Woman's food-tube dispute nears end
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/state/orl-locschiavo10091003sep10,0,1721253.story?coll=orl-news-headlines By Maya Bell | Sentinel Staff Writer
Posted September 10, 2003
Family. (CHRIS O'MEARA/ASSOCIATED PRESS)
Sep 9, 2003
Theresa Marie Schindler Schiavo is likely living out her last weeks, still unaware of the heated controversy over her husband's battle to let her slip from her void and die.
Barring another round of last-minute rulings, a Pinellas County probate judge is scheduled Thursday to order the removal of the feeding tube that has kept the severely brain-damaged Clearwater woman alive for 13 years.
Her plight has become a rallying cry for many religious and disabled Americans. Their mantra: For the crime of being disabled, Terri Schiavo is being "executed by starvation."
"The law shouldn't judge some lives as worthless," said Max Lapertosa, a Chicago attorney representing Not Dead Yet and a dozen other national disability organizations. "That's a very disturbing thought to a lot of families who have sons and daughters with severe disabilities."
Terri Schiavo was just 26 when she collapsed from cardiac arrest and endured five critical minutes without oxygen. She never wrote a living will stating her wishes in the event she became incapacitated, but her husband, Michael, insists she made them clear during casual conversations.
He says she would never want to live in a persistent vegetative state, unable to eat, think or talk, always reliant on others to change her diapers and move her rigid, curled limbs. In 2000, Pinellas Circuit Judge George W. Greer concurred and ordered her twice-a-day tube feedings halted.
Relying on their Catholic faith, her parents vehemently disagree with her purported wishes and diagnosis. They insist their daughter laughs and cries, feels and knows. They say she could be eating and even speaking again by now if her husband had continued therapy. They even suggest their son-in-law had a hand in her collapse.
However, after a dozen court appeals, including rejections by the Florida and U.S. Supreme Courts, Bob and Mary Schindler have all but exhausted their legal options. So far, the only victory they can claim is in their public relations war.
Family rallies support
Galvanized by videotapes of Terri Schiavo seeming to respond to her mother and other stimuli, dozens of medical, religious and disability organizations have joined the Schindlers' battle to keep their daughter alive.
So have people such as Pamela Hennessy, a Clearwater woman who launched a petition drive that captured Gov. Jeb Bush's attention. After receiving more than 27,000 e-mails alleging irregularities in the case, the governor urged Judge Greer to appoint an independent guardian to represent Terri Schiavo.
The judge declined, prompting the Schindlers' lawyers to move for his disqualification last week. On Tuesday, Michael Schiavo's lawyer responded by asking the 2nd District Court of Appeal to enforce a prior ruling allowing Terri Schiavo to die.
As she awaits the final word, Hennessy, who works for a marketing and Web-design firm, devotes much of her time to maintaining the Schindler family's Web site of www.terrisfight.org and answering, on average, 250 e-mails a day.
For years, Hennessy said, she thought Terri Schiavo's family should let her go. Then Hennessy saw videos of her lying in her Pinellas Park hospice bed and changed her mind.
In one of many video snippets available on the family Web site, Terri's mother greets her daughter and, kissing her face, asks about her cold: "Hi, baby," Mary Schindler coos. "Are you better?"
Her daughter's eyes widen and a smile seems to spread over her face. Then, as if responding to her mother's question, she groans.
"The videotapes sealed it for me," Hennessy said. "Here they were saying she was a vegetable, but clearly this is a case of bigotry against a disabled person."
Patient's classic symptoms
Through the years, however, a number of doctors have testified that Terri Schiavo exhibits classic symptoms of a persistent vegetative state. She has sleep cycles, wake cycles and startle reflexes. Her eyes can even track a balloon, but her cerebral cortex, the part of the brain responsible for cognition, is irreversibly gone.
Unconvinced, Hennessy and other supporters repeat the same suspicions the Schindlers have raised about their son-in-law's motives. For years, the Schindlers contended that Michael Schiavo sought to halt his wife's feedings in 1998 to inherit what was left of the $700,000 he won for his wife's care from a malpractice suit.
Michael Schiavo, a nurse, countered that his in-laws were driving him to divorce the woman he married nearly 20 years ago so they could control her assets. Though he has a fiancé and a child, he has steadfastly maintained he would not divorce his wife because that would mean losing the right to carry out her wishes.
Today, with the money largely depleted, much of it by legal expenses, the Schindlers are concentrating on a new theory. They suggest Michael Schiavo has fought so hard to silence his wife because he tried to strangle her that night in February 1990 when she collapsed.
As evidence they point to the opinion of a doctor who, at their request, reviewed Terri Schiavo's medical records and found she was admitted to the emergency room with a "rigid neck." The doctor said he had treated only one other patient with a similar injury: the victim of an attempted strangulation.
"There's only two people who know what happened to Terri that night -- Terri and Schiavo -- and a lot of circumstantial evidence points a hard finger at Schiavo," her father said.
Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, who has written a book about his right-to-die advocacy, dismisses the affidavits and accusations as nonsense promulgated by right-to-life fanatics who, like the Schindlers, simply believe it immoral to withhold life-prolonging measures.
The proof, he said, lies in unbiased court rulings that 11 times have sided with his client.
"Are all those judges stupid? Have they all been snookered?" Felos said. "Of course not. They are trained to separate fact from the Schindler propaganda machine."
Court refuses appeal
Indeed, in its most recent ruling in June, the 2nd District Court of Appeal refused to reverse its earlier finding that Terri Schiavo suffered cardiac arrest from a potassium imbalance.
Reviewing the opinions of five doctors and viewing the same videotapes available on the family Web site, the appellate court once again agreed that her movements are the classic responses of someone in a persistent vegetative state.
Again, the court found that, once forced into the feud that has torn her loved ones apart, Judge Greer had "clear and convincing evidence" to rule that, after 10 years without hope for recovery, Terri Schiavo would chose to die.
"It may be unfortunate that when families cannot agree, the best forum we can offer for this private, personal decision is a public courtroom and the best decision-maker we can provide is a judge," the court said.
On that one point, almost everybody agrees. The Schiavo case is a persuasive argument for everyone, even young people, to discuss the unthinkable, said Kenneth Goodman, a University of Miami ethicist who helps hospitals resolve end-of-life conflicts.
"This case has turned ghastly and the dispute undignified, but there is a lesson here," Goodman said. "Make sure your loved ones know what your preferences are. Tell your spouse, your friends, your brother, your sister and your doctors."