A Daughter’s Fight for Truth Turned into a Guardianship and Probate Nightmare

(By Pamela Locke Bimberg, Daughter) – My mother suffered a brain aneurysm in March 2005, and our family’s life changed forever. For years after that medical crisis, my father and I stood by her side, along with my siblings.

Before my mother became incapacitated, she handled all of the personal and business finances because my father was limited in his ability to do so. My father then insisted that I step into that role and do everything my mother had done, including helping manage their personal finances, her rental properties, and his road-building and land-clearing business.

I was not a stranger to my mother’s care, and I was not a stranger to my parents’ finances. My father and I were as close as a daughter and father could be from the day I was born. I was a true daddy’s girl. I was his favorite, and he made that known. CONTINUE

Source:
A Daughter’s Fight for Truth Turned into a Guardianship and Probate Nightmare 

Terri Schiavo Guardianship Records to Remain Confidential, Court Rules - State Affairs

BY JIM SAUNDERS

Key Points

1. State appeals court rejects bid to unseal Terri Schiavo records
2. Schiavo died in 2005 after feeding tube removal
3. The court cited a state law keeping guardianship records confidential

Two decades after Pinellas County resident Terri Schiavo died following high-profile legal, political and ethical battles over removing her feeding tube, a state appeals court has rejected an attempt to unseal records about the case.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeal on Wednesday denied the attempt by Schiavo’s brother and mother — Bobby and Mary Schindler — and an advocacy group, the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network.

Schiavo died March 31, 2005, 15 years after she sustained severe brain damage because of a cardiac arrest at age 26. Her husband, Michael Schiavo, sought permission in 1998 to remove her feeding tube, drawing fierce opposition from her brother and parents.

The case drew national attention and sparked lengthy legal fights and debates in the Florida Legislature and Congress, with Gov. Jeb Bush helping lead efforts to prevent the removal of the feeding tube. Courts allowed the removal, ultimately resulting in Terri Schiavo’s death.

Wednesday’s opinion rejected an attempt by the Schindlers and the advocacy group to open records in a guardianship case. Michael Schiavo was his wife’s guardian after her incapacitation.

The opinion said Bobby Schindler and the group sought to intervene in the long-closed case as a step toward opening the records. It said Mary Schindler did not need to intervene because she had been a party to the case. But it upheld a circuit judge’s decision denying their requests.

In part, the opinion cited a state law aimed at keeping guardianship records confidential. Chief Judge Matthew Lucas wrote that the “fact that Ms. Schiavo passed away many years ago” did not “diminish the importance of the confidentiality the legislature afforded her guardianship records.”

“Finally, and perhaps most glaringly, none of the appellants [the Schindlers and the group] have ever explained why they waited nearly two decades after Ms. Schiavo’s death before filing a motion to unseal her guardianship records,” the opinion, joined by Judges Stevan Northcutt and Craig Villanti, said. “Their failure to address that pertinent question would seem fatal to their argument that good cause justified unsealing these confidential documents.”

Similarly, the opinion said Bobby Schindler and the group did not provide adequate reasons for intervening, saying their only justification “is that they wish to see what is in the sealed guardianship records so that they can, perhaps, use whatever they might find in their public advocacy. We agree with the circuit court that that is an insufficient basis to permit intervention in a case that ended more than twenty years ago.”

In a January news release on the group’s website, Bobby Schindler said the appeal was “about transparency, constitutional rights, and the pursuit of truth.”

“These documents may contain information that could alter the historical understanding of Terri’s case,” he said in a prepared statement. “There is no valid justification for continued secrecy after two decades.”

Bobby Schindler is president of the group, which says on its website that it has “advocated for and assisted thousands of medically vulnerable patients and families” since its founding in 2005.

Full Article & Source:
Terri Schiavo Guardianship Records to Remain Confidential, Court Rules - State Affairs

See Also:
Terri Schiavo 

Bobby Schlindler on The Shannon Joy Show - 08 July 2022

Source:
Bobby Schlindler on The Shannon Joy Show - 08 July 2022

Professor Discusses 5 Recent Brain Injury Breakthroughs

(OCNJDaily) – One in every 60 adults and children in the United States is living with a permanent disability caused by a brain injury. That’s 5.3 million people.

