Posted on 08/11/2005 6:36:42 AM PDT by JRios1968
Oh, I have NO DOUBT that "loving husband" Michael Schiavo had a lot to do with Terri's collapse and with her condition. Too bad he will never admit to it, because he knows he can still be prosecuted.
Regardless of whether Michael ever admits anything, the Silent Witness has more to say. The anoxic/hypoxic insult that brought Terri down was local, not global. Terri's heart and liver were undamaged. The damage was greatest in the anterior brain area which receives oxygen from the strong carotid arteries. That tells us that the assault was very likely to the neck or higher. It was not some general cause with global effects. You need something a lot more specific than "ten glasses of iced tea per day" to shut off the carotids.
Pressure to the carotids is well known to the martial arts, and it certainly can kill. This is from a med page: "Many classical jujitsu and aikido strangle holds are applied to the vascular structures of the neck and not the trachea." Iow, go after the arteries, not the windpipe. If the pressure continues, the result will be collapse with anoxic brain damage or death.
Two very peculiar injuries showed up in Terri's bone scan: a compression fracture at L1 (lumbar area of the spine) with damage to adjacent ribs. Now, that's in the back of the body, not in the front where rib damage may be caused by CPR. The other injury, also strange, was a bone bruise to her right femur. It takes a lot of force to do that. Even very rough handling by emergency medics is highly unlikely to cause those particular injuries (and nothing of the sort was reported anyway).
What could have caused them is Michael's knees -- a very big man kneeling on a small woman's back to pin her down.
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