Posted on 03/20/2005 6:06:29 PM PST by Former Military Chick
He's been vilified on Web sites and talk shows. He's been called a wife-abuser, an adulterer, a money-grubbing murderer.
Death threats have been left in his mailbox.
Throngs of protesters have waved signs and chanted outside his house in Clearwater, Fla., and they have gathered again.
Sometimes, even Michael Schiavo's friends have wondered why, in the face of all that, he didn't just walk away.
It would have been easier for him to relinquish guardianship of his severely incapacitated wife, Terri, to her parents.
So why not give it up, leave Terri's feeding tube in, let her parents care for her? After all, he is living with another woman now and they have two children.
"Because he's sticking by what he promised," Scott Schiavo, Michael's brother, said in a recent interview. "He wants to honor the last thing he can give to her."
Physicians have testified that Terri Schiavo is in a persistent vegetative state and will never improve. Michael Schiavo has said his wife told him she would not want to live like this.
Her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, formerly of Huntingdon Valley, say she is responsive and can be helped. They say that, as a Catholic, she would choose life at all costs.
On Friday, Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, which has been in place for all but two brief stretches of time since she collapsed in 1990, was removed. It could be brief this time as well. The House is expected today to consider a Senate bill that would allow Schiavo's parents to take their case to federal court.
Throughout the protracted legal battle, the Schindlers have made their religious views, their personal anguish, and their mistrust of Michael Schiavo a public cause.
Intensely private, according to his family and friends, Michael Schiavo has rarely spoken publicly about the matter, out of respect for his wife's privacy. Through his brother, he declined to be interviewed for this story.
However, in recent days he has gone on national TV to reiterate that Terri would not have wanted to live like this and criticize politicians for getting involved in a deeply personal matter.
His brother and friends also have decided that it's time to speak up. The mudslinging, they said, has become too ugly, too nasty.
"I have a friend who I think has been maligned," said Russ Hyden of Gainesville, Fla.
"We're tired of it. We're done. It's time people know who he is," said Scott Schiavo, who lives in Levittown near where the brothers were raised.
The thing is, even if Michael Schiavo wins the final court battle, and Terri Schiavo's feeding tube is removed, he really hasn't won at all, Scott said.
"He's already lost," he said. "He's already lost Terri."
Social with friends, but reclusive
His brother and friends describe Michael Schiavo as social within his circle of friends, but otherwise almost reclusive. Except for the No Trespassing sign on his front lawn and the armed guards he's occasionally hired to protect his home, he's tried to grasp whatever shreds of normalcy he can.
His friends don't see the demon that protesters who have hurled insults at him do.
Wilma Mackay, a 65-year-old retiree from Palm Harbor, Fla., who watched her husband and brother die of cancer, sees a man who is "the epitome of loyalty."
Bonnie Rowley of Largo, Fla., a friend for about a decade, sees someone who "stands strong on what he believes in, and that is Terri Schiavo. If I needed a health-care advocate, he'd be my first choice. I know he'd be there till the end, and he'd give it one hell of a fight."
Michael Schiavo, 41, was the youngest of five boys. Six-foot-seven, athletic and model-handsome, he met Terri Schindler at Bucks County Community College in 1982.
She had graduated from Archbishop Wood High School in Warminster, he from Woodrow Wilson High School in Bristol Township.
Married two years later, they moved to Florida, where, early on the morning of Feb. 25, 1990, Michael Schiavo has testified, he awoke to the sound of a thud and found Terri on the floor in the hallway, unconscious.
They had been married a little over five years.
He has spent three times as long - the last 15 years - first trying to bring her back, then trying to let her go, his friends and brother say.
In the beginning, they say, Schiavo was relentless in his search for his wife's cure. She underwent various therapies.
He rented a house large enough for him and Terri's parents, who had moved to the area.
He made sure she was dressed every day. He applied her makeup and dabbed on perfume, Rowley said.
He went to school to become a nurse, "because he wanted to take care of Terri," Scott said. "He swore that he could get Terri better... . One doctor said: 'Mike, you know what? There's nothing else we can do. The next time Terri gets sick, why don't you just let nature take its course?' And Mike wouldn't do it."