Michael Fraas is a professor who earned his Ph.D. from the University of Cincinnati and is a Member of the Brain Injury – Interdisciplinary Special Interest Group (BI-ISIG) of the ACRM. Dr. Fraas has worked extensively and published in the field of brain injury rehabilitation.

There are many exciting developments in this field, including a second edition in the works for The Cognitive Rehabilitation Manual, courtesy of Dr. Fraas and colleagues. Below, Professor Fraas discusses some recent developments in the study of brain injuries that have made their way into the news. CONTINUE

Full Article & Source:

Professor Discusses 5 Recent Brain Injury Breakthroughs

Bobby Schindler: Health Care's March Toward Death

On September 6th, 2021, Jean-Pierre Adams died at the age of 73. You would have never heard of Adams if not that he was a former French professional soccer player. However, what made Adams’ death newsworthy was that his extraordinary wife Bernadette dedicated her life to caring for Jean-Pierre when he sustained a brain injury after knee surgery complications.

Jean-Pierre never regained full consciousness and for 39 years he was dependent on his wife for care. From the day Bernadette brought Jean-Pierre home she was at his bedside, never at any time contemplating ending his life by removing his feeding tube. She taught the world a lesson of unconditional love.

Sadly, we don’t hear enough of these stories. Certainly, there are families who are caring for the “Jean-Pierre’s”, but the reality is that the media – and more troubling – our health care systems, are inculcating the public into their earthly worldview, fostering a culture that accepts the denial of life-affirming care, even if the “care” is ordinary – food and water – based on a person’s utility, as was in the case of my sister, Terri Schiavo.

In fact, it was 18 years ago on October 21st, 2003, when the Florida Legislature passed a bill granting the governor, Jeb Bush, the power to reinsert Terri’s feeding tube after it had been removed for six days. That day marked the beginning of my family’s experience with corporate media and how they would launder the truth of Terri’s situation and condition with “right to die” propaganda.

Full Article and Source:
Health Care's March Toward Death

Society Is Increasingly Embracing Eugenic Logic. I Saw It Firsthand With My Sister's Death.

by Bobby Schindler 

Source: AP/Reuters Feed

In 2014, Richard Dawkins, a British evolutionary biologist, author, and a one-time University of Oxford Professor, advised a woman who was pregnant with a Down syndrome baby that she should "Abort it and try again. It would be immoral to bring it into the world if you have the choice."

There is no way to quantify the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling to legalize abortion and the effect it has had on our consciences let alone its impact on our culture. It is reasonable to conclude given the remarks like Dawkins that Roe has desensitized us to the meaning of life – the unborn and born included – and our God-given sacredness to what has become a utilitarian way of thinking.

This kind of eugenic logic led to a mob of media, politicians, and individuals attacking my family for wanting to care for my sister, Terri Schiavo. These people believe disabled people like Terri should be killed while an apathetic majority does nothing.

Terri had difficulty swallowing due to her brain injury and needed a feeding tube to administer her food and water but was not sustained by “life support,” nor was she sick or dying. Nonetheless, she received a death sentence ordered by a Florida judge at the request of her estranged husband because he viewed her as a “burden” with a “quality of life” that he loathed and was unwilling to support.

In response to Terri’s death, my family established the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network to aid families in situations like what my family experienced with my sister. Since that time, we have watched the protections for our medically vulnerable shrink as an acceptance that would make Dawkins proud infects our culture like an uncontainable sickness.

For example, I recently received the following email from a brother who needed help to protect his sister from having her life ended by their mother (names have been omitted for reasons of privacy):

"I need help regarding my disabled sister’s right-to-life. She has had many surgeries and my mom no longer wants to care for her and is doing everything in her power to bring in hospice, so they can give her morphine to suppress her lungs so that she passes away. She’s a happy thriving individual who loves life - she rides her bike, watches movies, communicates using sign language, and is in general the happiest person you would ever meet. Dying would not be her wish."

