FL. Loses Appeal in Terri Schiavo Case

Looks like the final chapter is here.


Court: Feeding Can End for Brain-Damaged Fla. Woman

CLEARWATER, Fla. (Reuters) - A Florida man can remove the feeding tube that has kept his brain-damaged wife alive since 1990, an appeals court ruled on Tuesday in what could be the final chapter in a bitterly fought right-to-die case.

Florida's 2nd District Court of Appeal dissolved a stay that had kept the feeding tube in place during a legal battle over the fate of Theresa "Terri" Schiavo, 41. Some doctors said she has been in a persistent vegetative state since suffering a heart attack that severely damaged her brain.
 
Meg said:
Looks like the final chapter is here.


Court: Feeding Can End for Brain-Damaged Fla. Woman

CLEARWATER, Fla. (Reuters) - A Florida man can remove the feeding tube that has kept his brain-damaged wife alive since 1990, an appeals court ruled on Tuesday in what could be the final chapter in a bitterly fought right-to-die case.

Florida's 2nd District Court of Appeal dissolved a stay that had kept the feeding tube in place during a legal battle over the fate of Theresa "Terri" Schiavo, 41. Some doctors said she has been in a persistent vegetative state since suffering a heart attack that severely damaged her brain.
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It's not over yet. There's a stay of the order until 5pm tomorrow. I will have to pull up the source, but it's not quite over yet.

OKay...Here's the article to support what I said:

Updated: 02:43 PM EST
Florida's Schiavo Case Locked in Legal Stalemate
Judge Issues Emergency Stay After Another Expires
By VICKIE CHACHERE, AP



Reuters
Terri Schiavo is shown here with her mother, Mary Schindler, in a photograph taken late in 2001.

DUNEDIN, Fla. (Feb. 22) - The case of a severely brain-damaged woman remained locked in a legal stalemate Tuesday after an appeals court cleared the way for her husband to remove her feeding tube only to see a judge promptly block the removal for at least another day.

The 2nd District Court of Appeal offered no specific instructions in a one-page mandate issued in the case of Terri Schiavo, who was left brain damaged 15 years ago. That meant her husband, Michael Schiavo, could order his wife's tube be removed.

But Pinellas Circuit Court Judge George Greer later issued an emergency stay blocking removal of the feeding tube until 5 p.m. EST Wednesday. Greer, who has been overseeing the long-standing dispute, scheduled a hearing on the case for earlier Wednesday.

It would likely take several days for Terri Schiavo to die if the tube is pulled.



In October 2003, she went without food or water for six days before Gov. Jeb Bush pushed through a new law letting him order the tube be reinserted. The Florida Supreme Court later struck down his action as unconstitutional.

The courts also sided with Michael Schiavo when he had the tube removed for two days in 2001.

Pinellas Circuit Court Judge George Greer, who twice has granted Michael Schiavo permission to remove the feeding tube, was asked to issue an emergency stay that would keep Terri Schiavo alive while her parents seek to oust their son-in-law as her guardian. The parents are also seeking additional medical tests which might back their assertion that their daughter has some mental capabilities.

George Felos, Michael Schiavo's attorney, did not have any immediate reaction.

Terri Schiavo suffered severe brain damage on Feb. 25, 1990, when a chemical imbalance believed to have been brought on by an eating disorder caused her heart to stop beating and cut off oxygen to her brain.

While she breathes on her own, she relies on the feeding tube to survive. Doctors have ruled she is in a persistent vegetative state with no hope for recovery.

Still, her parents who visited her nearly every day report their daughter laughed, cried, smiled and responded to their voices. Video showing the dark-haired woman appearing to interact with her family has been televised nationally. But the court-appointed doctor has said the noises and facial expressions are reflexes.

Both sides accused each other of being motivated by greed over a $1 million medical malpractice award from doctors who failed to diagnose the chemical imbalance. The Schindlers argue Michael Schiavo should divorce their daughter.


02/22/05 13:57 EST
 
Oceanbreeze said:
It's not over yet. There's a stay of the order until 5pm tomorrow. I will have to pull up the source, but it's not quite over yet.
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Ahhhh ..keep me posted...am fascinated with this case.
 
