Posted on 10/24/2003 2:21:25 PM PDT by kattracks
PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (AP) ? Diane Meyer can recall only one time her best friend Terri Schiavo really got angry with her. It was 1981, and it haunts her still.The recent high school graduates had just seen a television movie about Karen Ann Quinlan, who had been in a coma since collapsing six years earlier and was the subject of a bitter court battle over her parents' decision to take her off a respirator. Meyer told a cruel joke about Quinlan, and it set Terri off.
"She went down my throat about this joke, that it was inappropriate," Meyer says. She remembers Terri wondering how the doctors and lawyers could possibly know what Quinlan was really feeling or what she would want.
"Where there's life," Meyer recalls her saying, "there's hope."
Twenty-two years later and suffering from brain damage, Terri is now the subject of a similar debate ? and so is the question of just what choice she would make about her life and death.
She has not been fully conscious since collapsing in 1990 at age 26 from what doctors have said was a potassium imbalance that stopped her heart.
In contrast to Meyer's recollection, her husband, Michael Schiavo, and members of his family have said Terri told them she would not want to be kept alive artificially if she were incapable of getting better.
Michael Schiavo petitioned in 1998 to remove Terri's feeding tube. The courts have ruled Terri is in a persistent vegetative state and last week approved the request. But after six days without food or water, the tube was restored Wednesday by order of Gov. Jeb Bush, who acted on a bill rushed through the Legislature.
Amid the swirl of court filings and the cries of protesters, family and friends say people seem to have forgotten that Terri is a person. That before people became obsessed with whether she should die, she had a life.
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Theresa Marie Schindler was born Dec. 3, 1963, to a well-to-do family in the Philadelphia suburbs. The oldest of three children, she was always shy and retiring.
Her mother, Mary, says Terri would spend hours in her room, arranging her more than 100 stuffed animals into a private zoo. Always heavy, Terri hated sports, except horseback riding, which fed her love for animals.
Terri never said anything about her weight, but her mother always sensed it bothered her.
"She cried a lot when she went to get clothes," Mrs. Schindler says.
Terri didn't go to school dances, not even her senior prom. Instead, she and her friends would go to the movies. Meyer remembers they went to see "An Officer and a Gentleman" four times in one day.
She was a huge fan of the TV show "Starsky and Hutch." Sue Pickwell figures she and Terri wrote hundreds of letters to co-star Paul Michael Glaser, and "I remember the excitement when they finally wrote back, or their people wrote back."
Terri was naive and somewhat gullible. When she couldn't get her Christmas tree to stand up straight one year, her father, Bob, told her to take it back to the lot and have them put it in the "tree straightener."
"She called me about an hour later and said, 'What did you do to me? They all laughed at me.'"
Terri has always been very tenderhearted, especially when it came to animals.
She came home crying one night, saying she thought she'd run over a rabbit or squirrel. Knowing she would be devastated if she saw the animal the next day, her brother Bobby went out and threw it in the bushes, then assured Terri he'd found nothing.
When her yellow Labrador collapsed, Terri performed mouth-to-nose resuscitation on him, her mother says.
"She was puffing away for all she was worth," she says. "He died in her arms."
Her junior year, Mrs. Schindler took Terri to the doctor to ask about her weight, which had ballooned to over 200 pounds on a 5-foot-3 frame. The doctor told her Terri would lose the weight when she was ready.
After graduation from Archbishop Wood Catholic School, she was ready. On a structured diet program, she got her weight down to 140 to 150 pounds initially.
"Terri has always been beautiful from the inside out," Meyer says. "And then when she lost all the weight, she really became quite beautiful on the outside as well. What was inside she allowed to shine out at that point."
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Terri enrolled in Bucks County Community College with the goal of working with animals, and there she met Michael Schiavo. Mrs. Schindler says Terri went head over heels.
"It was the first guy who ever, ever paid any attention to her," she says.
Meyer says Terri talked about how gorgeous Schiavo was and how he was always telling her she was beautiful. He was the "Officer and a Gentleman" to a chubby girl who had lived vicariously through Danielle Steele romances, Meyer believes.
After a little more than a year of dating, the two were married in 1984. Terri wrote to her favorite entertainer, John Denver, to ask him to sing at her wedding, but he never replied.
By a year later, Terri had gained a little of her weight back. Meyer says Terri told her that Schiavo had seen her high school graduation picture and warned her "if she ever got fat like that again he'd divorce her."
"I said, 'He's probably kidding,'" she says. "But it was upsetting to her."
Scott Schiavo, Michael's brother, says it was the Schindlers who rode Terri about her weight. He says her brother sometimes showed one of Terri's old driver's licenses for a laugh.
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In 1986, the couple moved to Florida. Schiavo managed restaurants, and Terri got a clerk's job at an insurance agency.
Mrs. Schindler says Terri began complaining that Schiavo never wanted to go anywhere. When she would go visit her parents or a friend from work, Mrs. Schindler says, Schiavo would check the mileage on her car.
"She could go to those places," she says. "Any other place, he gave her crap."
Jackie Rhodes, who worked and socialized with Terri, says Schiavo would frequently call his wife at work and leave her in tears. She says she and Terri had each discussed divorcing their husbands and moving in together.
"We actually discussed how much we could afford and where we would want to live," she says.
But Scott Schiavo, Michael's brother, says he wasn't aware of any trouble in the marriage.
