Conflicting memories about Schiavo's wishes
PINELLAS PARK, Fla. -- In early 1994, Terri Schiavo, lying in a nursing home bed, contracted a urinary tract infection, not uncommon for immobile patients. But her husband's response, according to court documents, surprised nearly everyone involved in her care.
Michael Schiavo ordered the nursing home not to treat the infection, and signed a ''do not resuscitate" order. It was the first time he indicated that his wife -- a severely brain-damaged patient requiring the use of a feeding tube -- should be allowed to die.
The nursing home objected, and he withdrew the request. But his actions enraged Terri Schiavo's parents, thus beginning the battle over her life.
With legal efforts to reinsert Schiavo's feeding tube nearing an end yesterday, the 41-year-old patient entered her ninth day without food and water. According to a Florida court and her husband, this is what she would have wanted.
Appeals and federal courts have upheld that notion. But the actual evidence indicating Terri Schiavo's intentions in the absence of a living will or legal directive is more complicated, based on conflicting recollections by family members of long-ago casual remarks by her.
The 1994 incident was the first time Michael Schiavo indicated that he thought his wife was beyond rescue, a conclusion he reached after consulting with doctors, according to court documents. Michael Schiavo has insisted that his wife supported the right to die, citing conversations the couple had in the past. But an examiner appointed by a Florida court concluded that the husband's opinion on the matter was not convincing, according to court documents. Instead, it was testimony by his brother and sister-in-law that became crucial in swaying a Florida judge.
On the other side, Schiavo's mother, Mary Schindler, has insisted that her daughter openly opposed the notion that life support be withdrawn from patients in persistent vegetative states. But on cross-examination, Schindler acknowledged that the comments were probably made when Terri Schiavo was just out of elementary school.
In deciding between these conflicting accounts, Pinellas County Circuit Judge George W. Greer, who made the crucial ruling in the case, relied in part on an assumption about young adults coming of age in the 1980s.
Terri Schiavo's support of the right to die, as recalled by her husband's family, was believable because it ''would be expected by people of this country in that age group at that time," Greer wrote in the February 2000 opinion ordering the removal of the feeding tube.
But many Americans following the case remain conflicted: What would have Terri Schiavo wanted?
On Saturday, the Florida Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Schiavo's parents, ending their legal efforts to reinsert her feeding tube. The Schindler family has asked Governor Jeb Bush to intervene somehow. But Bush has repeatedly said he will not -- beyond his pending state court attempt to gain custody of Schiavo.
Schiavo's parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, have argued recently that removing the feeding tube violates their daughter's right to religious freedom. They have asserted that she was a practicing Catholic who would have agreed with the view of Pope John Paul II that patients in a vegetative state should be kept alive. But when the Schiavo case reached a Florida courtroom in 2000, Mary Schindler made a different argument.
According to court records and media accounts, Schindler said her daughter's views became clear while the two watched a television program on a comatose 22-year-old, Karen Ann Quinlan. After ingesting alcohol and tranquilizers at a party, Quinlan collapsed and entered a vegetative state, kept alive by a respirator, which some in her family wanted removed, prompting a national debate on the right to die.
''Just leave her alone. Leave her. If they take her off, she might die. Just leave her alone and she will die whenever," said Terri Schiavo, according to Schindler's testimony.
Schindler said her daughter was 17 to 20 when she made the comments, according to court papers. But after she was shown newspaper articles on the Quinlan case, which began in 1975, she changed her mind. Terri Schiavo, on Dec. 3, 1963, was 11 or 12 at the time.
Greer similarly discounted the testimony of another family friend, who also testified that Schiavo made similar comments on the Quinlan case when she was 19. Instead, Greer found the recollections of Michael Schiavo's family more convincing.
Michael Schiavo testified that his wife, during a discussion over his sick grandmother, told him, ''If I ever have to be a burden to anybody, I don't want to live like that." On another occasion, he said, she made a similar comment while watching a television program on end-of-life care.
But lawyer Richard L. Pearse Jr., assigned by the court to review the evidence in the case, found that Michael Schiavo's recollection alone was not ''clear and convincing" evidence of Terri Schiavo's wishes, according to court documents. Thus, his family's recollections became crucial.
Michael Schiavo's brother, Scott, testified that Terri Schiavo commented on the right to die after the funeral of his grandmother, who was kept alive by doctors against her wishes. Terri Schiavo said, ''If I ever go like that, just let me go. I don't want to be kept alive on a machine," according to his testimony.
Joan Schiavo, married to Michael Schiavo's older brother William, was among Terri Schiavo's closest friends. She said the two talked about the issue about a dozen times because they knew a woman who had to remove a feeding tube from her baby. Terri Schiavo said, ''If that ever happened to one of us, in our lifetime, we would not want to go through that," Joan Schiavo testified.
Raja Mishra can be reached at rmishra@globe.com. 