Sadly, this is all too common, as we have received similar calls for help. But when our dignity is marginalized, particularly in persons with disabilities and other medically unsafe persons, this is the consequence.

And this human dignity has been marginalized previously in our recent history. Only three decades prior to Roe, the world watched in horror as fanatics (using Dawkins-esque rationale) orchestrated “The Euthanasia Program” – the prearranged and calculated murder of institutionalized patients with disabilities in Germany.

These heartless tyrants – mostly German doctors – targeted those they deemed "life unworthy of life.” In other words, individuals with mental and physical inferiorities were killed, in part, because they were financial burdens on German society.

Although the United States has not reached a full-scale, government-endorsed “Euthanasia Program,” this financial rational, along with the fading meaning of a person’s intrinsic worth, has taken root in American health care, as it is used to deny and withdraw care from our medically inferior.

Disguised as compassion, the value of the dollar is given more deference than a person with disabilities or the medical care they require. Moreover, the expansion of this thinking is spreading into uncharted territory.

For instance, the difficulty in diagnosing severe neurological related injuries, the rising expense of life-sustaining medical technology, and the lucrative financial incentives to harvest organs is forcing challenging and unwanted decisions on caregivers and loved ones.

Perhaps, not surprisingly, the current “procurement” market for human tissues and organs in the U.S. is quite large and driven by insufficient supply and heavy demand. The Milliman Report publishes the “going rate” for each of 12 different tissues and organs in the human body. A heart, for instance, goes for close to $80,000; a kidney, $65,000; a lung, $70,000. If all 12 tissues and organs could be harvested from a single patient declared “brain-dead”, a highly controversial diagnosis, however unlikely, their total value would exceed a half-million dollars.

It was not long ago— prior to Terri’s death in 2005—when the thought of dehydrating a cognitively disabled person would have been unimaginable. Today, it has become commonly accepted by society, not only as the cases we receive at the Life & Hope Network demonstrate, but by the worldwide headlines of comparable types of cases.

So, who is next? Perhaps those with autism will be in their crosshairs? We can certainly make similar financial burden and the loss of dignity arguments on the most severe cases of autism. How about persons with Down syndrome after they have been born? Especially if their parents or caretakers pass away and they become wards (and financial liabilities) of the state? Seems like Richard Dawkins would approve.

Indeed, this is the natural progression when we marginalize those in society we judge “useless.” Eventually, nobody is immune to mistreatment, and in the case of our medically unprotected, death is the inevitable conclusion.

The medical profession used to lead by example, understanding the vital importance of a person’s dignity and reflecting that in its relationship between the physician and the patient. Doctors desired and chose to be healers, so that our medically fragile would receive appropriate and needed life-affirming care.

Extremists like Dawkins’ understanding of what is “immoral” exposes a new morality that is being supplanted by today’s modernists and their relativistic agenda: an anti-life, anti-traditional value, anti-Christian ideology.

Consequently, God as our Creator is rejected, opening the door to the most powerful and influential institutions: physicians, government bureaucrats, the health care system, the insurance industry, and the media, all intertwined working in harmony deciding who should and who should not receive treatment. Or in other words, who will live and who will die.

What a dangerous time for us all.

Bobby Schindler is president of the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, and an associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute.

Full Article & Source:

Society Is Increasingly Embracing Eugenic Logic. I Saw It Firsthand With My Sister's Death.

26-Year-Old “Brain Dead” Coronavirus Patient Just Walked Out of the Hospital

by Anna Medaris Miller

Reuters

Medical workers treat COVID-19 in Madrid.

When Tionna Hairston's heart repeatedly stopped beating for 30 minutes, her doctors worried yet again that she wouldn't make it. 

The 26-year-old in North Carolina was diagnosed with COVID-19 in May, and subsequently suffered a stroke that led to bleeding in her brain and blood clots in her heart that caused the cardiac arrest, the Winston-Salem Journal's Richard Craver reported. 

The conditions left her unable to fully use her arms and legs, and she was put on a ventilator for more than two months. She also suffered kidney and liver failure. 