Death and defining moments
Many of the defining moments of Michael Schiavo's life have revolved around death.
In 1988, his grandmother was hospitalized with a serious illness. She had signed a "do not resuscitate" order, Scott Schiavo said, but when she worsened in the middle of the night, no one looked at her records.
"It took them I don't know how long to get her breathing again. They stuck a ventilator down her throat." To little avail. "She was brain-dead," Scott Schiavo recalled.
All the family could do was wait until medications that kept her heart beating wore off. It took a day and a half, he said.
After the funeral, the family went to the Buck Hotel in Feasterville. Scott and Terri were sitting next to each other at a large table, where the conversation turned to how upset their grandmother would have been at her final hours.
Terri turned to him, Scott Schiavo said, "and she said, 'Not me, no way, I don't want that.' She says, 'If I'm ever like that, oh, don't let me. Pull that tube out of me.' " Scott Schiavo said he testified about the incident in 2000.
Several years after Terri collapsed, Michael Schiavo's mother was diagnosed with cancer.
Eventually, medical complications required the removal of her feeding tube, Scott said. "It's not like we said: 'Turn it off.' "
She was kept "peaceful and out of pain" until she died, Scott said.
Then their father died.
Eventually, Scott said, his brother realized he would have to let Terri go, too.
The Schindlers - who did not respond to a request for an interview made through their lawyer - have been distrustful of his motives partly because, they have said, no one mentioned Terri's wishes until years after her collapse.
But, Scott said, "it's not something you think about while Mike's trying to save her life... . It's something that people do when there's nothing left to do."
This particular fight has not come without a price.
"I give Mike all the credit in the world, because I would have snapped already. I know how bad it hurts me when I hear people talking about him and downing him," Scott Schiavo said.
Most of all, Scott said, "the thing that tears him up is he worries at nighttime, if he's working. He's afraid for the kids and Jodi."
Love and moral dilemmas
Michael Schiavo met his girlfriend, identified in court records as Jodi Centonze, about a decade ago.
Initially, Rowley, who was Centonze's friend, didn't know what to think. The court battles had not yet heated up, but she knew the situation with Terri.
When Rowley met Michael Schiavo, what she noticed first was his "great smile, a gentle smile."
Gradually, her respect grew. "He could have stepped off and divorced Terri five years ago, when this really hit the court. And got married and started his family that way," Rowley said.
The couple has two toddlers - a daughter and a son. Michael Schiavo works in the medical unit of the Pinellas County Jail.
Both Centonze and Michael Schiavo had to face "their own moral dilemmas as far as having children out of wedlock," Rowley said. "But the two of them weren't getting any younger... So does that make him a bad person because he did that? Did he fluff his responsibility to Terri at any point? No."
It is Centonze, Scott Schiavo said, who now does all Terri's laundry. "She's been unbelievable. She supported Mike in everything he did... . She's gone with Mike to visit Terri. She's helped Mike clean Terri up."
Centonze has been a flashpoint for Michael Schiavo's critics who think it is a reason to disqualify him to be Terri's guardian. His living with Centonze "abrogates the covenant of marriage," said Rob Schenck, president of the National Clergy Council, who was among the demonstrators outside the hospice on Friday.
Looking back on it now, Scott thinks his brother "just wanted somebody to love him." He equates it with a widower who remarries, "but it doesn't mean that that person stopped loving their spouse that passed on. Mike was very lonely. I mean, he was a 26-year-old kid" when Terri collapsed.
"It's hard to imagine the circumstances he lived under," friend Russ Hyden said. "There was no closure, yet there was no companionship either. That's the worst possible scenario."
Hyden had met Schiavo in 1991. Hyden's pregnant wife had been diagnosed with cancer. A mutual friend thought they "might have something in common. And we did."
But it was more than that they were both going through "life-changing ordeals," Hyden said. "We both liked to play a little golf. We enjoyed each other's company."
Hyden scoffs at the accusations about Schiavo taking the malpractice money awarded to Terri. "If there was so much money, where was that money when I first met Mike? Why wasn't he driving a big car and living in a big home? He was driving a Jeep and living in an apartment."
