RIP Terri Schiavo

[Caj]

Don't cry too hard for him; for his coup de grace, he banned the parents and siblings from being present when she did die. Only he and his lawyer were in there, apparently.

Just admiring their legal handiwork, no doubt. Why else would you order (and that is what he did) the immediate family out of the room?

Can someone confirm this? I keep hearing that he banned the family from the room, but then I read that Schiavo's parents weren't at the hospice at all. From the way O'Reilly told it, I got the impression that he had the parents booted out of the room.

Also, an autopsy has been performed, says the news. People have been demanding this, apparently, to satisfy their suspicions about various things. (O'Reilly even alleged an autopsy wouldn't happen, suggesting a cover-up of whatever he was suspicous about.)

My prediction: if nothing unusual is found, expect to hear all sorts of vicious random things about the autopsy doctor.

Caj

[jGilder]

Don't cry too hard for him; for his coup de grace, he banned the parents and siblings from being present when she did die. Only he and his lawyer were in there, apparently.

Just admiring their legal handiwork, no doubt. Why else would you order (and that is what he did) the immediate family out of the room?

Can someone confirm this?

Actually it was the hospice staff that ordered everyone except Terri's husband out of the room. The staff had some sort of procedure to attend to. (I can't remember what it was.) The father got into a shouting match with a police officer that was enforcing the hospice request, that's when Michael demanded they all leave because he didn't want Terri's last moments to be in turmoil.

By the way… you needn't pay any attention to IRtradRU? because he thinks Michael, OJ and Scott Peterson all are on a world tour of golf courses looking for the real murderers. :roll:

[The Weekenders]

Immediately after local examiner's autopsy, she was cremated yesterday (Saturday). Fast work by Schiavo and his lawyer. Wonder what the hurry was?

[OnTheMoor]

Nevermind, no point.

[drochfhuaimniú]

Immediately after local examiner's autopsy, she was cremated yesterday (Saturday). Fast work by Schiavo and his lawyer. Wonder what the hurry was?

I believe this was done in order to prevent her burial from becoming a media debacle; you'll note that it is not told where the ashes are buried (somewhere around Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, I believe)

[Caj]

Immediately after local examiner's autopsy, she was cremated yesterday (Saturday). Fast work by Schiavo and his lawyer. Wonder what the hurry was?

The suggestion here is that Schiavo is trying to cover something up. But what are people suggesting is being covered up?

Caj

[jkrazy52]

One theory is that Michael Schiavo possibly strangled his wife, creating the original injury. 2 nurses did testify before Judge Greer that on separate occasions Terri Shiavo suddenly had abnormal blood sugar levels after a visit by her husband, which they maintained could have been from insulin injections.

The case does set worrisome standards as far as I'm concerned. Brain-damaged relatives you don't want to care for any longer? Gee, it's legal to starve them to death. Food and water are now considered "medical treatment". Hmmm, rich old Unca Joe shouldn't be wasting my inheritance with all that nursing home care -- let's call Judge Greer and starve the old man. We'll give the judge a generous campaign contribution just like George Felos did .....

Try going without food and water for 2 days -- then decide if that's a kind & gentle way to die.

[Beauford T Rosemondt III]

For the most part we do get along. It seems in situations like Terri Schiavo's, though, when one side wants to allow an unconscious person to die and the other doesn't, getting along is impossible.

I don't think "unconscious" is a good description...she had extensive brain damage. Although "brain-dead" sounds harsh, I believe it to be the more accurate term. To my understanding, as far as higher brain function, she was dead and has been dead for years.

--James

I have to say that, having seen the videos of her, and her response to everything from her mother's voice to music, I don't buy for a minute that she was "brain dead" or even in a "persistent vegetative state." And while she may or may not have expressed her distaste for being kept alive on a respirator (we only have the husband and one of his relatives word for that, and it was in a very specific situation in which another relative had died and was being kept functional on a respirator), that's not the same thing as assenting to being systematically starved to death. What really got me was when the parents lawyers asked the hospice if she could be offered food and water by mouth (she was able to swallow), he was told flatly "our orders are no nutrition or hydration...period." That just chilled me. They wouldn't even let her attempt to eat or drink normally...they'd decided she was to die, and that was the end of that.

If one good thing has come out of all this, it's that I now have a living will, and I'm urging my husband to do the same.

