Terri Schiavo's parents ask judge to let her divorce husband

The Miami Herald ^ | 2-28-05 | VICKIE CHACHERE

[TAdams8591]

VICKIE CHACHERE

Associated Press

TAMPA, Fla. - Terri Schiavo's parents asked a Pinellas court judge Monday to allow her to divorce her husband - in either life or death - in a court filing accusing Michael Schiavo of adultery and not acting in his wife's best interests.

The filing was one of a flurry of 15 motions filed by Bob and Mary Schindler as they now have less than three weeks to find a legal way to keep their severely brain-damaged daughter alive.

Terri Schiavo is scheduled to have the feeding tube that has kept her alive for 15 years removed March 18 unless her parents can convince an appeals court to block Michael Schiavo again. Michael Schiavo says he will have the tube pulled because his wife once told him she would never want to be kept alive artificially.

David Gibbs, the Schindler's attorney, said Pinellas Circuit Court Judge George Greer has indicated he will not hear the divorce request and five other motions filed Monday - but that only means that the matters are now on their way to being appealed to the 2nd District Court of Appeal in Lakeland........

Terri Schiavo's parents ask judge to let her divorce husband

[TAdams8591]

Your kidding????? A book and movie royalties alone would make him wealthy. Many people see this as a motive because shortly after he received 1.7 million dollars from the lawsuit againt the doctor, he discontinued Terri's therapy claiming it was useless and wouldn't help her.

Person's in Terri's condition recover very slowly and generally do not recover completely. It takes a number of years but they recover. That she wasn't going to recover was and still is a rationalization on his part for everything he has done since, including pushing to euthanize her.

[TAdams8591]

Not to mention that Michael's hearsay is probably perjury since it took him until five years after the fact to recall it.

[nicmarlo]

I wonder, however, if somone is being strangled (she had on ER exam a rigid neck), would that not ALSO lead to erratic beating of heart, when not only air is being prevented from flowing to the brain, but knowledge that someone who's supposed to love you is actually trying to kill you? I would assume that would affect one's heart rhythm.

I assume flight or fright response kicks in....and being unable to flee....with being choked and all (she did have other bruising on her body).

[Trinity_Tx]

"It is possible that Terri's eating habits caused her supposed collapse."

Yup. Everything fits, for sure.

"What about all those broken bones?"

That fits too. Remember that women with eating disorders can lose 30% of their bone mass in a year. (Her medical chart also shows her to be undernourished and low in calcium.)

And the only broken bones she had, according to the full deposition of the radiologist was:

- a compression/hairline fracture in lumbar 1, which he said could have happened when she fell (a lot of us are walking around with those - my sister is in her 30s and has numerous ones just from daily living)

- some of her ribs and the parts of the thoracic vertebra they were connected to in the back, which is extremely common after CPR, even in people with strong bones.

That's it.

The rest are just bruises (like her femur), and common joint problems among people in her condition and rehab. The Drs who saw her treated her for those things.

There would also have been outward signs like bruising had she been attacked, and it would no way explain such "severely" low potassium.

"With everything Terri has been through, if she wanted to be dead, she would be. She has shown by her actions, she doesn't want to die. Actions speak louder than words!!!!!!"

I wish the court would just voluntarily enforce the recommendations of the guardian ad litem, Wolfson, appointed to report to Bush.

What I would love more than anything would be to see, as a result of that, her respond to intense therapy, independent of the feeding tube, and able to communicate and enjoy life with her family.

[Trinity_Tx]

The ER said she had a rigid neck ***and all other muscles in her body*** were rigid. They still are.

I've had a seizure before. My neck was the most painful part. She was having continual, and no doubt much more intense, seizures.

Even had it only been her neck, and no seizures... I got whiplash years ago from falling forward out of my rolling chair that lost the front wheel, and I didn't even hit the ground. Her fall was even worse.

Then you still have the severely low potassium that no fight or flight response would account for.

See above for the rest.

What bruising?

I do my best to avoid comment about this, but it's hard. I just think the theory is so full of holes, the best that can be said is that it isn't worth the distraction it causes from the real points:

Give her another chance at therapy and testing so she may be able to eat and drink on her own.

That should be focused hard and driven home, IMHO.



gotta run : )

[TAdams8591]

I doubt the broken bones. Particularly at that age. Even if possible it would be extremely rare for BOTH her heart to have stopped AND to have simultaneously developed all those broken bones at different stages of healing. No one ever said she complained of pain. She would have had to complain to someone of pain (before her collapse). And please don't suggest they all broke after her collapse.