Hyden's wife lived for almost three more years. He and Schiavo spoke or saw each other several times a week.
"He was always great with my kids," Hyden said. Hyden's daughter was 2, his son 7, and Michael brought them gifts.
"He spent a great deal of time helping me put my family back together," Hyden said. "Perhaps it was because his had fallen so tragically apart."
Sympathy for Terri's parents
In a way, Michael Schiavo has said he can sympathize with Terri's parents. "I have children, and, you know, I couldn't even fathom what it would be like to lose a child," he said in an interview on Nightline last week.
But, he continued, "they know the condition Terri is in. They were there in the beginning. They heard the doctors. They know that Terri's in a persistent vegetative state. They testified to that at the original trial. Fifteen years - you've got to come to grips with it sometime."
He said Terri would "always be a part of my life.
"And to sit here and be called a murderer and an adulterer by people that don't know me, and a governor stepping into my personal, private life, who doesn't know me either? And using his personal gain to win votes, just like the legislators are doing right now, pandering to the religious right, to the people up there, the antiabortion people, standing outside of Tallahassee?
"What kind of government is this? This is a human being. This is not right."
In a way, Michael Schiavo's world still revolves around Terri. He calls every day and visits several times a week, Scott Schiavo said. He can still talk to her, even if she doesn't talk back.
Michael Schiavo yesterday told CNN that he had a "sense of relief" now that the feeding tube had been removed and he promised to "stay by her side" till the end.
"This is her time...," he said. "I will love her and I will hold her hand."
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Contact staff writer Sandy Bauers at 610-701-7635 or sbauers@phillynews.com.
Congress tries again to stop Schiavo death
Timeline of the Terri Schiavo Case
Recent court rulings and other materials related to the Terri Schiavo case:
5 Wishes a Site that helps one prepare if one is unable to speak for themselves.
Randjuke, note that this is the bone scan report. This is the one other Freeper physicians have looked at and so far as I know, this is all that's accessible. Terri's actual radiographs, if that's the right word, have not been released to my knowledge. It is at least possible they would become available if Michael Schiavo's legal guardianship over his wife is ended. He has used his guardianship to keep her medical records locked up.
ZOT.
Yes, and I'm also a big poopy head.
Congress is now saying that you have the fundamental right to care no matter how dire the situation, no matter your ability to pay for it.
In other words, we just got an endorsement for universal health coverage from congress.
Question to those who support this law. If Terri Schiavo was a single adult waitress who was orphaned and in this condition, would you be willing to pay millions of dollars to keep her alive?
Wait a minute, the "kill Terri" crowd all talk about how she won't suffer from the starvation, yet she is somehow suffering by having the feeding tube?
What is this lady smokin'? If she needed a health-care advocate, Michael Schiavo would be her first choice? Dear Lord, help us all.
I have a sister in law who's a big poopy head.
If you have something to say to me, say it...you can FREEPMAIL me if you want.
Not to mention the health industry taking every penny you had.
As soon as any article that doesn't condmen him to hell is posted, people start trashing him and there is effectivly NO DISCUSSION.
If you dare to ask a question, you're called a murderer, or told to go back to DU (Yes, a million people have called me a troll and told me to get over to DU).
And if you are interested in the legal proceedings and ask questions about it, someone will come along and jump you and call you a euthansia lover.
I remember when conservatives use to be for the rule of law; I remember when conservatives use to be for the sanctity of marriage; I remember when conservatives use to be opposed to activist judges.
And I remember when people on FR could voice their opinions without being repeatedly drummed off threads; my Freepmail box is FULL of pages and pages of emails from people who are AFRAID to post on these threads to voice their opinions because of the vicousness of the attacks, just like I was on this very thread.
I am of the opinion that this is a BAD bill, if it gets past the USSC; it opens the door to anybody that you know butting into your life.
And I remember when conservatives thought the government should get out of our lives.
Howlin, I just wanted again say I appreciate your point of view. You carefully crafted and worded an accurate observation.
It is always my hope that we all can treat each other respect and dignity even when we disagree. The lines are drawn and I wonder if folks will use this issue to define who they will and will not debate with on future news items?
No, it wouldn't.
