By Susan Brinkmann
CS&T Correspondent
"They're calling her the 'Iron Lady,'" said Mary Schindler said about her daughter, Terri Schindler-Schiavo, who narrowly escaped death last week when the Florida legislature voted to overturn a court order to withdraw the woman's feeding tube. "It's unbelievable how well she did throughout the ordeal," Mrs. Schindler said.
"Even the doctors were amazed at how hydrated she stayed. Her skin was so good. I honesty believe it was all the prayers. The people outside the hospice came from all over the country. They stayed here night and day." One could hear a remnant of the acute anxiety this mother must have felt during those six days when her helpless daughter was slowly starving to death.
"I'm just glad they're feeding her again," Mrs. Schindler said often during the conversation. "She looks good. Her face is filling out. I just hope she's okay." Thus far there seems to be no lasting damage from the forced starvation Terri endured for more than a week, but the family's battle for her life is far from over. "The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) jumped in on the other side over the weekend. This is not over by a long shot," Mrs. Schindler said.
"We need an investigation. There's just so much that we don't have answers for. We still don't know why Terri passed out that night. She didn't have a heart attack. Two doctors have said that -- one of ours and one of theirs. There's a reason why she passed out, and we've got to find out."
This is only one of many questions that have never been answered in this case.
Why did Michael Schiavo keep his wife's medical records sealed for 10 years? Why did he refuse to allow her even the most minor rehabilitation, even though he won tens of thousands of dollars in a medical malpractice lawsuit that was supposed to be used for exactly this purpose?
These suspicions were only reinforced during the six-day long starvation, when Michael Schiavo ordered his wife's body cremated immediately after her death and denied the family access to their dying daughter.
He even refused to allow a priest to give her the last rites. Such cold-hearted behavior has not endeared him to the American public and forced him to make an appearance on CNN's Larry King Live to help bolster his image.
During the interview, Schiavo repeatedly accused the Schindlers of wanting money and that by pulling his wife's feeding tube, he was only following her wishes, something that he admits no one can prove because she left no living will.
CNN ran the video of Terri interacting with her mother several times during the show and even Larry King appeared less than convinced that she was in a persistent vegetative state.
Schiavo and his attorney, George Felos, insisted the tape was four hours long and was edited to show only those moments when Terri appeared to respond. However, the credibility of this argument was completely destroyed when Larry King offered to independently videotape Terri and was turned down flat.
Felos, a right-to-die, activist who has handled almost a dozen euthanasia cases in the last 10 years, proceeded to read from the reports of several doctors who believed Terri was in a vegetative state.
What he never told the viewing public was that there is an equally long list of notable doctors who disagree with the diagnosis that Terri is in a persistent vegetative state.
In fact, the medical profession itself admits this state is commonly misdiagnosed.
In a study published in the June 1991 Archives of Neurology, it was found that of 84 patients with a firm diagnosis of PVS, 58 percent recovered consciousness within three years.
Some patients who recovered said they were aware and emotionally responsive to everything going on around them, even though they were unable to communicate.
Several doctors appeared with the Schindler family in an Oct. 24 press conference, one of whom, Dr. William Hammesfahr, is a nationally recognized expert on PVS and a Nobel prize nominee.
He said that Terri's eyes were clearly able to fixate on her family and that she tried to follow simple voice commands from her parents. "She looks at you, she can follow commands," Hammesfahr said during the press conference. "This is a case about a judicial system making an error."
Felos and Schiavo have paid little or no attention to any facts that are unsupportive of their position and have remained determined to end Terri's life.
In fact, when the Florida state legislature issued the Oct. 21 order to reinsert Terri's feeding tube, the first thing Schiavo and Felos did was file a motion with Circuit Court Judge George Greer to ask for an injunction to overturn the order.
Greer refused on technical grounds, and Felos refiled with State Circuit Judge W. Douglas Baird, who also refused it.
Felos now has five days to file additional arguments in a revised petition to overturn the order.
These last-minute efforts to halt the feeding caused confusion at Woodside Hospice, where Terri was staying. An executive order from the governor's office was received by both fax and official delivery, yet hospice workers claimed there was no medical staff available to reinsert the tube.
Terri was then rushed by ambulance to Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater, where the medical staff again refused to comply, but this time they made their reasons known — because they had been threatened with litigation by Michael Schiavo's attorneys if any medical care was given to Terri.
The hospital had to be repeatedly told that they must either comply with the governor's order or risk losing their funding. At 9:30 p.m., approximately four hours after the order was issued, Terri Schiavo began to be rehydrated. Michael Schiavo at first refused visitation to Terri's family, not allowing them to see her until the following day. By then, he had clandestinely removed her from the hospital and returned her to the hospice.
This occurred only hours after the Schindlers' attorney, Pat Anderson, expressed fears that Michael would remove Terri from the hospital before her condition was medically stabilized, something he has done in the past.
Anderson was not surprised when she heard he had done exactly that. "She should be in intensive care at the hospital," Anderson told LifeSite news, "but the fact is, Michael's her guardian, and if he withdraws his consent for them to treat her, there's nothing they can do. Their hands are tied. This tells you a lot about him."
She pointed out that it was precisely this kind of behavior that makes the appointment of a new legal guardian so crucial. "We've got to have a guardian ad litem to put a stop to that kind of high jinks because [Michael's] primary objective is to kill her."
"Terri's Bill," the legislation passed by the Florida legislature, included instructions for the court to appoint a guardian ad litem for Terri who would oversee legal matters in the case. The appointment has to be acceptable to both Schiavo and the Schindlers. Thus far, the two sides have not agreed, which allows the court to appoint its choice, Dr. Jay Wolfson, a professor of health and law at Stetson University in St. Petersburg, Fla.
The Schindlers oppose him because he has already made his opinions known about the Terri Schiavo case.
Her medical care, however, remains in the hands of Michael Schiavo, a man who has consistently denied her rehabilitation for 13 years.
October 23, 2003
Catholic Standard & Times