Redwolf

I guess having most of her brain liquified and flatline electrical activity in all the scans doesn't indicate much to you. The videos you see are about 30 seconds out of hundreds of hours in which the Shindlers concocted a shtick to make it look like she was responsive, and out of those hundreds of hours of video they could only manage that same half a minute and then showed it over and over and over. Plus that was over a decade ago. If you watch the little balloon scam you'll see the balloon anticipates the eye movent and follows it far to the right as the eyes drift randomly on their own. Then when the eyes flit left the scam artist with the balloon tries to jerk over to make it look like her eyes were following the balloon movement. The eye movement is too fast however to pull it off in that case, and then the eyes overshoot the balloon to the right again and the balloon is moved quickly to catch up with the eyes. And again, one short sequence out of hours and hours of trying to catch something intelligent looking.

Furthermore, her father was claiming even a day or two before her body finally gave out that she was desperately fighting to talk to him and in one case he claimed she did talk to him and begged him to save her.

The whole frenzy is based on the bogus assertion that those CAT scans and the flat electrical activity in the nonexistent cerebral cortex is some sort of conspiratorial lie. If those purely medical evaluations are correct the entire rest of the Shindler argument is deluded fantasy. It's sad, desperate fantasy, but they've taken millions along with them in selling themselves on it.

A living will is obsolete and almost ignored by the medical profession, they're never specific enough and always easily contested by any family member or as we see any special interest group pretending to be acting in your interest to "save" you. The Shindlers pretended they'd have had no problem if Terri had written her wishes down, but the truth is they weren't going to accept her passing under any circumstances and even in defiance of common sense. They developed 16 years of conspiracy theories and pulled a team of like-minded medical authorities into the mix who would be just happy to invent any claim necessary to keep the delusion alive. But they never once considered that having most of your brain turn to syrup is just as irreversible as the numerous courts and numerous neurologists have said all along--and their own experts haven't even attempted new scans probably because it would only confirm the fact that she's been dead for all practical purposes for a long long time.

It's got nothing to do with euthanasia, or abortion, or fighting for life or mercy or anything at all. The claim that the "arrogant courts" have thwarted the constitution is asinine. There's not too little democracy going on, there's way too much. The masses and the politicians who serve their electorate can't in a constitutional republic just storm in and take over as has been suggested. That's just mob rule, social Darwinism.

What this case is really all about is just a bitter set of in-laws and old drinking buddies who never liked a guy for marrying and taking their little girl away from them down across the country and doing that horribly evil thing the Bible calls "leaving your father and mother and cleaving unto your husband."

[Lambchop]

http://www.stpetetimes.com/2005/04/03/T ... chia.shtml

This newspaper is known for its well-balanced journalism. Gulfport, where the funeral will be, is where I live.

We've had the sad fortune to have seen the case from its first days.

One theory is that Michael Schiavo possibly strangled his wife, creating the original injury. 2 nurses did testify before Judge Greer that on separate occasions Terri Shiavo suddenly had abnormal blood sugar levels after a visit by her husband, which they maintained could have been from insulin injections.

That was a contention early on, along with accusations that he belittled her into worsening bulemia. While evidence was never there to prove it, people still seem to think it may have been the case. It was a lot like the OJ Simpson business and that fellow recently from California (sorry, can't remember the name)--just without a body.

I never thought he should have been permitted to have custody of her, because he has never been unbiased. There was a large amount of medical settlement money early on, which is now mostly gone, and there was the question of one other woman, then another by whom he has had two children. I'm not really certain why this was not termed bigamy, since he has been living in a common law state with the second woman while refusing to divorce Terri. I suspect he refused to divorce her because of the settlement money, which until recently was substantial and he stood to inherit it.

Every day that she lived was a drain on that money.

He has been vile from the earliest days, seeming to make every effort to aggravate her parents with tactics that often focused on denial of her and their faith. It's totally in keeping that he should deliver the final twist by cremating her and interring her ashes in Pennsylvania, thus denying her family even that comfort and interfering with their beliefs once again.

Poor Terri, poor everyone.

Hopefully, some legislation will be a result of this.

And don't be so sure that your living will and advance directive will be honored. They are very often ignored in favor of the family's wishes.

[Beauford T Rosemondt III]

Immediately after local examiner's autopsy, she was cremated yesterday (Saturday). Fast work by Schiavo and his lawyer. Wonder what the hurry was?

The suggestion here is that Schiavo is trying to cover something up. But what are people suggesting is being covered up?

Caj

A rotting corpse. You don't embalm an autopsy subject. You don't embalm a cremation subject. Rotting flesh is unpleasant. That's the hurry.

But that just exposes the twisted sort of paranoid pseudo logic of those vainly, desperately struggling to produce some rational, tangible reason for crapping all over a spouse carrying out another spouse's last wishes simply because he disagrees with your entirely religious and personal dogma.