#570 Darn, looks like I missed a good one.
The Congress was established to pass laws for the people.
Not for one person.
The Congress was not established to review cases. They are a legislative body, not the Supreme Court. Congressmembers should be evaluating and considering laws for PEOPLE, not one person.
And re: passing laws...
I don't want Congress passing a law to keep one person alive anymore than I want Congress passing a law to keep one person dead.
Medical choices are individual and family considerations, not to be 'considered' or evaluated by the legislative body. If the legislative body was so concerned, why didn't they get involved in this matter months BEFORE the feeding tube was removed?
Thanks for the link. Looks like some good material to read. There are many point of views, aren't there?
Fifteen years is a long time....
I have been puzzled by the 'conservative' response as well.
As Christian and a military man, I am puzzled by the viciousness expressed by those who 'choose life' towards those who have other reasoning that could at least be respected.
My wife and I pray for the families and the people and the judges and the courts involved.
The rift is sad, and the involvement of the legislative body is frightening.
"The rift is sad, and the involvement of the legislative body is frightening."
Does the involvement of the judiciary (i.e. Greer) trouble you in the least?
They were waiting for the legal system at the state level to work. You are missing the big picture here. The Executive Branch and the Congress have ganged up on the Judiciary. A positive development. The blood of Terri is on the Judiciary. I think this is just a parting shot across the bow. The Judiciary is going down.
OK, the bone scan. As another poster pointed out, the actual images are not available, all there is is the radiologist's interpretation, so what I am doing is giving an opinion of an opinion so to speak. All a bone scan really tells you is if there is inflammation of the bone or surrounding tissues. It doesn't tell you why the inflammation is there, although as the radiologist tries to do, you can make an educated guess.
The first question is why the scan was ordered: "evaluate for trauma". The doc who ordered it had some reason to suspect trauma - why I don't know, maybe somebody can fill in this part. It's dated 3/91 which is over a year after she was incapacitated. I have real trouble extrapolating anything on this scan back to 2/90, if that's what people are thinking. The radiologists I work with are generally able to discriminate between old and recent injuries - this radiologist makes it sound like these are recent - he desribes the radionuclide uptake as "intense". As a bone heals up the bone scan would show less activity, I would think a year-old fracture would be described as an "old" or "healing" fracture, if it even showed up at all.
Nonetheless this bone scan is really abnormal, and there are two areas especially that would seem to me to be likely traumatic. One is the ribs, the other is the right femur. She could have had broken ribs from CPR but still have inflammation a year later? That would be odd. Did she get CPR? The most likely explanation of inflammation here would be an injury - as the radiologist says it could be metastatic cancer but we know she didn't have that. Here plain X-rays would be very helpful but they're not provided.
The vertebral compression fractures may or may not be traumatic, you can injure them in traffic accidents, falls, etc but I would think a strong possibility is that after a year she had probably developed osteoporosis and had some spontaneous fractures. These hurt quite a bit, I think I had read that she seemed in pain at this point but I'm going by memory here.
The areas of the sacroiliac joints, knees and ankles seem unlikely to be traumatic but more likely some other kind of inflammation, like rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, etc. I haven't seen any reports that Terri has those problems. I have seen these areas described as fractures on some pro-Terri websites but think that would be very unlikely. Here again plain X-rays would show a fracture a lot better. So I would say I don't have an explanation for the inflammation in those areas but doubt trauma.
The other odd thing is that several pro-Terri websites are saying this shows evidence of head injury, when the scan doesn't mention the head at all. I have also read much discussion of neck injury - this scan doesn't mention the neck at all.
So overall the scan poses more questions than it solves, it's confusing. To read it you'd think the radiologist is blaming all of this on trauma - he says "the patient has a history of trauma" which he doesn't elaborate on. Did he know she had trauma before he read the scan or is this his conclusion? It's a little sloppy but I'm sure when he read it he didn't think millions of people would dissect his report.
A much better opinion could be given with access to all of the X-rays, CTs, physical exams,histories, etc. but unfortunately they aren't available to us. If you want my opinion it's that there are things on the scan that are almost certainly traumatic, but other things that are almost certainly not. Sorry it's not much of an answer.
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