Replies

Not to change the subject, let's go back and ponder this St. Pete newspaper story from Nov. 15, 1990 -- 9 months after the incident. Generally, the earlier the testimony, the more reliable the memory, so let's think out loud about this.

Mike Schiavo vividly remembers the morning of Feb. 25. Usually a late sleeper, Schiavo awakened suddenly about 5 a.m. and started to get out of bed.

"For some strange reason that day, I was just taking the covers off, and then she hit the floor," he said.

Schiavo's 26-year-old wife, Terri, had suddenly - and as yet inexplicably - suffered a loss of potassium in her body that caused her heart to stop beating. She was rushed to the hospital.

The first thing we can say is that the final paragraph is false. If Terri had suffered cardiac arrest due to low potassium, her whole body, including the heart itself, would have been damaged by loss of oxygen ("global ischemia"). But her heart and other organs below the neck were unaffected. The damage due to lack of oxygen was only in her brain. It was not caused by cardiac arrest but by some blockage of oxygen to the brain.

What else can we glean here? Schiavo awoke at 5:00 a.m. despite being a late sleeper. No reason given for him to wake up so unusually, especially since he had worked late at the restaurant. And what a striking coincidence -- he wakes up just before his wife "hits the floor." Was he awake all along? Was the "sleep" a murderous period of time he wants to block out of his mind?

The ambulance got there when, 5:40? What happened in the forty minutes after Terri "hit the floor" and the arrival of emergency medical people?

At 5:00 a.m. in winter it's dark out. This was nighttime. How did he know that she hit the floor? Did he see her? Was a light on? Did he hear her? (But there could have been other explanations of a sound.) Why didn't he say? For someone who "remembers vividly," he's omitting every detail.

"For some strange reason..." -- what kind of witness is that?
"...that day," -- it wasn't day, it was night.
"I was just taking the covers off, and then she hit the floor." -- weird.

He doesn't describe the room, give details, say where is wife is, what she's doing, what he sees, what he hears. All he mentions is covers. What did he do next? Did he give her CPR? Nothing about calling 911 either. Nothing about the ambulance arriving, or Bobby, or going to the ER. The most traumatic night in his life and he is a clam. The reporter isn't asking any questions, either.

This does not make sense. Any other insights or views? What is he hiding?