Regardless, even if Michael was not physically abusive of her then, he has been abusive and physically neglectful (another form of physical abuse) of her since. I do NOT believe Michael's hearsay testimony, because it took Michael FIVE years to remember it, and because that recollection is the only "evidence" Michael had to offer the otherwise baseless claim that Terri did not want to be hooked up to tubes. Michael's memory of that passing comment was CRUCIAL and PIVOTIVAL. Without it, JUDGE GREER could not have ordered Terri's feeding tube removed, we would never have heard of Terri Schiavo and we would not be traversing the Schiavo threads today. The entire rational for euthanizing Terri rests on her passing comment that Michael so selfservingly suddenly remembered.

I don't know that I believe Michael's primary motive (though it probably is one of his motives) is money, either. It's something deeper. In conversations with people and in reading over the years, I have come across women who claim that had they given up their child for adoption instead of aborting them, it would haunt them throughout their lives. To them, aborting the child was wiping out that child's existence and erasing the fact that the child EVER existed. I believe such sentiments are operating in this scenario in the person of Michael Schiavo.

[Torties]

Do you really believe God wants us to keep everyone alive by any means possible for any reason??? Hardly. It's not nice to fool mother nature.

[Melas]

Strangulation is an adult is one of the easiest things to identify. If she'd been strangled there would be have been myriad tell tale signs such as bruising on the neck or busted capilaries in the eyes. I see no such evidence recorded. You're jumping through hoops to come up with a plausible "what if" that might be damning to Schiavo.

You've reached your conclusion, and now you're dilligently looking for a way to intellectually justify it. It's supposed to work in the reverse.

[AaronInCarolina]

Didn't Michael claim that Terri made the comment that she wouldn't want to live on "TUBES" while watching the Karen Ann Quinlan story?

I was under the understanding that Michael could not remember the name of the show, (or any detail for that matter) that they were watching.

[nicmarlo]

But I'm not jumping to any conclusions. That's what Greer has done all along and continues to do. Without there being an investigation, there can be no conclusions, except for his own, of course. But, I would like there to be something more than Greer's own word for what happened to Terri that night rather; I don't accept Greer's, he's not a police officer, an investigator, or a physician, even though he's put himself in their place.

[nicmarlo]

I suppose you can just as easily dismiss the broken and fractured bones to her back, thigh, ankles....

[AaronInCarolina]

Do you really believe God wants us to keep everyone alive by any means possible for any reason???

No, but that is not the situation here. Not even close. Terri is not "being kept alive", except by being fed. She is actually fairly healthy fitness-wise. She has a mental dis-ability, one which many experts believe she can improve from.

[Trinity_Tx]

"I doubt the broken bones. Particularly at that age."

Her radiologist didn't. Nor do I. It makes complete sense, especially for bulimics, who as I said, typically suffer from brittle bones. Her calcium was low, she was undernourished, and her potassium was severely low. Classic.

"Even if possible it would be extremely rare for BOTH her heart to have stopped AND to have simultaneously developed all those broken bones"

On the contrary, they often go hand in hand as they are both caused by the same thing.

What is extremely unlikely would be to have her potassium simultaneously drop so severely as a result of having been attacked, or to be attacked like that without serious bruising. Or for such signs to be missed by doctors in their own malpractice defense.

"at different stages of healing."

Nowhere did it say that those breaks were at different stages of healing.

"No one ever said she complained of pain. She would have had to complain to someone of pain (before her collapse). collapse."

She complained of fatigue and irregular periods and infertility. Again, classic.

"And please don't suggest they all broke after her collapse."

Based on my personal experience with eating disorders, and other knowledge, there is no doubt in my mind.

And I agree that the claims about her comments are unconvincing, and I think pulling her tube under these circumstances is wrong.

[Trinity_Tx]

The Karen Ann Quinlan show comment was supposedly made to her mother when she was 10-12, and to her childhood friend, who at first said it was later, but when the dates and quotes were examined, it made no sense. The court found that that comment was most likely made at the same time when her friend was visiting the family for the summer.

Her husband and his family were referring to comments she supposedly made regarding other family and friends after they were married - her uncle and a baby of a friend.

I tend to think none of them are telling the truth.

[nicmarlo]

I suppose you can just as easily dismiss the broken and fractured bones to her back, thigh, ankles....

Never mind; I already see you have.

