Posted on 04/02/2005 3:04:50 PM PST by Halls
PINELLAS PARK - The room was quiet Friday. The stuffed animals and family pictures were gone. The air mattress that protected her skin from bedsores is neatly covered with a pink and blue blanket.
Only a few clues marked her passing: a bouquet of flowers, still fresh in their vase. An electric candle, ceramic angel and farewell note left by the staff.
Four boxes of facial tissues were strewn on two chairs.
For the first time in five years Friday, life at Hospice House Woodside went on without Terri Schindler Schiavo.
About 50 patients were fed and bathed. An elderly woman with cancer died just before noon. Workers who helped keep Schiavo alive for so long reined in their emotions and plowed through another day.
"It's been very hard watching a circus outside and be there with her while she was dying," said Susan Agines, a senior nursing supervisor. "I think what finally did it was when the juggler came. To me it was ... awful."
Hospice workers are accustomed to death. Their job is to help families through it. But never has the journey exacted such a toll as this one, said Woodside manager Becky McAllister.
For two weeks, nurses, aides and volunteers had to pass through yelling throngs to get to work. Angry voices accused them of murder.
"Today, we are feeling a mixture of relief, exhaustion and satisfaction that we were able to take care of her as well as we did," McAllister said, "and pride in our staff that we were able to continue in spite of having to run this gantlet."
Losing a patient is never easy, McAllister said. Hospice workers deal with patients and families on intimate levels and tend to get attached.
One patient always walked around with a red mark on his cheek, bragging about his daily kiss from the receptionist. An AIDS patient, after several days of extensive wound treatment, told staff that "no one would ever touch him before that," McAllister said. "He felt loved here."
The bonds with Terri Schiavo also were strong. Her five-year stay was two years longer than any other patient. She originally came in 2000 after Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge George W. Greer ordered her feeding tube removed for the first time. People expected her to die soon, but litigation stretched on and on.
The staff took pride that she never developed a bedsore. With twice as many nursing aides per patient than the average nursing home, Woodside workers were able to turn her every two hours.
"She wasn't able to verbalize," said Agines, the nursing supervisor. "But if she was uncomfortable, because the staff had been with her so long, we knew. If she moved, we knew what it meant. We knew when she should settle down with a different piece of music."
For five years, the staff also made connections with Terri's two families - her birth family and marriage family. Some of the staff had moral reservations about removing her feeding tube, others were fine with it, McAllister said. But they were trained to keep those feelings to themselves and try to support everyone equally.
"I said, "This isn't my battle,"' Agines said. "I'm there as a nurse caring for patient. I am caring for the wife of Michael Schiavo, the daughter of Bob and Mary Schindler and the sister to Suzanne and Bobby."
Agines, McAllister and Hospice of the Florida Suncoast president Mary Labyak said their biggest regret was not helping Michael Schiavo and the Schindler family bury their differences, at least long enough for everyone to be present at her death.
Family members have given conflicting versions of what transpired in Schiavo's last few hours Thursday, and the hospice workers declined to elaborate, citing confidentiality.
About 7,000 people die a year under Hospice of the Florida Suncoast care, mostly at home and in nursing homes, Labyak said. Conflict is common as families decide when to treat infections, when to put in feeding tubes, when to disconnect ventilators, when to sign do-not-resuscitate orders.
Mediating disputes "is a way of life for us," Labyak said.
The Schiavo case is the only one she could remember where disagreements kept family members from a bedside at death.
"What saddened us with Terri was all our hoping for reconciliation," Agines said. "To see a family so torn and divided ... I think that was the hardest."
Labyak said it was too early to assess the financial impact of the publicity and furor. She has seen no significant effect on donations.
"Some people wrote letters and said they were not going to donate anymore because they were against" the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube, Labyak said. "Others sent contributions because they said they were proud of what we were doing."
Woodside, with room for 70 patients, is a small part of Hospice's $90-million-a-year operations. Hospice paid about $40,000 for off-duty Pinellas Park police officers to provide security, in addition to officers assigned there by the Police Department, Labyak said. That money came from a "quality of life" reserve fund that usually fulfills last wishes such as helping one patient fly to Peru to visit her mother.
Lasting impact on potential clients is yet to be discerned.
"If anything, I fear that when people need us, they will think of hospice as those signs, those statements, instead of the compassion and dignity and we will not have people dying well in our community because of something they saw on TV," Labyak said. "That would be the ultimate tragedy."
Dr. Theresa Buck, the staff physician, understands the danger. Her own mother and step-mother refused to believe her assessment of Schiavo's condition because of what they saw on television.
"They said she is talking and asking for things," Buck said. "I had dinner with them Wednesday night and couldn't convince them that's not true. And I'm here every day."
Gulfport resident Delys Cavalaro, 82, loves how hospice workers are treating her. "We smile at each other. It's a bond. We don't see many frowns," said Cavalaro, who has breast cancer.
She has a living will and does not want to be kept alive through a feeding tube. "I want to go peacefully. If God chooses to let us live a little longer, I guess that's good fortune."
But she also feels for Mary Schindler. She never met Michael Schiavo, but wished "he would have given her back to her mother. It would have solved a lot of problems."
Jane Burnham knows Michael Schiavo, who lived at Woodside after his wife's feeding tube was removed March 18. His room was next door to the room where Burnham's mother, Betty, 74, lives as she copes with chronic lung disease.
Jane Burnham and Michael Schiavo talked every day.
The day Terri Schiavo died, Burnham's mother was reeling under an infection and was not eating. As they left the hospice, Michael and his brother Brian stopped to say goodbye.
"With all that going on in his life, he knew I was having a rough day," Burnham said. "He came by and gave me a hug and said I was in his thoughts and prayers. He is the nicest man."