Meg said:
Ahhhh ..keep me posted...am fascinated with this case.
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refresh, please. I edited my post and attached the article supporting the assertion that there is a stay. :)
 
Toonces said:
Perhaps there is hope for Terri Schiavo and her parents after all. :fingersx:
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Don't count on it. The only way this will resolve in the Schindler's favor is if Schiavo is removed as her gaurdian, and that's not likely to happen. There is also still a chance the "Papal appeal" will go to the Supreme Court, but I'd be very surprised if they decided to hear it; much less if they gave it any validity. But, we shall see. They are going to court tomorrow morning to hear new evidence supporting removing Schiavo as her gaurdian. We'll see what comes of that, if anything.
 
Beowulf said:
Sad.
She is going to be killed and we have no say in this matter.
http://www.spiritdaily.org/Quickhive articles/schiavoalert.htm
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Yes indeeded very sad because they act like they have so much control on Terri's life, when this is Terri's life we are talking about what about her choices? Oh right, She cannot speak? so her feelings has no input? That is how sad that is for people to decide her fate in life and dealth when God is the one who has our fate when we should die, not "we the people" or "the court".
 
It would awful to starve a person to death.

Nobody would starve a dog to death, but rather put it to sleep.

So why not put Terri to sleep...
since some people want her to die??
 
Miss*Pinocchio said:
It would awful to starve a person to death.

Nobody would starve a dog to death, but rather put it to sleep.

So why not put Terri to sleep...
since some people want her to die??
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It's not that simple for some reason. I don't know why. I've also questioned whether there was a quicker way for her to go. :dunno:
 
Oceanbreeze said:
Keep in mind the above "interaction" was with Terri and a couple of right to life lawyers. It's biased.
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Are you so attached to your perspective that you can't percieve any other? It doesn't take a doctor to recognize that thedescribed "interaction" is not a series of autonomic impulses.
 
lostintexas said:
Are you so attached to your perspective that you can't percieve any other? It doesn't take a doctor to recognize that thedescribed "interaction" is not a series of autonomic impulses.
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I suppose I am. As for doctors, there have been many who say she is vegetative. Her cerebral cortex is shot, and all that is left now is spinal fluid filling the cavity. Also, they spent hours filming Terri looking for anything they could call "purposeful movement". The problem is that she has reflexive movement that looks purposeful, but it can't be duplicated . They've tried, already.

This has already been litigated. The Schindlers are just revisting old issues at this point to try and prolong the case. They are deluded into thinking there will be recovery, and there won't be. The parents just can't give this up.
 
There are also many other doctors who disagreed that Terri is in a persisitant vegetable state. *Shrugs* And you really can't blame the Schindlers...they are her PARENTS, and the love a parent has for a child is quite strong. :/


By the way, I saw on TV CNN that Judge Greer had extended the stay till this Friday at 5pm. So, Terri get to live a little longer for now.

And here's the link: http://www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/02/23/schiavo.case/index.html
 
Schiavo Case Highlights Eating Disorders

Thu Feb 24, 2:18 PM ET Top Stories - AP


By VICKIE CHACHERE, Associated Press Writer

TAMPA, Fla. - 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.

Gary Fox, a lawyer who represented Terri and Michael Schiavo in the malpractice case, said the disease is the "lost lesson" in the Schiavo case.

"While there is no cure for bulimia, there were things that could and should have been done for her that would have controlled it," he said in a recent interview.

Terri Schiavo, 41, is now locked in what some doctors say is a persistent vegetative state, with no hope of recovery. In one of the nation's longest right-to-die disputes, her husband is fighting with her parents to have the feeding tube removed; a court order preventing its removal expires at 5 p.m. Friday.

Like almost every element in the case, whether Schiavo really was bulimic is in dispute. Her father, Robert Schindler, said he does not believe his daughter had an eating disorder and thinks her husband had something to do with her collapse. Michael Schiavo has denied hurting his wife.

During the malpractice case, at least one of Schiavo's friends testified they knew she was bulimic because after meals out, she always immediately excused herself to go to the bathroom. Her husband also knew she had peculiar eating patterns but did not realize they were dangerous, Fox said.

