I Will Never Forget the Look of Horror on My Sister Terri Schiavo’s Face the Day She Died

On March 18, 2005, my sister, Terri Schiavo, began her thirteen day agonizing death after the feeding tube – supplying her food and water – was removed. Terri was cognitively disabled and had difficulty swallowing and therefore needed a feeding tube. Terri was not on any “life support”, nor was she sick or dying. Nonetheless, she received her death sentence ordered by Circuit Court Judge, George W. Greer of Pinellas County Florida.

Greer’s order to remove Terri’s feeding tube was in response to her estranged husband and guardian, Michael Schiavo, requesting permission from the court to kill his disabled wife. This was after Schiavo began cohabitating with his fiancée and stood to inherit Terri’s medical trust fund, which at the time was close to $800,000.

However, more disturbing was that the judge ruled to kill Terri, despite her mother and father pleading with Schiavo, and the court, to allow them to take her home. In fact, a guardian ad litem urged Judge Greer to refuse the dehydration request. Instead, this legally-required protector of Terri was dismissed from the original case by Greer and no replacement was ever appointed.

March 31st marks a very sad day; and this year, it will be the ten year anniversary of Terri’s death. Rush Limbaugh described it this way, “the day our country hit rock bottom”.

Terri’s case divided the nation and it will be discussed in high schools and college medical ethics classrooms for years to come. It is the anniversary of the death of a young woman who simply had a disability and needed basic and ordinary care to live, and a family who wanted to love and care for her just as she was.

With it being the 10 year anniversary, calls from the media have increased. Most of the articles are excoriating Governor Jeb Bush for his defense of Terri when he was the Governor of Florida back in 2005. But I have noticed one question has been asked more than others – “What, if anything, has changed since Terri’s death?”

Yes, things have changed – they’ve gotten worse. Exactly how many persons are being killed like Terri every year is difficult to know, although I think the numbers would shock us. What we do know is that we have a very active and aggressive right to die movement.

There are many dynamics involved to successfully convince our general public that it’s “okay” to dehydrate and starve a human being to death. If I had to point to one of the major accomplishments, it is how the right to die forces have been able to reclassify feeding tubes as “medical treatment”. However, just as effective is how they’ve influenced the masses to buy into the notion that some persons are in fact, not persons. Consequently, these human “non-persons” have no “value” and can be killed.

This should be frightening to read. But it is true. Even more frightening is how this ideology has impacted and been accepted in our culture, in particular, our health care community.

This, along with changes in public policies, now puts life and death decisions in the hands of physicians, hospitals boards and ethics committees – basically strangers – in the place of family members.

After Terri died, my family’s experience, contesting this powerful right to die movement, led us to establish the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, which seeks to raise public awareness of the looming culture of death, and to educate the public about care potentialities. Most importantly, however, is to help families in situations similar to what we experienced – loved ones in danger of being killed, like Terri.

Indeed, the calls from families for help have increased, and increased significantly, as the years have passed.

Why is this? How has the right to die agenda been able to efficaciously shift our attitudes to the point that is has become everyday practice to starve and dehydrate a person to death. The issue may see complex, however it seems to me that the answer is very clear. It is because they lie.

I saw it in my sister’s case and I see it in the stories from the families who call us. And one of the most pathetic lies out there is that killing someone by denying them food and water is a “peaceful” and “painless” experience, and the patently absurd notion that it is a “death with dignity”.

It’s important to differentiate that Terri’s condition, and countless others like her, is quite different from a situation where it may be medically appropriate to withhold food and fluids because a person is actively dying and their bodies are shutting down, no longer able to assimilate their food and hydration.

terrischiavo10Nonetheless, the never-ending propaganda about the peaceable nature of forced dehydration compelled me to make public this image of my sister created from my memory. This (right) is what Terri looked like just before she died. It was horrible to see.

And yet, Schiavo’s attorney falsely told the public during a press conference, just days before Terri’s death, that she looked “beautiful”. This is what they want you to believe, not the harsh truth about the madness of what we permit in the rooms of hospitals, nursing homes and hospices every single day across this country.

These are the hard facts my family and I will have to live with for the rest of my life: After almost two weeks without food or water, my sister’s lips were horribly cracked, to the point where they were blistering. Her skin became jaundice with areas that turned different shades of blue. Her skin became markedly dehydrated from the lack of water. Terri’s breathing became rapid and uncontrollable, as if she was outside sprinting. Her moaning, at times, was raucous, which indicated to us the insufferable pain she was experiencing. Terri’s face became skeletal, with blood pooling in her deeply sunken eyes and her teeth protruding forward. Even as I write this, I can never properly describe the nightmare of having to watch my sister have to die this way.

What will be forever seared in my memory is the look of utter horror on my sister’s face when my family visited her just after she died.

Those pushing this agenda will certainly deny this, they have to. But there was a reason the court ordered that no cameras or video be permitted in Terri’s room while she was being killed. They claimed privacy issues. My family knows otherwise. And they do too.

So when will this heartlessness end? When will the lies end? When will the American people decide this insanity has to stop?

Seems like he is keeping her and children in the shadows. There may have been threats directed at him but I doubt any FReepers.

It's been interesting reading the many reviews and comments on his book at amazon. Some were very positive for Michael. Then one came along who knew (and remembered) all the things Michael did that weren't right.