Doctors "thought that we should take her off of life support because she had no hope for life," Hairston's mom, Stacey Peatross said, according to Rasheeda Kabba, who covered the story for multiple local outlets. "They thought she would be a vegetable. She wouldn't have any quality of life at all." 

They were wrong. After family, friends, and strangers prayed for her, Hairston began improving. She entered rehab for more than a month, where she relearned basic activities of daily living, like eating and getting dressed. 

On Tuesday, she walked out of the hospital to continue rehab at home. She had been in medical care for 137 days. "My faith in God and the fact that I wanted to walk again" allowed her to survive, Hairston said. 

Calling Tionna Hairston a survivor may be one of the great understatements of 2020. https://t.co/R4x0zRtFFD

— Winston-Salem Journal (@JournalNow) October 21, 2020

While she's not fully recovered — she walks with a walker and has some memory loss — her doctors praised her recovery and the lessons it can teach others. 

First, people should know "20-somethings can get very sick from COVID and COVID complications," Dr. James McLean, director of the Novant rehabilitation hospital in Winston-Salem, told Craver. "It's not just older folks." 

The other lesson is that Hairston "demonstrated that human spirit, that little flame inside that keeps us going, shows us that people can overcome things that we could never imagine."

Other young COVID-19 patients have suffered strokes and neurological issues  

Doctors have been concerned to see strokes in young people with no prior history of strokes and, in some cases, mild or even asymptomatic COVID. 

In May, five young New Yorkers with COVID-19 were admitted to the hospital with life-threatening "large-vessel" strokes, or those caused by a blood clot that travels from the body into an artery in the brain, Business Insider's Aylin Woodward previously reported. 

Doctors don't yet understand exactly how COVID-19 influences stroke risk, but it may have to do with blood clots, which have appeared in other parts of coronavirus patients' bodies, like the lungs and legs. 

COVID-19 has also been linked to a range of other neurological issues, including delirium, brain fog, and memory lapses. Some experts have even warned of an epidemic of brain damage. 

"My worry is that we have millions of people with COVID-19 now. And if in a year's time we have 10 million recovered people, and those people have cognitive deficits ... then that's going to affect their ability to work and their ability to go about activities of daily living," Adrian Owen, a neuroscientist at Western University in Canada, told Reuters.

 

Michael Goldsmith returning home April 19.

Abbie Sophia

It's unclear why some young critically ill patients who were previously healthy recover and others die, but Hairston is not the only success story.

Michael Goldsmith, a 34-year-old husband and father in New Jersey, was in a medically-induced coma and on a ventilator for 22 days while fighting a severe case of COVID-19. At the same time, his family and community advocated for access to the drug remdesivir, which they thought might be his only chance of survival. 

He never got the drug, but recovered, and doctors don't know why. 

After returning home, Goldsmith told Insider he cherished simple moments like snuggling with the family while watching TV. "It's the little things that you hope for, and I would say 'you dream about,'" Michael said, "but after going through the coma, I don't know for sure that was the case."

Editor's note: This story was updated to remove medical information provided by another media outlet that Business Insider was unable to verify. 

Full Article & Source:

26-Year-Old “Brain Dead” Coronavirus Patient Just Walked Out of the Hospital

14 Years After They Starved My Sister to Death, We Must Never Forget Terri Schiavo

Every year, I write to honor my sister, Terri Schiavo, on March 31^st, the anniversary of her death. For those who do not remember, Terri, at the age of 26, experienced a still inexplicable collapse resulting in a severe brain-injury. As a consequence of her brain injury, she was unable to swallow using conventional utensils, and like many Americans required nutrition and hydration by feeding tube in order to live.

Terri did not have a medical directive specifying who would make her health care decisions in the event she was incapable of making them herself. Therefore, it was her husband, Michael Schiavo, who was appointed by the court to be her medical caretaker and was ostensibly the only person who would decide what type of care, if any, Terri would receive.

