By this time, her weight had dropped below 120 pounds, and Mary Schindler says she confronted her daughter about it. The reply: "I eat, Mom. I eat." Potassium disorders and heart failure have been linked to anorexia, but family members say they do not think Terri Schiavo had a real eating disorder. Doctors never have been able to say with certainty what caused the collapse.
The day before she collapsed, Terri Schiavo had complained to her mother that she was having menstrual problems and that she wasn't satisfied with her doctor. Mary Schindler said they would get together after the weekend and find her a new one. They never had the opportunity.
Terri Schiavo is 39 now, living in a hospice in Pinellas Park. After working so hard to come out of her shell, she spends most of her days alone in a single room. She still has her "stuffies," only not as many as before. Just a couple of stuffed dogs and a pair of plush pumpkins her mother hung up for Halloween. Her family says she laughs when they play John Denver for her and follows them with her eyes. Doctors say those are unconscious responses.
A special person, not a cause Michael Schiavo, who has since become a registered nurse and has a daughter with his girlfriend, could not be reached to comment. But Scott Schiavo says his brother is merely trying to let Terri Schiavo die with dignity. "When it sunk into Mike's head, Mike decided to stop being selfish. "I can't bring her back, and I've got to grant her wish,' " he said. "The bottom line is that Mike never wanted this to be a sideshow." Her family and friends say they love her, too, and think she can get better with therapy. They are just as convinced that she would not want to be let go. One thing they are sure of. She would not like all this attention and fuss over her. "She's not a cause," Meyer said. "She's a person. A very special person."
Courtesy - Buffalo News
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