Terri Schiavo's husband allows her family to visit

CNN Website ^ | 10/22/03 | CNN correspondent John Zarrella

[JulieRNR21]

An ambulance returned Terri Schiavo to hospice care in Florida on Wednesday evening.

PINELLAS PARK, Florida (CNN) -- The brain-damaged woman at the center of a Florida right-to-die controversy had her feeding tube reinserted Wednesday, a day after the governor ordered her feedings be renewed.

[texastoo]

Felos, the lawyer said that the cat scan shows a hole in the brain that spinal fluid had drained into.

Her main problem was a chemical imbalance and heart attack. Lack of oxygen doesn't cause a hole in the brain.

[CindyDawg]

floriduhvoter posting that the hospice coned off and cop cars everywhere. Yall heard anything?

[JulieRNR21]

Have not heard from FV for several hours.

[JulieRNR21]

More info here......PING

[Bobby777]

maybe, but if he has a court order for yanking her tube, and he has her tube yanked, and the doctors rule the termination of life as a result of yanking the tube, well, there you have it ...

I, of course, am against Michael and for Terri ... I'm just saying what would probably happen ... has he ever been charged with a crime in relation to her injury?

[icwhatudo]

"She is responsive to stimuli, doctors have said"

Thats a change, first we were told she was "comotose" now this, amazing what a sneaked in videocamera can do for you-LOL

[CindyDawg]

yall see this? I copied from another thread. (hope you don't mind, Annie)http://www.centredaily.com/mld/centredaily/news/7079354.htm

[Bobby777]

she doesn't look like a vegetable in what little pictures I've seen ... just sadly incapacitated but she sure looks like there is a functioning person inside there to me ... I am, of course, not an expert in such matters ...

Michael should divorce her and transfer custody to the parents in a 100% legal fashion ... unless of course, there is an unspoken insurance policy to be gained by croaking her off ...

in which case, the court should demand release of such information ... amounts, policy dates, etc. ... period ... the fact he doesn't want to discuss it smells real bad ...

[auboy]

"Terri was almost a week into her death process slow, torturous murder," Felos said.

Scumbag lawyer. I didn't realize death was a process. I have always believed life was life and death was death.

Okay to "process" you, George? Afterall, you're heartless.

[jwalsh07]

"If you look at a brain scan of Terri, where her cerebral cortex used to be is a black hole filled with spinal fluid," he said. "There is simply no hope of recovery for Terri."

First of all I don't believea word this ghoul utters but it might be of interest to some that Karen Quindlans cerebral cortex showed very little damage at all. Her thalamus on the other hand showed severe damage.

The question of where consciousness resides is one that I don't think has been answered yet. What do you think?

[isrul]

"after the feeding tube was reinserted the doctors felt she had stabilized enough to move her back to the hospice. He said her feedings have resumed."

This doesn't square with what another doctor said a few days ago relating to Terri having "begun the dying process."

If she was in such bad shape then, she couldn't be completely stabalized yet. Stabalization might have begun but she would still need constant monitoring by medical professionals, not the ghouls at the death house.

Someone is lying.

[GretchenEE]

Schiavo's lawyer: New law is unconstitutional Felos said the law allowing Bush to order her feeding tube reinserted is unconstitutional.

Yeah, that "right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" is just so vague and squishy, I'd say the lawyer must be onto something there.

[CindyDawg]

I really don't know what his motive is but I don't think it is money. I have read that the parents have offered him a lot of money for guardianship and he refused.

[dixiegrrl]

But what if it is under Jodi's name and not his?

[dixiegrrl]

Glad you reposted the email addresses.

[FITZ]

George Felos, an attorney for Terri's husband and legal guardian, Michael Schiavo, said that after the feeding tube was reinserted the doctors felt she had stabilized enough to move her back to the hospice. He said her feedings have resumed.

I certainly don't trust Felos --- but this may show how little medical intervention Terri needs ---- even after several days of being starved and denied water, she has such a strong will to live that she can stabilize so quickly just after a few hours of hydration and a little food. She's really just not as ill has her adulterous husband would have everyone believe.

[GretchenEE]

He won $1.2 million in a malpractice case against his wife's gynecologist and another $250,000 in a settlement with her general practitioner.

Anyone know what the gynecologist has to do with this? And the general practitioner?

[JulieRNR21]

This investigation looks like good news to me:


Agency to probe alleged spousal abuse of brain damaged woman

BY MICHAEL MARTINEZ AND PAT KAMPERT
Chicago Tribune

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. - (KRT) - A state protection agency for disabled persons on Wednesday was planning to launch an investigation into alleged spousal abuse against Terri Schiavo, the severely brain damaged woman whose feeding tube was reinserted this week after intervention by the Florida Legislature and Gov. Jeb Bush.

The investigation by the Advocacy Center for Persons with Disabilities, an agency mandated in states and funded by Congress, could play a decisive role in a revived legal battle over who should be the guardian of the 39-year-old Schiavo - her husband or her parents.

Terri Schiavo was moved Wednesday for the second time in two days - this time back to a Pinellas Park hospice where she was receiving nourishment again through a feeding tube. Later, Robert Schindler, her father, said he, his wife and son visited Schiavo for about 45 minutes.

The family was annoyed, Schindler said, that Schiavo had been moved again from the hospital in nearby Clearwater where she had been taken on Tuesday.

