Terri's husband isn't the enemy, guardian says

Orlando Sentinel ^ | February 25, 2005 | Mike Thomas

[EveningStar]

Wolfson's report is based on court files, depositions, medical records and interviews with everyone involved.

That said, I begin with the most explosive allegation:

Did Michael try to kill Terri?

Wolfson laughs. "No!"

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Wolfson's report states that in the four years after her collapse, Michael "had insistently held to the premise that Theresa could recover and the evidence is incontrovertible that he gave his heart and soul to her treatment and care . . . In late autumn of 1990, following months of therapy and testing and formal diagnoses of persistent vegetative state with no evidence of improvement, Michael took Theresa to California, where she received an experimental thalamic stimulator implant in her brain. Michael remained in California caring for Theresa during a period of several months."

Says Wolfson now: "Michael was adoring of her. One nursing home complained he was hostile and abusive of the staff in championing her care. She was immaculately kept. In 13 years, she never had one bedsore."

[llama hunter]

oh, first time I heard about the bulimia angle, cardiac arrest makes perfect sense if that was the case

and people with food disorders are very secretive, it is entirely conceivable that the sister didn't know....at the time, anyway

and there are a number of very classic physical symptoms if you are bulimic ( I saw it on CSI, sorry)

but is it true the husband is insisting on no autopsy, why, it would put so much to rest......not the least of which is the public perception of him

of course if she was bulimic you could blame him, maybe he was like Prince Charles, a cold rigid brute......

[Lady Heron]

Maybe, just maybe, he realized, because unlike any of you, he sees her everyday, she's not going to recover.

There are 2 people out there that want to care for her whether he does or not. Doing the right thing in this situation is not killing her in a horrendous tortuous manner, but divorcing her and giving her up to those who do care, the next best thing would be to put a gun to her head and be honest and quick about killing her. We put dogs out of their misery in a nicer manner than they are going to make her die.

[UCANSEE2]

I read the link that led to court documents a month or so ago so maybe I've gotten the name wrong. It was her best friend and the name started with "J". She stated under oath that Terri told her she'd never want to live with tubes, etc.

I think you are referring to the testimony of MICHAEL's SISTER IN LAW. She is the one who said that. Two people who were TERRI's friends, who were there watching the same TV show that night with Terri and Michael, his brother, his brother's wife, said the exact opposite.

[the Deejay]

For such an Emergency session! Congress is in no hurry to start the program.

[Hildy]

We would never let a dog linger in the condition she is in. We put animals out of their misery.

[UCANSEE2]

Dozens of doctors say that Terri is PVS

If I may offer some advice. It would do you well to actually get some factual information.

If 'dozens' say that, list just six who have made that statement.

[Hildy]

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- Before she was the severely brain-damaged patient at the center of a legal dispute over whether she should live or die, Terri Schiavo was a young woman who desperately wanted to be thin.

At 26, she was strikingly beautiful with delicate features. But she had spent her childhood and high school years as a chubby and shy girl, standing just 5-foot-3 and weighing 200 pounds at her heaviest.

When she finally lost 65 pounds in her late teens, men started to pay attention -- including the man who would become her husband, Michael Schiavo, who was tall and handsome.

But keeping the weight off was a struggle for Terri Schiavo, and years later -- after her heart stopped briefly, cutting off oxygen to the brain -- a malpractice case brought against a doctor on her behalf would reveal she had been trying to survive on liquids and was making herself throw up after meals. The Schiavos' lawyer said her 1990 collapse was caused by a potassium imbalance brought on by an eating disorder.

It is a cruel twist lost on no one close to the case: A woman who is said to have struggled with an eating disorder is now in the middle of a court battle over whether her feeding tube should be removed so that she can starve to death.

[Hildy]

There were five Dr.'s. Three came to the same conclusion.

[UCANSEE2]

It was not. She had bulimia. Her heart attack resulted from low potassium. It happens to those with eating disorders. You people will stop at NOTHING.