In either case the cause of her condition is irrelevant to her ultimate situation. Brain dead is brain death and it wouldn't matter who was responsible for that. But the truth is, for the first two or three years the Shindlers were praising Michael as a perfect son-in-law in all the hearings and even Terri's fat, divorced, old drinking girlfriend who claimed they were going to run off from their husbands and get an apartment together to binge and purge to their unlimited delight, said he was great for the first three years or so--went to specialists all over the country and therapy and whatnot.

Truth is, after seven years of this and nothing happening Michael finally called it quits and they simply had to begin inventing rationale to get around his jurisdiction over his wife whatever it cost, whatever they had to say or do because they insisted on this fairy-tale ending where she just comes out of it one day with just the right doctor or just the right drug.

Personally, if Michael had walked into the hospice and put a slug in her forehead that would have been mercy, not murder but it's rather complicated legally that way. Isn't it funny that while there was hope in the beginning nobody doubted Michael's jurisdiction over his wife's treatment, and it was only when he set about what he believed to be setting in motion her last wishes that all of these theories came floating up out of the murky minds of the Shindler clan? The claims of insulin injections are part of the lunatic conspiracy that these people for some reason covered up Michael's efforts and fired the nurse who claimed to have seen it to supress the truth. Why all these doctors and whatnot were compelled to cover this up is curious, but all these claims have been investigated by police and the courts and just telling them over and over doesn't make them any truer.

But this isn't a rational case at all, it's all decided on dogma and emotion and the facts are just made up to support the two on the spot.

[Beauford T Rosemondt III]

http://www.stpetetimes.com/2005/04/03/T ... chia.shtml


And don't be so sure that your living will and advance directive will be honored. They are very often ignored in favor of the family's wishes.

Interesting. Michael Schiavo is Terri's family. Not the Shindlers. That's what happens when you get married, for better or worse. Amid the "family's objections?" don't think so. The Schiavos were quite content with their arrangements. I doubt if the Shindlers would have been happy unless Terri had married a brother or a cousin the way they go on about the "Schiavo clan."

You've just picked a side and decided quite illogically just to believe anything it says.

[jGilder]

Furthermore, her father was claiming even a day or two before her body finally gave out that she was desperately fighting to talk to him and in one case he claimed she did talk to him and begged him to save her.

The people that opposed Michael carrying out Kerri's wishes are religious zealots for the most part. Many of them were seen on TV praying for a miracle. The testimony from her father would have been seen as their prayers being answered. CAT scans and such wouldn't figure in with that kind of logic. You don't need CAT scans or any other science telling you what's going on if you're waiting for divine intervention.

"Destruction of the body flies in the face of the Christian belief that the body we die in will be resurrected in the future," the document stated.

Burial out of state is "unkind and inappropriate," the Schindlers said, because the majority of people who would visit the grave live in Pinellas County.

Michael had the right as legal guardian to take possession of the body and cremate it. I would have done the same thing because the parents would have created a shrine that people would mob for reasons that have nothing to do with Terri Shaivo, but everything to do with religious zealots and pro-lifers.

That's just mob rule, social Darwinism.

Precisely. That's why we need judicial independence; the courts functioned exactly as they were intended to in this case.

[Lambchop]

Immediately after local examiner's autopsy, she was cremated yesterday (Saturday). Fast work by Schiavo and his lawyer. Wonder what the hurry was?

The suggestion here is that Schiavo is trying to cover something up. But what are people suggesting is being covered up?

Caj

A rotting corpse. You don't embalm an autopsy subject. You don't embalm a cremation subject. Rotting flesh is unpleasant. That's the hurry.

Oh, please! This may be Florida, but we're not that backward. We have refrigerated morgues. That is absolutely not why the rush.

By the bye, you can do an autopsy on an embalmed body. When they dig them up, that's what they do them on. You can also do them on rotting bodies, and it doesn't much matter to the pathologist if that's all you've got. Forensic pathologists do them all the time.

Don't you watch TV???

[Walden]

The people that opposed Michael carrying out Kerri's wishes are religious zealots for the most part.

Who's wishes?

Many of them were seen on TV praying for a miracle

Oh... well... no wonder... good thing she got killed then. :roll:

[jGilder]

Who's wishes?

Kerri's wishes not to be kept alive in a vegetative state.

Oh... well... no wonder... good thing she got killed then. :roll:

She died 15 years ealier. Would you want to be kept alive in the state she was in? If so, you better start making out a will.