He delayed CPR and either that or strangulation (they found marks) plus possibly bulimia were the cause of what happened to her. If it was bulimia, I wonder what heartless remarks Michael might have made to her. At the time, he clocked her mileage.

We will never know the whole truth, I tried to be objective at the time, but Terri was denied any chance of any quality to the life she had or to see if she could improve.

I don't care if I get branded a rw zealot. I did not want to euthanize my dear cat and we were happy together until the last week. Then i saw it was time for her to go. She got so thin. I gave her water in a dropper to almost the very end when she could still swallow. And she seemed to APPRECIATE it.

I never understood why it was ok to euthanize our beloved pets but not our beloved family or even some not so loved. Now I wonder if I should have put my feelings aside and have her euthanized.

My next cat died the following year and I did the same toward the end. She didn't get as weak and lose as much weight. I decided if she was still alive one morning, I would take her in and have her euthanized. I asked the vet if they suffer. Well sometimes it doesn't go so well. She died here at home before I could get her to the vets and they told me to bring her in. They pronounced her dead and gave me a nice box to bury her in. They didn't charge me anything, and they are pricey.

They would have tried a few things to save her but the odds were not good. It was partly the money plus they would use one of their cats for a live transfusion. I didn't want that. So I didn't want any more cats but one found me. I've now had him almost nine years now.

Anyway cats are not people and I have had a couple animals euthanized. One was a poor dog that ran in front of my car. It wasn't mine, no tags, but I took it to a vet right away to see if anything could be done. That was a long time ago and I paid $25 to euthanize it because they said they couldn't do anything for it.

The other was a pretty little tortoise shell cat who had climbed on the neighbor's engine block to keep warm; it was winter. When they started the car in the am, the cat jumped out but was injured. It upset me so I took her down to the vet I used for most of the above. Her shoulder was broken. I didn't have much money in those days. They wanted a lot to set it and suggested I could take her 200 mi to the state vet school. That wasn't practical for me. But I've never forgotten that little cat. I paid to have her euthanized and it still bothers me when I think of it.

So people might judge me both ways. Instead of all the cat talk I should have talked about my elderly aunt. I and my sister were responsible for her care but I was there the last six months. It came down to she didn't want to eat any more. I know it is normal for elderly toward the end.

I was sitting next to her bed when her Presbyterian minister came to talk to her. Everybody thought she was hopelessly not aware of the here and now but this proved she was to some extent. The minister said he and his wife had living wills. They only wanted water. He said, "______" my aunt's name, "your niece wants to know what you want to do about a feeding tube, end of life measure I don't exactly remember the words." I said this had never come up in our family before. She agreed, "yes" (it hadn't happened, true).

My sister and I talked. She had heard that it was very painful to die by dehydration. But I thought to be force fed if you are sick to your stomach might not be good. Anyway I called a priest. He dismissed me like he didn't want to be bothered. Then I talked to the hospital chaplain, a female. She was in favor of no feeding tube.

Finally I told them to put in a feeding tube. I knew it was a gamble and didn't want to cause prolonged suffering for her but I could not watch her starve to death either. So the head nurse called me in and shut the door. She pressured me to change my mind. I stood up to her, too, and said to put the feeding tube in.

So they did and she didn't wake up for 24 hours. She finally did and I could take her home which I did. She only lived 2 weeks after that. Only one day did she have a lot of pain so we gave her prescribed pain meds. Then the visiting nurse who had not been like the others said it was time for her to go so I didn't want to deal with her dying at home so back to the hospital. She went into a coma and just slept away.

What lingers to bother me is that the last night we were in her room; it was up by Chicago, and it was like people who knew her liked to come and were happy to have someone like me to to talk to. I enjoyed all of them. But what I am getting at is we were talking out loud about the end being near for her. Then I got up to go to her house (its was late). She died the next morning before I went to the hospital. I procrastinated and went to have a cup of coffee with her neighbor then was going to go. My sister got called by the hospital that she was gone so she called me.

At her visitation, one of her ladies who had been at the hospital that last night said, "did I see her moving her mouth like she wanted to say something?" No I hadn't but it was like some part of her knew and understood. I did say to her (I had fought to keep her alive all those months) that if Jesus sent an angel or somebody to get her to go with them.

But my point was that you shouldn't talk about negative things in front of a comatose person because there is a good chance they will know what you are talking about, get upset, but be unable to communicate. That is really important, I think.

So I went right to the hospital and was asked if I wanted to see her. Yes and no but I said yes (I was upsetting). So I saw her, talked to the hospital nurse and left. I was walking up the sidewalk toward my car and it was like an earthquake; the sidewalk was waving under my feet. It was the stress and I felt like I was going to pass out. I was the only family there all this time. I set my mind to I had to get to my car because if I passed out, I knew I would end up back in that hospital at least to be checked.

I made it back to her house and had to take care of a lot of things for the funeral. My sister did help with some of it but it was mostly on my shoulders.

But I have never regretted having a feeding tube put in. I hope I never have to deal with that again. I am probably next anyway. Sorry I ran on so long. I had my evening planned out but I burned my hand about a week ago, washed the dishes, and it's not right so I don't want to wash my hair and get it wet any more. I will look for my Walsporin before I go to bed here shortly.

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