Medical records from the hospital where Schiavo was treated after her collapse note that "she apparently has been trying to keep her weight down with dieting by herself, drinking liquids most of the time during the day and drinking about 10-15 glasses of iced tea."

Fox said that in the months before her collapse, Schiavo went to the doctor because she had stopped menstruating. It was a silent "cry for help," the lawyer said. But the doctor did not take a complete medical history that might have revealed an eating disorder.

The jury put the damages at $6.8 million but reduced the verdict to about $2 million because it felt Schiavo was partly at fault for her collapse.

Fox said Schiavo was a victim of medical negligence, but also a victim of societal pressures to be thin. "She didn't want to go back to where she was from," he said. "This was the only way she could do this in her mind and be able to eat as much as she did."

Eating disorders have long been known to cause heart failure. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, the binge-and-purge cycles of bulimia can lead to chemical imbalances that harm major organs.

David Herzog, a Harvard psychology professor and founder of the Harvard Eating Disorders Center, said medical science is only in the early stages of tracking the long-term effects of eating disorders and there are no good statistics on how many people are killed or permanently disabled. Herzog said that even when someone dies from an eating disorder, medical examiners often do not list it on the death certificate.

Experts say the serious health risks exist long before a victim looks sick. In Schiavo's case, Fox said, she was not excessively thin when she went to the doctor.

Psychologist Doug Bunnell, president of the National Eating Disorders Association, said while he could not comment on the specifics of the Schiavo case, it is often impossible to predict which sufferers are in immediate danger.

"Paint me a picture of an eating disorder — it's an emaciated woman," he said. "But that's not the reality. They don't get down that low. The face of eating disorders is your next-door neighbor's daughter or maybe your own."
 
I'm glad to see something was finally written about her eating disorder. It's not been widely publicised and people think Michael abused her, ect. I don't believe that. I truly believe an electrolyte imbalance caused her to collapse. I also have a suspicion her parents had no clue that she suffered from bulimia. I wonder just how much they really knew about their daughter. Doesn't seem like they knew a heck of a lot about her.
 
Oceanbreeze said:
I'm glad to see something was finally written about her eating disorder. It's not been widely publicised and people think Michael abused her, ect. I don't believe that. I truly believe an electrolyte imbalance caused her to collapse. I also have a suspicion her parents had no clue that she suffered from bulimia. I wonder just how much they really knew about their daughter. Doesn't seem like they knew a heck of a lot about her.
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It is ashamed that she did all of this to herself to keep a man.

That is why I got pissed off when a guy told me to work hard for him...
he wanted me to look better and dress like a slut or whatever.

If a man won't love me for me.... then he can kiss my ass. He ain't worth it.
 
Oceanbreeze said:
I'm glad to see something was finally written about her eating disorder. It's not been widely publicised and people think Michael abused her, ect. I don't believe that. I truly believe an electrolyte imbalance caused her to collapse. I also have a suspicion her parents had no clue that she suffered from bulimia. I wonder just how much they really knew about their daughter. Doesn't seem like they knew a heck of a lot about her.
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Huh??? Bulimia?? A potassium imbalance caused by it??
"Dr. Michael Baden co-director of the Investigation Unit of New York State Police in Albany and former chief medical examiner for New York City, ruled out pottasium imbalance and a heart attack as factors in Terri's mysterious collapse 13 years ago..and pointed to head traumas and bone injuries as a more likely cause."

http://www.sweetliberty.org/bulletins/terri/baden.htm
 
Beowulf said:
Huh??? Bulimia?? A potassium imbalance caused by it??
"Dr. Michael Baden co-director of the Investigation Unit of New York State Police in Albany and former chief medical examiner for New York City, ruled out pottasium imbalance and a heart attack as factors in Terri's mysterious collapse 13 years ago..and pointed to head traumas and bone injuries as a more likely cause."

http://www.sweetliberty.org/bulletins/terri/baden.htm
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Funny. Baden contradicted himself tonight on Greta Van Susteren's show stating that, yes, a potassium imbalance could have caused her collapse. He also said that based on everything he has heard, he doesn't think she will improve.
 
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