Schindler said he was happy to see his daughter, but "she looked to me like a person who has the flu - (someone who would say) don't bother me," He called his daughter "a really tired girl" and said he was struck by some redness in her eyes.

Her parents had also been upset by the earlier decision of Michael Schiavo, Terri Schiavo's husband and guardian, to bar them from visiting her in the hospital in Clearwater.

"Nothing's different. It's been that way for 10 years," Schindler said of the battle between his family and Michael Schiavo over whether Terri Schiavo should be kept alive with a feeding tube or should die. He made his comments outside the hospice, where Schiavo had spent the past week after a court approved removal of her feeding tube.

Even though lawmakers and Bush passed a law Tuesday authorizing the reinsertion of the feeding tube, her husband has authority, as guardian, to determine who is allowed to visit her.

The Schindler family has accused Michael Schiavo of abuse and neglect as guardian, and the state protection agency's independent investigation could play a major role in removal of the husband as guardian - as well as shed light on how the husband managed funds during the guardianship.

Terri Schiavo's husband and her parents have been estranged for a decade while wrangling over her fate; her husband said that his wife told him she didn't want extended life-support, but her parents have disagreed and have sought to keep her connected to a feeding tube.

The law signed Tuesday by Bush requires the chief judge of Pinellas County Circuit Court to begin proceedings to appoint an independent guardian. The husband's attorney has called the law unconstitutional and is expected to initiate a legal challenge.

The chief judge on Wednesday scheduled a Nov. 5 court hearing and has recommended a public health professor at the University of South Florida, Jay Wolfson, as the new guardian if the in-laws cannot agree on a new guardian.

The governor's order of reinsertion of the feeding tube has bought time for the advocacy center to conduct its investigation as to whether Terri Schiavo has been a victim of abuse and neglect over the past 10 years.

Under federal law, the agency is granted strong investigative powers, including examining medical and court-sealed guardian financial records, and its findings of abuse or neglect would be conclusive and pre-emptive of any court or other agency determination, said Patricia Anderson, an attorney for Terri Schiavo's parents.

It was unclear Wednesday why the agency hadn't launched an investigation earlier in the case of Terri Schiavo, who went into a persistent vegetative state after a heart attack induced by a misdiagnosed potassium imbalance in 1990. Her eyes are open, but she is seriously brain damaged, according to doctors.

"They are referred to as the `big sharks' in the disability field," Anderson said of the agency. "What we have here is a guardianship system that discriminates against disabled people."

Richard LaBelle, an attorney and agency board member who is involved in the investigation, said this week's events will aid the investigation.

"I think to the extent that Terri is still alive and will be receiving food and water - we think that's a positive development," he said.

LaBelle said he did not know how long the probe would take, saying it depended on how much cooperation the agency receives in obtaining Schiavo's medical records and access to individuals on both sides of the court fight.

For his part, Michael Schiavo said Wednesday through his attorney that he is outraged that the legislative and executive branches would overturn a judge's order that had allowed him to have the feeding tube removed from his wife.

"It was just an absolute trampling of her personal rights and her dignity," Michael Schiavo's attorney, George Felos, said Wednesday on NBC's "Today." "We believe that a court sooner or later, we hope sooner, will find this law to be unconstitutional."

Felos added it was "an absolute horrible tragedy for Terri Schiavo, literally being abducted from her deathbed and her death process."

Terri Schiavo was already showing signs of organ failure, Felos said. The attorney for the parents, however, said that Felos has no medical background to make such a claim.

One legal expert, Marc Spindelman, an Ohio State University law professor who specializes in death-and-dying issues, said much is riding on what the advocacy center finds in its probe into claims by Terri Schiavo's parents that her husband abused and neglected his wife.

Those accusations have been strongly denied by Michael Schiavo and his attorney.

"Should there be a determination that the allegations against Michael Schiavo are factually supported, it might be the case that the dispute gets resolved by more informal means," Spindelman said.

Some experts are viewing the case as if it's a foregone conclusion that the courts will overturn the new law, under the assumption that Bush, who is President Bush's brother, and the legislature overruled the courts. But that is not necessarily true, said Andrew Koppelman, a constitutional law expert at Northwestern University.

"I don't understand what separation of powers has to do with it," he said. "Some law is going to govern how people behave toward (Terri) tomorrow. The legislature has to have power to legislate today about what we do tomorrow, and that power is not taken away by the fact that the judiciary said something else yesterday."

Koppelman added that the legislature's action may have aided the Schindlers' case.

"If there is a dispute about the constitutionality of the legislation or anything else having to do with the appropriateness of intervention, the court's first duty is to make sure neither side suffers irreparable injury that couldn't be remedied by subsequent litigation," he said.

Thus, the argument could be made that to remove nutrition and hydration before the case winds it way through the courts would cause Terri Schiavo to suffer "irreparable injury," experts said.

[jwalsh07]

She has a will to live Fitz, it's pretty apparent. Most truly PVS patients do no last as long as Terri has.

[Bobby777]

strange ... so, he just wants her dead? ... maybe some of the FReepers are correct ... if money isn't an issue, he should be forthcoming on the insurance policy ... if there isn't one ... OK, maybe he has other motives ... if it's 2 million bucks, well ...