And when the couple went to his grandmother's funeral, Scott Schiavo says, Terri told him she would not want to be put on a respirator, as the grandmother had been.
"Terri turned around and looked right in my eyes, and I can still see her sitting there on my lefthand side," he recalls, repeating testimony he gave in court. "'If I'm gone, just let me go.'"
Bobby Schindler says his sister began talking about leaving Schiavo in 1989. "She said she wished she had the strength or the energy or the know-how to get a divorce," he says.
By this time, Terri's weight had dropped below 120 and Mrs. Schindler says she confronted her daughter about how thin she was getting.
Terri's reply: "I eat, Mom. I eat."
Potassium disorders and heart failure have been linked to anorexia, but the family doesn't think Terri had a real eating disorder. Doctors have never been able to say with certainty what caused the collapse.
The day before she collapsed, Terri had complained to her mother that she was having menstrual problems, and that she wasn't satisfied with her doctor. Mrs. Schindler said they'd get together after the weekend and find her a new one.
They never got to.
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Terri is 39 now, living in a hospice in Pinellas Park. After working so hard to come out of her shell, she spends most of her days alone in a single room.
She still has her "stuffies," only not as many as before. Just a couple of stuffed dogs and a pair of plush pumpkins her mother hung up for Halloween.
Her family says she laughs when they play John Denver for her and follows them with her eyes. Doctors say those are unconscious responses.
Michael Schiavo, who has since become a registered nurse and has a daughter with his girlfriend, could not be reached for comment. But Scott Schiavo says his brother is merely trying to let Terri die with dignity.
"When it sunk into Mike's head, Mike decided to stop being selfish. 'I can't bring her back, and I've got to grant her wish.'" he says. "The bottom line is that Mike never wanted this to be a side show."
Her family and friends say they love her, too, and think she can get better with therapy. And they are just as convinced that she would not want to be let go.
One thing they are sure of. She would not like all this attention and fuss over her.
"She's not a cause," Meyer says. "She's a person. A very special person."
But, like everything else in her life, that is beyond her control.
___
EDITOR'S NOTE: Allen G. Breed is the AP's Southeast regional writer, based in Raleigh, N.C.
Well, you're very gracious. Actually, I think only two are accurate - numbers 4 and 5.
But, who's counting? ;-)
Nobody to date has offered me any reason, other than corrupt financial or criminal motives, for Michael not to divorce Terri. Can you offer one?
I agree. Especially #5. For all the obvious reasons. ;-)
But, who's counting? ;-)
Well, some may be, but I'm not. :-)
On the other hand, her medical records would very likely confirm the much more recent actions on his part that are alleged in affidavits, and quite possibly show some more besides. They would might also provide clear and compelling proof that he purjured himself when seeking to have his wife put to death.
As for the financial records, Terri's $750K trust fund was supposed to be used for her treatment. According to Michael, there's only about $50K left. If Michael spent any of the trust fund money on things that did not serve Terri's best interest, he could go to prison for embezzlement.
What's more interesting than any crimes these records would show, is what the existence of such crimes would imply. Since the only way Michael could ever expect to get away with any of these crimes would be if he remained guardian until she'd been dead long enough that the records could be requested destroyed. If Michael wanted to marry his lover without his crimes being exposed, that would imply that he wanted Terri dead for criminal reasons. His actions to kill her then would be attempted murder.
I would suggest that you stop heroically trying to extend your life by administering yourself food and water.
His actions as a whole do not show concern for his wife's wishes, well-being, or comfort. I suppose it's conceivable that a man who's a pathological liar could still somehow tell the truth about such a thing, but it sure seems doubtful.
Well, initially her trust fund from what I understand. But Michael didn't like seeing "his" money going down the drain, so when his present lawyer Felos offered to let Terri stay in a hospice for free, Michael accepted despite the rules that forbid non-terminal patients from staying in taxpayer-funded hospices.
Bingo! We have a winner! Pray the new judge hears this and the new GAL.
Horrific? You bet. And read Carla Iyers affidavit. That nurse along with two others, apparently now deceased, has astounding things to say about Terri's competence, neglect and the hatred Michael displayed towards Terri. Openly.
You've got that exactly backwards.
When you start allowing a sanctimoniously liberal cadre of judicial elites override the legislative branch, you open a Pandora's box of horrors.
Actually, the horrors have already happened. Witness:
1. The Warren court's school prayer decision.
2. Roe v. Wade
3. The Florida Supreme Court's attempt to hand the 2000 election to Gore.
4. The Ninth Circuit Court's many attempts to thwart the will of the people, including blocking many popularly elected referenda and banning the Pledge of Allegiance
5. A panel of the Ninth Circuit attempting to block the fully constitutional California recall vote.
They've tried. IIRC, Judge Greer asked that five doctors evaluate her. Two were appointed by Felos, one by Greer himself, and two by the Schindlers (Terri's parrents). Three of the judges said Terri was vegetative; two did not. I bet you'll never guess which three and which two.
BTW, have you seen the videos of Terri? In addition to the ones on the www.terrisfight.org website, which I would guess were taken before Michael got vindictive, there's another one called terri-cable.mov (Quicktime) which was taken on 8-11-2001. That one's not on Terri's website because a judge (IIRC the same Judge Greer as has corrupted everything else in the case) ruled that it was taken in violation of a court order forbidding anyone from videotaping Terri.
[BTW, I wonder if a sound super 8 camera would have violated the order?]
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