Posted on 10/26/2003 2:04:02 PM PST by Normally a Lurker
Behind the story of the fight over whether Terri Schiavo should live is another story.
This one is about how she came to exist in this terrible twilight, not fully dead but not really alive.
Terri Schiavo apparently had an eating disorder.
Even some of her family members have said they think so.
Eleven years ago, when she was 26, Schiavo collapsed with the disease of the middle aged, the old, the overweight.
The St. Petersburg woman had a heart attack when her body ran low on potassium, the chemical needed to make the muscles work. No muscle matters more than the heart. This is the way women with eating disorders usually go. Whatever the cause, they die at rates 12 times higher than women who eat normally.
Potassium is why sweaty athletes guzzle Gatorade. It contains potassium. You also find it in bananas, potatoes, oranges. They are ordinary foods, to ordinary eaters. But women who suffer from anorexia -- who starve themselves -- or from bulimia -- who vomit what they eat -- regard even a Ritz cracker as a threat.
Family members have said Terri Schiavo put herself on a liquid diet in high school because she was overweight and dateless. She was a size 12 when she married three years later, but that wasn't enough. She kept dieting so she could finally wear a bikini at the beach. She lived afraid of what all dieters fear, that the pounds will return.
Schiavo had other red flags signaling the possibility of an eating disorder, said Susan Mullins, who counsels women with eating disorders at Tampa's Hyde Park Counseling Center.
Schiavo suffered abdominal pains before the heart attack. They occur when you throw up a lot or your stomach, so used to no food, finally gets some.
Her period was intermittent. If you don't eat enough, your body doesn't produce what's necessary to create the uterine lining that is shed every month in menstruation.
And if you don't have a uterine lining, there's no place for a fertilized egg to attach itself. Terri Schiavo wanted to get pregnant, but couldn't.
Schiavo's family didn't see her problem before her heart attack. Her husband has insisted he saw nothing wrong at all. That's also common.
"We've had women in treatment who were married for 15 years, and their spouses have not known," said Mullins. "There's a lot of hiding, a lot of secrecy, shame, embarrassment associated with eating disorders."
Not even Schiavo's doctors knew her problem. This is also typical. They don't know what to look for.
"Medical ignorance is pretty widespread," said Robin Piper, who runs the Turning Point of Tampa, another clinic that treats women with eating disorders.
Eating disorders are another stop in that crazy house of distorted perceptions called addiction. Women can't stop using food to hurt themselves the way drunks and junkies can't stop using liquor or crack to hurt themselves. Yet this thing that has a woman out of control is, to her, about being in control.
"If I can't control what happens to me or my family, I can control what I eat. You can't make me eat," Piper said.
We live in a culture where zero is a dress size and a status symbol. That's why I tell you all this. It might save a life. The appeals may go from the Pinellas circuit courts to the U.S. Supreme Court again, but it's almost certainly too late for Terri Schiavo.
Her parents and the growing circle of strangers around the country who call themselves her advocates say they are fighting for what Terri Schiavo would want. They are so sure they know. But if you understand that she had an eating disorder, what she would want is a disturbing, tantalizing question.
Said Robin Piper: "She spent all her life fighting whether to eat, and now people are fighting over whether to feed her or not. What would she think if she knew?"
In 1998 she was lying in a hospice bed. I believe she was married in 1984 or 1985.
LOL. Too bad you can't be perfect, like me. hehe
BTW, I live not to far away (Charlotte county) and grew up in your area (Pinellas county) - a very long time ago, when Dunedin had no high school and US 19 was a two lane road with no stop lights from St. Pete up to Tarpon S.
And I'm certain that you KNOW that she was strangled, and that that KNOWLEDGE of FACTS involves absolutely no "peculation and guessing."
I'm sorry, but IMO the article contains enough specific info and has enough of a common sense basis (if you have just a little medical knowledge) to make it very believable. The "the husband tried to kill her" agruements seem to be just emotionally based.
Said Robin Piper: "She spent all her life fighting whether to eat, and now people are fighting over whether to feed her or not. What would she think if she knew?"