Initially, my family did not anticipate this would be an issue. But that changed after Michael obtained a million-dollar medical malpractice settlement on Terri and his behalf. Before the settlement, Michael discussed continuing rehabilitation. Afterwards, he tried to deny her antibiotics when Terri came down with a urinary tract infection. But when my family sued, he relented.

It was in 1997, and as a consequence of Michael not having the permission to end Terri’s life by denying treating her UTI, Michael petitioned a Florida court, for consent to remove Terri’s feeding tube with the intent being that she dies by starvation and dehydration.

My family objected vehemently and offered to care for Terri in her disabled condition and provide ongoing appropriate therapy that was positively impacting her brain-injury. By this time, Michael was living with a woman he called his “fiancé,” with whom he eventually sired two children.

Despite this clear personal conflict of interest – and the financial benefit he would receive by inheriting Terri’s estate from the malpractice case – the judge believed testimony that Terri simply “wanted” to die.

Sadly, after a protected legal battle, Michael was successful, and on March 18^th, 2005, Terri’s feeding tube was removed, beginning a steady and extended death lasting almost two-weeks. I witnessed the process. Believe me, it was an agonizing and merciless demise.

It was during my families very public battle with Terri’s husband that we were often asked whether Terri documented who would care for her in the case of her incapacitation. In other words, did she have an advanced medical directive that specified a health care surrogate. That’s an important issue.

Each year there are over a million Americans who experience brain-injury. In fact, brain-injury is leading cause of death and disability in the US and can, at least initially, impact a person ability to make competent medical decisions. Indeed, with no previously chosen person to act as your medical decision maker and depending on the laws of the state where you live, a large portion of these cases will default to a spouse or family member deciding next medical steps.

In worse case scenarios, and depending on the circumstances, patients can be subjected to medical decisions that are made by the hospitals where they are admitted. This is because hospitals are now empowered to decide whether treatment will be continued or stopped by what is termed as “futile care theory”.

Even those who sign an advance directive requesting continuing care are not necessarily safe. “Medical futility”, sometimes called “futile care” or “inappropriate care,” permits strangers – bioethicists or doctors – to have the final say about a patient’s care, even if the patient has expressly detailed their medical treatment wishes in an advance directive or by identifying a health care surrogate.

These “futile” care determination can happen by either denying (or withdrawing) care when they conclude that a patient’s “quality of life” is arbitrarily “too low” to justify care or the cost of treatment that is, in fact, working by allowing them to continue living. For example, it would be as if doctors vetoed a decision by Michael and my family to continue Terri’s care.

Exacerbating these situations is the legality (and the common practice) to deny/withhold food and water (via feeding tubes). Understand that these are not cases of refusing extraordinary and disproportionate care when one is truly near death, rather the denial/withdrawn of basic and ordinary care to knowingly cause death.

Unfortunately, this is the economic and ideological reality of today’s health care system and is the reason the autonomy of a patient is susceptible by hospital refusal to provide the life-affirming treatment that patients are requesting, and treatment that is helping them.

Ironically, as medicine and ethicists push for a patient’s autonomy, the direction of today’s health care is to control treatment (or the patient) even in such case when a patient is clearly asking for certain treatment as in futile care judgments.

Notwithstanding these possible scenarios, executing a health care power of attorney can help safeguard access to treatment, including basic care, food and water, as well as other forms of appropriate care.

It is harder to impose futile care on a patient who has stated in writing they want treatment and have appointed a surrogate to carry out those instructions. A health care power of attorney is a document that allows you to designate a specific, trusted person to make critical medical decisions if you are not able to speak for yourself.

Equally important is whoever you designate your health care surrogate, they will need to understand the patient’s rights, without being frightened by clinicians or hospital administrators if there is a disagreement over medical treatment.

Appointing a health care surrogate is a simple and not only the smart way, but the best way to ensure that ethical and appropriate decisions are made by someone trusted and can act in a way that advance directives simply are unable to do.

