Fighting for Dear Life (9 page)

He must have seen the look of surprise on my face. He continued, ‘‘Trust me, you need to disconnect yourself from the process. You cannot care—it's not your problem. You'll have a heart attack or an ulcer or a mental breakdown. Without a professional distance, the practice of law will destroy you.'' I'm sure he thought he was giving me sound advice. I respected his opinion, and in practical terms it's pretty good advice.

However, I've never been able to do that. I cannot distance myself from what I believe. To me, when I go to court, I have to believe I'm on the side of truth. I could never stand before God—or even look myself in the mirror—and say, ‘‘Sure, I fought for Terri, but it was just a job. I could just as easily have represented the other side.''

These were several of the unsettling issues that grieved me as I left the hospice on Christmas Eve—concerns I still haven't fully come to terms with.

I SWEAR TO TELL THE TRUTH

Two years after his wife's disability occurred, Michael Schiavo sued Terri's general practitioner and gynecologist for malpractice, claiming they had failed to realize that Terri was bulimic (though her autopsy did not reveal signs of bulimia). At the time of the trial, Michael told the jury and Terri's family that he was committed to taking care of his wife for the rest of his life. Through what was at times an emotionally charged testimony, Michael made his intentions clear:

1. He was committed to getting Terri treatment.

2. He was committed to keeping her alive.

3. He was committed to doing everything he could to help improve the quality of her life.

On November 5, 1992, Michael Schiavo took the witness stand. Under oath and under direct examination by his own lawyer, Michael fought back tears as he affirmed his desire to care for his wife, Terri:

As you might expect, Bob and Mary Schindler were elated to know that their son-in-law was committed to caring for their daughter. They were especially heartened that Terri might finally have enough money to receive the professional rehabilitation and speech therapy she so badly needed. Naturally, the prospect of receiving funds to cover the mounting medical bills was a great relief too. No longer would the Schindlers have to initiate fund-raisers, hold bake sales, and scrape together money for Terri's treatment.

Originally, Michael sought $20 million in malpractice damages for Terri's future medical care and therapy. This figure was based on the prediction that Terri's life expectancy was another 51.27 years—a projection made by expert witnesses called by Michael's legal team. Part of the money requested was also for his loss of companionship.

Although Michael had already begun to move on in his personal life, during the malpractice trial his attorney asked specifically about Michael's relationship with Terri:

Michael's eyes brimmed with tears as he wrestled to keep his emotions under control. The jury watched in silence as Michael dabbed at the corners of his eyes and fought to compose himself.

On November 10, 1992, the jury returned its verdict. Without going into all of the details, suffice it to say that the award was a fraction of the financial windfall Michael sought. After an appeal, on January 27, 1993, the court approved a final payment of $2 million.

Of the approximately $1.2 million left after paying attorney fees from the jury award and a previous settlement with Terri's personal doctor, 70 percent was designated for Terri's needs and 30 percent went to Michael. Not that the percentages were of much consequence. As Terri's guardian, Michael ultimately controlled the entire amount. Almost immediately following the jury award, a number of red flags surfaced in his behavior. The same month the malpractice award was approved by the court, Michael refused to honor his promise to the Schindlers (and to the jury) to use the money for Terri to begin receiving advanced rehabilitation therapy.

Indeed, the Schindlers' sense of euphoria was short-lived. On February 14, 1993, just two brief weeks after the malpractice award had been finalized, Bob and Mary had a heated falling-out with Michael. They had asked him to honor his agreement regarding the malpractice jury award for Terri and place her in a rehab facility. He, in turn, threatened a legal injunction forbidding family members to visit Terri at her nursing home. Furthermore, Michael instructed the nursing home staff not to release any medical information concerning Terri to her family.

The Schindlers were stunned beyond belief. But things would only get worse. Michael would later claim that a memory had suddenly surfaced:
Terri would not really want to live in a disabled condition
. In fact, although the money they needed was now there, Terri received absolutely no rehabilitative services, swallowing tests, or therapy of any kind between 1992 and her death in 2005.

You might want to read that again.

Absolutely nothing for more than a dozen years.

The timing of Michael's change of heart is deeply troubling. While you and I might question the way the mind works when remembering past details, the Schindlers could only wonder why Michael very much wanted Terri alive when he anticipated a jury awarding him more money than many people will see in their entire lifetime. Then, after the check arrived, Michael's story changed: Terri really wouldn't want to live anymore.

Why the sudden revision of his story?

As Bobby Schindler, Terri's brother, would later ask, ‘‘Which Michael are we to believe? The one who promised he would take care of his wife for the rest of his life, or the one who says these were Terri's death wishes?''
2
And so, for the Schindler family, a twelve-year battle over Terri's life was set in motion with that jury award.

For his part, Michael entered into a committed long-term relationship with Jodi Centonze. He and Jodi began living together in 1993 and subsequently became engaged. Michael started a new family and fathered two children with Jodi, while blocking the way for the Schindlers to bring Terri back into their own family. Michael continued to live with Jodi and their children after Terri's death in 2005; they were married in January of 2006.