This is the most offensive piece of garbage I have seen included in newspaper print in a long time.
Terri was not dying from starvation....she was suffering from a life with an abusive husband....or did her anorexia give her the broken bones and stiff neck?
We (then) lived fairly close to a major hospital. I was in the ER within 10 minutes of leaving my house. It would have likely taken longer for a 911 call and for an ambulance to travel the same distance and arrive at my house.
Don't you think that there seem to be a lot of questions unansered here?
I think that most of them have been answered, but many in the "save Terri, hang he husband" crowd are going to ignore any and all reasonable answers and continue to grab ever piece of "off the wall" info and blow it up, distort it, etc. forever.
PLEASE READ!!
This is the letter written by Terri's friend Kathy to the St. Petersburg times. I have been in contact with Kathy and she confirmed that she did write the letter, and several others, but that the paper chose NOT to publish it. I have encouraged Kathy and her friend Dee to join us here at FR and I will send them the link to this thread and others about Terri, so please post your personal messages to Kathy as well.
She lives in the area and has been trying get someone to listen to her for a long time. I assured her that she, and Terri, have many friends here and also that we have a huge readership so it would at least be seen and circulated by a lot of people.
"Dear Mr. Levesque,
I am sure that you wrote your article on Theresa Marie Schindler Schiavo in what you believed was the truth. However, I can stay quiet no longer.
It is a proven fact that Mr. Schiavo had at least one affair and fathered an illegitimate child while still married to Terri before she was injured,
He is paying child support. Since her injuries, it is also a proven fact that he has been with numerous women one with whom he now has one child with another on the way.
No one has investigated nor seems to even care that the night that this happened to Terri they had had a huge fight. She had confided to family members and friends that he had become abusive and controlling.
She was advised not to go home that night but to spend the night with a girlfriend but she went home. Hours later he called Bob Schindler saying Terri was on the floor hurt. He did not call 911 first.
There are medical records that sustain the fact that Terri suffered multiple broken bones that night and came to the hospital with a rigid neck.
I have all that info if you are interested and would be happy to send to you.
To say that Mr. Schiavo loves Terri is nonsense.
He lost the ability to say "my wife" with any credence a very long time ago.
I wish that just one person would print the truth about this guy. I truly believe that the only reason he wants her dead so much is because he never wants her to come out of this and point the finger at him for battering her almost to death. He wants to finish what he started that night.
You probably won't investigate any of this. No one seems to care what happened to Terri but at least I know I have tried.
Sincerely, Kathleen (last name deleted)
St. Petersburg, Fl."
I suppose that we can discount the FACT that Mr. Shiavo now has TWO outof wedlock children he manages, a mistress, an attorney who is a member of the Hemlock Society, and a few thousand other facts, as in Michael has denied Terri any TV, Music, Therapy, Stimulation, punished her parents by not allowing them to see her when their actions piss him off, and that we could ignore the affidavits of nurses who tended to Terri, like Carla Iyers, and then, we are left with, ho hum, anorexia did her in!
yeah, right.
If you do, you might give us another case to debate.
When did I ever say that? Jumping to conclusions I see, just what you are accusing others of doing.
I'm sorry, but IMO the article contains enough specific info and has enough of a common sense basis (if you have just a little medical knowledge) to make it very believable. The "the husband tried to kill her" agruements seem to be just emotionally based.
Sure, there's enough specific info and common sense basis if you choose to ignore other factors in this situation, most notably the behavior of Michael Schiavo throughout this long ordeal. The common sense basis gets thrown out the window when coupled with his actions. These events have not occurred in a vacuum.
Can you give me one good explanation for why Michael, who has apparently moved on in his life with a new girlfriend and children, would not just divorce Terri and let her parents take care of her?
And please spare me the "he's trying to fulfill her wishes" BS, because if she really claimed she didn't want to be fed through a tube, why did he ever allow it in the first place? She'd been tube fed for 8 years - why was he not fulfilling her wishes for all that time?
Has it been posted here?
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