Full Article & Source:
14 Years After They Starved My Sister to Death, We Must Never Forget Terri Schiavo

New Yorker Presents Editorialized Speculation on Terri Schiavo, Offers No Correction

Rachel Aviv’s “What Does it Mean to Die?” profiles Jahi McMath, outlining this resilient and courageous young girl’s situation in much of its depth, conveying the complex nature of Jahi’s medical and legal situation as it relates to the neurological criterion for death (“brain death”) and many medical, bioethical, philosophical, and religious dimensions of the issue of human life. Unfortunately, in this same piece the New Yorker presents editorialized speculation and hearsay on Terri Schiavo as if it were objective news. Worse, after nearly two weeks of appeals, the New Yorker’s “fact checking” staff and editors refused any correction.

The New Yorker editorializes that footage of Terri Schiavo appearing conscious and aware “had been edited, giving the illusion that she was tracking people with her eyes, even though she was blind”.

These “fact free” assertions dramatically misleads readers about the nature of the early 2000s Terri-related footage. A much more objective and medically sound characterization in the form of a correction was proposed to the New Yorker but rejected: “Short video footage of Dr. Ronald Cranford’s neurological examination of Terri Schiavo on behalf of her husband, Michael Schiavo, remains controversial, due to the uncertain nature of her visual and cognitive abilities”. CONTINUE

* * *

Wesley J. Smith: More Falsehoods About Terri Schiavo’s Family

In "Culture of Death"

 

 

 

Terri Schiavo's Family Remarks on Bishop Robert N. Lynch's Retirement

In "Honoring Terri"

 

 

Please Don't Confuse This Story With Terri Schiavo

First appeared in the Dakota Voice, available here. One can’t help but wonder if perhaps the mainstream media is feeling a growing sense of uneasiness regarding Terri’s death. In the two years since my sister died I have witnessed an increasing determination on their part to convince the public that…

In "Op-Eds"

Full Article & Source:
New Yorker Presents Editorialized Speculation on Terri Schiavo, Offers No Correction

Sliding towards euthanasia in Oregon

Many Americans oppose abortion because they reject injustice – particularly when it targets vulnerable, fellow human beings.

You and I would be hard-pressed to find anyone more vulnerable than an innocent preborn child.

However, there is another segment of society whose right to life is being increasingly jeopardized, and there are ways we can – and should – help protect them.

It seems with each passing week another patient who has suffered a serious brain injury is being threatened with or denied the basics of food and water – the result of a healthcare professional deeming his or her life hopeless.

This is a much more serious problem than most people realize.



If you read only one article on this topic, let it be Basic Care, Human Dignity, and Care for Medically Vulnerable Persons, by Bobby Schindler. Bobby is the president of the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network.

Bobby recently became an associate scholar with the Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), the research arm of Susan B. Anthony List. In his first article for CLI, he articulately summarizes key moments in history that brought America to the point of ending the lives of patients by denying them food and water. He exposes the alarming margin of error associated with diagnosing a patient of being beyond hope and he notes some subsequent ramifications.

Bobby also directs us to the flickering light at the end of the tunnel that may mean life or death, recovery or languishment, for many thousands of people.

Last year Oregon’s State Senate passed a bill redefining food and water when given by a cup or spoon, as “medical care.” Thankfully it was tabled in the House. Had it passed, patients who were alert and aware but unable to feed themselves may have been denied food and water.

This frightening legislation isn’t a giant leap in logic from the laws in all 50 states that allow patients’ lives to be ended by denying them food and water. Yes, every state.

The term Persistent Vegetative State (PVS) means a complete unawareness of self and environment. It was coined by just to physicians, and it degrades and dehumanizes unresponsive or minimally aware patients, relegating them to the category of grocery produce.

PVS is arbitrary and subjectively applied to patients. In addition, research shows it has been misdiagnosed as much as 48 percent of the time. If that were the case with heart disease there would be an immediate stampede to rectify the situation.

Once a patient is labeled with PVS it’s difficult to undo and they are often denied insurance benefits for rehabilitation when it’s needed the most, their first signs of recovery are often overlooked, or it can lead doctors to persuade families to “let them go” by withdrawing food and water.