[Mr. Silverback]

***Not to mention that Michael's hearsay is probably perjury since it took him until five years after the fact to recall it.***

Here's something I thought of today, that I'd like the folks who think we're too hard on Michael to address:

In 1992, Michael's lawyer stated in his opening staement in a medical malpractice trial that Terri's life expectancy was 51 more years and she wouldn't be able to work.
At that same trial, Michael gave this testimony:

Q. Why did you want to learn to be a nurse?
MS. Because I enjoy it and I want to learn more how to take care of Terri.

Q. You're a young man. Your life is ahead of you. When you look up the road, what do you see for yourself?
MS. I see myself hopefully finishing school and taking care of my wife.

Q. Where do you want to take care of your wife?
MS. I want to bring her home.

Q. If you had the resources available to you, if you had the equipment and the people, would you do that?
MS. Yes, I would, in a heartbeat.

Q. How do you feel about being married to Terri now.
MS. I feel wonderful. She's my life and I wouldn't trade her for the world. I believe in my marriage vows.

Q. You believe in your wedding vows, what do you mean by that?
MS. I believe in the vows I took with my wife, through sickness, in health, for richer or poor. I married my wife because I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her. I'm going to do that.

Then, in 1993, Michael put a DNR in Terri's file. Later that same year, he testified about denying his wife treatment for a uniary tract infection until the nursing home forced him to allow it because it was mandated by law. At the same trial he testified that he had had her engagement and wedding rings melted down and her cats euthanized.

In 1998, Michael Schiavo testified, convincingly in the written opinion of Judge Greer, that Terri had told him she "wouldn't want to live like that," with "that" in this particular case meaning "on a machine." Greer presumes this means she would not want to live if significantly disabled, even if no machine were involved.

So here's my question: If she was so strongly and vocally opposed to extreme measures and so worried about being a burden that she would rather starve than be fed through a tube, why did he decide to be burdened with her care for a half-century?

Why does "I married my wife because I love her and I want to spend the rest of my life with her" change to "no antibiotics, no wedding ring and euthanize those dang cats" in less than a year?

Why does "I'll take care of her for fifty years" change to "take her feeding tube out" not on the occasion of some prognosis change, or after therapy has failed, but several years after successful therapy had stopped?

Why do people think we're demonizing this guy when we find this paradox suspicious?

[supercat]

Why do people think we're demonizing this guy when we find this paradox suspicious?

I suspect it stems from a desire to believe that nothing and nobody is 100% good or 100% bad. Any portrayal of someone as being 99% bad must be unfair, because it's unbelievable that anyone could really be that bad.

[Trinity_Tx]

Well to me, yeah. I think it's way over the top.

Not that I want to side with the guy...

I don't know him or what makes him tick. But to me, if someone's even in a deep coma, you can never be sure they aren't aware at any level, so it's wrong to let them languish inside with so little stim, like he's let Terri in the last few years.

I also think it's unforgivable that he hasn't allowed more doctors to attempt to give therapy and retest Terri in these recent years. I'm sure her parents would even pay for it. I think he wont half out of spite and half out of not wanting the to risk the guilt of learning she could be better or is aware of her condition.

Either reason is unacceptable to me.

But, the stretches that are made to claim he assaulted her and is afraid she'll tell, and the faith in Carla Iyer's outrageous claims... Well,, there's so much of that, it does gives the impression of an irrational eagerness to "over-demonize" him.

[supercat]

But, the stretches that are made to claim he assaulted her and is afraid she'll tell, and the faith in Carla Iyer's outrageous claims... Well,, there's so much of that, it does gives the impression of an irrational eagerness to "over-demonize" him.

I'll go along with you this far: Michael's treatment of Terri constitutes clear criminal neglect. Michael may claim that Terri isn't being harmed by it because she's just a vegetable, but if she were proven to have been aware during his neglect, such a defense would go totally out the window.

The issue of Terri remembering what happened in 1991 is a red herring. Memory of her treatment in the last five years is much more probable and much more relevant.

[Trinity_Tx]

Yup.

I mean, is there anyone out there who hasn't been told about comatose people awakening to tell what they were aware of?

Who knows what goes on inside the PVS (whatever) patient. Heck, I wouldn't risk speaking ill of someone who was all out dead, in the presence of their body. 8|

Not sure if this is what you're saying, but...
Even if she did awaken enough to speak, I don't think he would be legally charged with literally criminal neglect. He'd have the excuses of "advice of doctors", and what's (unfortunately) considered acceptable treatment...

I just think it would make his life hell to be faced with her having had abilities he denied. Can you imagine?

It would be a critical lesson for us all, really.