Burnham said protesters often yelled at her during her daily visits to her mother. "They have called us murderers," she said. "They say, "Why are you going to go in there where they kill people?' They have no idea what really goes on in here."
McAllister said she expects a new patient to take over Schiavo's room on Monday. It's in the back of the building and looks out over 9 pine-wooded acres. Sometimes, people hold memorial services out there, and weddings, including one between two patients, McAllister said. Afterward the staff welded their hospital beds together.
What you can't see from Schiavo's room is the front of the hospice, where protesters bore witness for two weeks. On Friday, only a few remained.
Exactly!
It is a very serious question. It seems to me that we have moved from questions about the use of artificial life support, which I don't think includes nutrition and hydration, to prolong the life of people who are clearly dying, to questioning "quality of life" for those who are not dying and then projecting on them our own thoughts and feelings about what we think WE would decide if we were in their situation, something that we really cannot and should not, in my view, do. I think the wrong decision prevailed in this instance and I am deeply disturbed by it.
A Times Editorial
Published June 15, 2004
http://www.sptimes.com/2004/06/15/Opinion/Scientology_settlement.shtml
With an out-of-court settlement and a confidentiality agreement that muzzles both sides, the Church of Scientology has succeeded in keeping a potentially explosive case from going to trial.
For seven years, the wrongful-death lawsuit against the church filed by the estate of the late Lisa McPherson ground through Pinellas County courtrooms, chewing up the time and patience of all involved. Details of the settlement that ended the case, including any money paid by the church to the estate, will remain secret.
Secrecy has been one of the hallmarks of the Church of Scientology and its dealings in Clearwater, where it maintains its spiritual headquarters. A trial, or even a settlement with terms disclosed, would have pulled aside a curtain that the church keeps firmly shut.
While the settlement will help free up the court calendar, an unfortunate consequence is that the public and current Scientologists will not learn through a trial more details about church policies and how they affected McPherson.
McPherson was an apparently healthy 36-year-old Scientologist in 1995 when she was involved in a minor traffic accident in Clearwater. When paramedics arrived on the scene, McPherson removed her clothes and told them she needed help. They took her to a local hospital for a psychiatric evaluation, but representatives of the Church of Scientology soon arrived and took her to the Fort Harrison, the church's headquarters in downtown Clearwater. After 17 days in a room there under the care of church staff members, McPherson died.
The McPherson lawsuit created numerous side issues that had to be handled by the court. As the years rolled by, the costs mounted and both sides grew weary of the bitter battle. Yet it is unclear whether an out-of-court settlement would have been reached without pressure from retired Senior Circuit Judge Robert Beach, who was assigned to the case last year.
Beach's role in forcing the case to a conclusion short of trial is interesting. While it is not unusual for judges to encourage litigants to solve their disagreements outside of the courtroom to save time and the public's money, Beach did a lot more than encourage. He insisted on another round of mediation before he would set a date for the trial. In courtroom lectures, he informed both sides that the court wanted the case to "go away." Beach even replaced the McPherson estate's lead attorney, Ken Dandar, with another attorney, saying, "I feel more secure with him guiding this case than I do you."
The McPherson case and the avalanche of negative publicity it brought down on Scientology may be over, but the questions her death raised remain. How did she die? Was she kept in the Fort Harrison against her will? Why wasn't she in a hospital? What doctrines and procedures of the Church of Scientology came into play during those 17 days?
There will be no answers to those questions in a Pinellas courtroom. Because of that, the speculation will go on.
END OF ARTICLE
Jodi has, in my opinion, already been "muzzled". Why haven't we heard anything from her?
She probably has a lot to add to this discussion. She knows MS better than anyone LIVING.
http://www.scientology-lies.com/conspiracy.html?FACTNet
Is scientology breaking the law?
I believe they are when they kill someone!
Following that line of thinking, any first aid, surgery, and medicine is man made. However, you might want to turn that around to God gave man the ability to think, reason, and learn so man made machines are from God. Jesus gave loaves and fishes but Greer banned even food by mouth for Terri.
Bizbba said-> I'll take the doctor's word over that of a nursing supervisor...""
I'll take the word of the Schindlers and other doctors and nurses over that of a PAID HOSPICE DOCTOR!!
Terri was in the Hospice Death Camp illegally for more than 5 years. That's against federal law.
read the truth here:
http://www.theempirejournal.com
Yes it is against Federal Law, but it seems that the AG's office in Florida doesn't care!
THE SMOKING GUN!!!
This was a cold-blooded murder!
It's sad to think of the ramifications of the precedent that has just been set.
Exactly, this is the smoking gun!! I have turned this over to someone who is giving this to Terri's family! IMO and many other's this women's statement in this article is going to come back to haunt her!!!!!!
Any one who would ask for another human to be murdered by starvation and dehydration is not a good human being, no matter how many hugs he has given to people that he has fooled. This is pure evil. No one that I know would even want to starve a cat or dog.
Really, you'd take the word of a doctor who may see the patient once a week over the word of a nurse who sees the patient many times a day?
Thanks for the link, very informative. The quote above provides a good summary of the tenor of the article. Presenting her as all concerned with Terri's comfort, doing Terri's laundry, protecting Terri's privacy. The writer even goes so far as to quote MS's brother saying 'Terri sent Jodi to my brother".
All in all another attempt at humanizing MS in the face of what I believe to be his inhumane behavior. Pretty nauseating IMO.
Three things haunt me about this case. One is that some of the Woodside staff "were fine with it" meaning the forced dehydration. Second, the fact that the lawmen seemed so comfortable putting the cuffs on children who were carrying water. Third, that I didn't do something while Terri still had a chance.
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