I would recommend you do a little investigating. Your 'facts' are full of holes.

Please show me the document where a doctor states that Terri had a heart attack, and lists the damage done to the heart by that heart attack.

[lakey]

Terri would still be on Medicaid and in a care center, wouldn't she? They would probably visit her, but it wouldn't be the same without her mother. They seem to love each other so.

Keeping her in a hospice and Felos repeatedly saying that Terri is terminal - and Greer saying, "This girl must die!" - galls me no end. Second to saving Terri, I want to see these madmen punished!

[Hildy]

The first mention of her injuries being anything other than the results of the heart attack first came up in 2002 when the Schindlers were making their motions. It's a last-minute (and obvious) try to cloud the facts and hurt Michael. Again, from abstractappeal.com:

After this case gained national attention in 2003, Gary Fox, the lawyer who represented Terri and Michael in that suit, wrote a stirring column concerning Terri's bulimia and how the tragic effects of that disease have been lost in the hoopla surrounding this case.

The significance of the medical malpractice lawsuit can be seen in a few ways. A jury agreed that bulimia caused Terri's collapse. The defendants were her doctors -- one might think that they, of all people, would have been able to show that Terri had been beaten or strangled if that was what had occurred. Also, to believe that Michael caused Terri's collapse by beating her is to believe that Michael initiated a lawsuit against someone else for causing her collapse, opening the whole matter to serious inquiry and greatly increasing the risk that someone would discover his role.

Finally, I am not aware that anyone -- not the paramedics, doctors, nurses, family members, friends, or anyone else -- who saw Terri in the hours, weeks, and months after her collapse ever suggested at the time that Terri had been beaten or strangled.

[Annie03]

http://www.zimp.org/stuff/Discharge%20Summary%20050990.pdf

[llama hunter]

someone mentioned Karen Quinlan being an euthanasia case, my understanding is that euthanasia is about actively doing something to make someone die, like give an overdose of morphine, like doctor assisted suicide

ah I saw a documentary on Karen Quinlan case and to the best of my recollection, Karen's case was exactly like Terry's in that the family clung to hope that she would recover, after 5 years or so, they gave up hope but when they wanted to remove all life support the hospital and various religious groups fought them, and when they eventually prevailed, they removed the feeding tube (I can't remember if she was on a respirator too) and sadly she took a few weeks to die

this was a religious family, they were beyond reproach, they loved their daughter very much, and they wanted to let their daughter go to heaven and end her suffering,

I seem to recall that the doctors did take extreme measures to save her initially, the family felt in retrospect it had been God's will that she should have died then

[Hildy]

See post #427. Instead of just "telling" me my facts are full of holes, tell me what the holes are.

[the Deejay]

I'm tellin' ya, all this girls & women that are Bulimic, just to keep their weight down, are playing a dangerous game.

Also, the Anorexia girls. It all takes its toll sooner or later and in one way or another.

[llama hunter]

wow that is a sad irony

[UCANSEE2]

I am so sorry you see it that way. My parents spent their money to ensure I had the best care, and got any treatment that would help me. I was supposed to be dead, then I was supposed to be paralyzed for life, then I was supposed to be in so much pain if I stood upright that I could not take it. The doctors were wrong.

My parents wanted me to live, no matter what was 'wrong' with me. Any parent that would reject their offspring because it was 'damaged', are not Christian, not human, and not what I would want for parents.

Her parents want to keep her alive, no matter how much it costs or how much of their personal devotion, time it takes.

Michael wants to kill her no matter how much it costs, or how much time it takes.

Whose side did you wish to be on?

[UCANSEE2]

Can you provide me to a link of this court testimony?

I would like to read it for myself. So far your references and paraphrasing of other's statements has been very very shaky.

[Hildy]

We're on the side of the wishes of the patient. I have said that in absense of signed consent, she should be released to her parents, providing they take care of her in their home, with their money and what's left of the settlement. I don't believe many people would wish to live like Terri Schiavo.

[veronica]

Do you have a link to that AP article?