Posted on 10/20/2003 3:24:25 AM PDT by Coral Snake
What about Terri's trust fund? Is everything kosher there?
If it can be shown that there are criminal irregularities there which would implicate all three members of the Schiavo Triumvirate in a conspiracy to commit embezzlement, and which could only be concealed by Terri's death, that would imply a criminal motive for wanting Terri dead, right? And what's criminal motive plus attempt to kill?
The most severe thing I can think to pin on him is multiple counts of attempted murder; that doesn't get Old Sparky, unfortunately [actually, nothing does--they use the needle now]. Can you think of any capital crimes to pin on him?
http://members.aol.com/catspark/story.html
It's about a young woman, Theresa Chesnut, who suffered a serious back injury because of an automobile accident.
Her broken back was not diagnosed, and she suffered quite a long time before a doctor finally made the connection between some symptoms of the deterioration of her extremities' nerves and ... "there must be something wrong here," if you will.
Here is a link that may help folks to understand what life is like for people who are severely disabled:
http://www.oceanofhope.com/manage/Spinal.asp
I was reminded of Theresa, because of Terri's rehab doctors apparent curiosity about the state of her bone structure.
I don't think that the doctors would have ordered a full body bone scan, for the sake of her knees.
Children who have actually been beaten and have, upon presentation, injuries about their knees --- while otherwise the doctors have no indication of abuse, nor reason to believe such --- are nowadays regarded with more careful circumspection. In which cases, doctors will look for more to rule out abuse.
The story about the bone scan and why the doctors did it, sounds like so many of the "features" of Terri's case, where Michael Schiavo says one thing to explain the other, which is his cover up his beating his wife.
Terri's doctors were looking for evidence of damage to her bones anywhere.
Doctors do not, as a rule, make such a widespread search on the basis of knee injuries.
My sister Terri
By Rus Cooper-Dowda
iCan contributor
If Terri Schiavo were not disabled and announced that she planned to kill herself in public, officials would line up banning and condemning it like they did the planned imaginary suicide at a recent rock concert.
But because she is a person with a disability in an isolated room at an out-of-the-way hospice site, the only officials lining up to comment (until Jeb Bush recently) are doing so to affirm killing her.
It is worth noting that in Pinellas County, Fla., where Terri lives -- doing to any animal what is now planned for Terri would be reason for jail time and mountains of adverse publicity.
Indeed, the state of Florida regularly takes young people from their parents permanently for doing what hospice wants to do to Terri legally.
I am in the exceptional education field now partly because I was inspired by Terri and her family during the October, 2002, hearing that I covered as a journalist.
I attend a lot of meetings about students with emotional and behavioral disabilities. Many of them have been or are currently dealing with levels of neglect that fully explain their public presentations of constant challenge and full-tilt anger.
Schools deal with the resultant student negative response all the time.
Classroom furniture and material are regularly thrown at me. Daily I am called the vilest profanity you can imagine by my students.
Why is this so?
My great crime is that I am trying to help them tap into their own power for good and positive movement -- both individually and as members in community.
The reason I have gotten so good at ducking and selective hearing is that I care about them all -- a lot and deeply.
I know that specific students are not angry at Ms. CD (what they call me instead of Ms. Cooper-Dowda) or even at the Rev. Rus Cooper-Dowda -- as I am known in my other public role.
I know the reason I now have to evaluate all decoration in light of whether it might hurt someone if tossed. It is because many of my students with disabilities have a history of not getting what they need when they need it.
Just like Ms. Schiavo.
She is probably just as angry and genuinely puzzled as I was during the time I was in her situation.
Were it not for a single health care professional who believed I was in there and of value, my neglected state would have killed me -- and my son, too.
So, we all bemoan and deal with the fact that so many of us are not getting our most basic needs met. Yet we move to make sure that happens to Terri as scheduled.
I grieve as a person with disabilities, a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, a reverend and a teacher.
While I am left wondering why a stage at a concert will get your death banned; yet a bed and a wheelchair will get you starvation.
Rus Cooper-Dowda is an online minister and writer who lives in St. Petersburg, Fla. Cooper-Dowda has lupus, a degenerative disc disease and chronic pain. She is attending the Schiavo hearing as a representative for Not Dead Yet.
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