SHUT IN AND SHUT OUT

That Christmas Eve afternoon in 2004 as I drove away from the Woodside Hospice in Pinellas Park, Florida, another aspect of Terri's case was bothering me. Back on April 10, 2000, Terri had been moved from her nursing home to a hospice; I couldn't figure out why. She wasn't terminal. She wasn't dying. She wasn't comatose.

She wasn't even sick.

To the contrary, Terri was very much alive. The Terri I saw was doing remarkably well, especially when you consider that this woman had only very minimal health care for over a decade.

Typically, patients with
incurable illnesses
are sent to a hospice to die, not to recover. In fact, generally, a person can only be admitted into hospice care if death is reasonably imminent—as a rule of thumb— within six months of admittance. Despite testimony at her malpractice trial of her anticipated longevity, Terri was admitted and confined to a hospice surrounded by death and the dying for
years
in violation of the practices generally governing such facilities.

What's more, Judge Greer's court was legally required to supervise guardianship cases like Terri's. Why didn't he intervene? Why wasn't Terri permitted to go home or to an appropriate extended care center? In truth, Terri would
still
be in a hospice room today had she not been dehydrated and starved to death. Which, again, begs the question, why was Terri restricted to the walls of Woodside Hospice after 2000?

An even more disturbing thought was the fact that Michael Schiavo's pro-euthanasia attorney, George Felos, had served as chairman of the board of directors at the very hospice where Terri was sent. Judge Greer subsequently denied several petitions by the Schindlers to return Terri to the nursing home.

Another serious injustice from my perspective, having visited Terri many times, was Judge Greer's ruling on February 11, 2000, authorizing the first withdrawal of Terri's feeding tube. In his death order Judge Greer declared that Terri was ‘‘unconscious, unaware, and without cognition.'' But how could the judge fairly make that assessment? He never saw Terri—and she had never come to court even though she logically would be the star witness! Terri had the most to gain and the most to lose in this case. She was the person with the right to decide whether she received medical treatment or not, yet she never attended court and was never afforded a lawyer of her own throughout the entire court process.

Worse, even when hit by a tidal wave of controversy following his ruling, Judge Greer didn't make time to drive across town or to have Terri come to court to see her for himself—just to be sure.

Why not? Certainly Judge Greer's conduct and decisions were consistently upheld on appeal by other judges who also had never seen Terri in person.

But contrary to Judge Greer's arm's-length assessment, I know from personal observation that Terri went to bed at night, woke up in the morning, and functioned throughout the day without the aid of any special machinery or extraordinary care. She breathed on her own. She was not ‘‘unconscious,'' nor was she ‘‘unaware.'' She could have traveled across town—or across the country!—without jeopardizing her health. And though she was disabled, all of her bodily systems could have kept her alive for many years—with one exception:

She required assistance at mealtime.

I was also baffled that Terri was not allowed out of her room to socialize. What harm could there be in visiting with others or attending the occasional hospice function? Evidently, her guardian, Michael Schiavo, controlled Terri's life as a disabled woman much as he reportedly had done when they were living under the same roof.

I would later learn from Jackie Rhodes, Terri's friend from work, that ‘‘Michael was very controlling. [Terri] was not allowed to go anywhere after work. She had to go straight home after work. He would monitor the miles on her car.''
3
How the court could allow Terri's husband to isolate her from human companionship was beyond me. Was this really the same man whose tears had convinced a medical malpractice jury that his desire was to spend the rest of his life caring for Terri? I wondered what the jury's decision would have been if they'd known that Terri would remain deprived of medical therapy, rehabilitation, and human companionship, and that she would spend years in a hospice surrounded by a dying world—often with the blinds drawn on her windows by orders of her guardian/husband.

Where was the basic human kindness?

TERRI AND KAREN ANN QUINLAN

The Schindlers' legal team was contacted early in 2005 by an attorney affiliated with the Florida legislature regarding a mistake he noticed Judge Greer had made in his 2000 death order. Using that information, the Schindlers filed a new motion on March 2, 2005, alleging that during the 2000 trial to determine Terri's end-of-life wishes, Judge George Greer made an error in determining that clear and convincing evidence existed to support Terri's oral end-of-life wishes not to be kept alive with an artificial feeding tube.

Attorneys for the Schindlers pointed out that in his February 2000 order authorizing Terri's death, Judge Greer made a clear mistake in discounting the testimony of Terri's close friend Diane Meyer. Diane had testified that in 1982 Terri told her she did not agree with the decision by Karen Ann Quinlan's parents to take their daughter off life support. Judge Greer stated in his 2000 order that he found Diane's testimony ‘‘believable'' but concluded that this conversation could not have occurred in 1982, after Terri had reached the age of majority, but must have occurred when Terri was only eleven or twelve years old, in 1976, the year Judge Greer believed Karen Ann Quinlan had died. Terri's mother, Mary Schindler, also had testified that Terri did not approve of Karen Ann Quinlan's parents' decision to remove her artificial life support. But Mary became confused on cross-examination about what year it might have been when she and Terri talked about this situation.