The flickering light at the end of the tunnel is this: New medical advancements have allowed doctors to better diagnose brain-injured patients. And the European Task Force on Disorders of Consciousness recommends the medical community abandon PVS and replace it with “unresponsive wakefulness syndrome.” It jettisons the dehumanizing “vegetative” language and infers the possibility of some level of recovery.

Santiago Ramón y Cajal, one of the founders of modern neurology, believed that the human brain was “hardwired” and unable to fix itself in the wake of an injury. However, Dr. Joseph J. Fins’ research now suggests the brain has a capability of “rewiring” itself to some degree. Even more is being done to assist this process with adult stem cells.

To help protect you and your family from the potential withdrawal of food and water against your will, please check out our free resources.

No patient should ever be subjected to death by dehydration and starvation. We wouldn’t do that to an animal, so why are we doing it to our own human family?

Brad serves as chairman of the board for the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network.

Bradley Mattes
President, Life Issues Institute

Life Issues Institute is dedicated to changing hearts and minds of millions of people through education. For 25 years, organizations and individuals around the world have depended upon Life Issues Institute to provide the latest information and effective tools to protect innocent human life from womb to tomb.

Full Article & Source:
Sliding towards euthanasia in Oregon

Terri Schiavo’s Brother on Protecting the Medically Vulnerable

Published on Jun 23, 2017
With the rise of assisted suicide, the spotlight is on the need to protect the medically vulnerable. Bobby Schindler, the brother of Terri Schiavo, joins us as we look back on her life and discuss how we can care for our loved ones.

 Source:
 Terri Schiavo’s Brother on Protecting the Medically Vulnerable

Attorneys fight to save life of CA man

Joe Williams collapsed in a hospital emergency room nearly eighteen months ago and suffered a major disability as a result.

He has responded to therapy that needs to continue, but a caregiver has sought to have him taken off life support.

He went without food for two weeks before Life Legal Defense Foundation intervened. Foundation director Alexandra Snyder tells OneNewsNow that the organization is fighting attorneys representing the other side.

"One of whom is Jon Eisenberg," she says, "who was the attorney for Michael Schiavo and who ultimately succeeded in getting Terri Schiavo killed, death by dehydration.”

Schiavo suffered brain damage during a heart attack and she died in 2005 after her husband persuaded courts to order life support removed.

Joining Eisenberg in the Williams' caregiver's case is an attorney from Compassion and Choices, an organization that promotes doctor-assisted suicide.

“So for the other side, this is no longer about Joe,” says Snyder. "It's no longer about compassion.

This is about an agenda and that agenda says if you're too needy, you're too dependent, you're too burdensome, you're too expensive, then you have to die.”

Life Legal has an agenda too, and that is to obtain court-ordered treatment for Williams to sustain his life and ultimately to return home for continued treatment.

Full Article & Source:
Attorneys fight to save life of CA man

From Private Ordeal to National Fight: The Case of Terri Schiavo

 

Her surname in Italian means “slave,” and is pronounced skee-AH-vo. Grim as it may be, the word could apply to Theresa Marie Schiavo, even with its Americanized pronunciation: SHY-vo. For 15 years, Terri Schiavo was effectively a slave — slave to an atrophied brain that made her a prisoner in her body, slave to bitter fighting between factions of her family, slave to seemingly endless rounds of court hearings, slave to politicians who injected themselves into her tragedy and turned her ordeal into a national morality play.

To this day, the name Schiavo is virtually a synonym for epic questions about when life ends and who gets to make that determination. It would be nice to believe that since Ms. Schiavo’s death nine years ago, America has found clear answers. Of course it has not, as is evident in Retro Report's exploration of the Schiavo case, the latest video documentary in a weekly series that examines major news stories from the past and their aftermath.

Ms. Schiavo, a married woman living in St. Petersburg, Fla., was 26 years old when she collapsed on Feb. 25, 1990. While her potassium level was later found to be abnormally low, an autopsy drew no conclusion as to why she had lost consciousness. Whatever the cause, her brain was deprived of oxygen long enough to leave her in a “persistent vegetative state,” a condition that is not to be confused with brain death. She could breathe without mechanical assistance. But doctors concluded that she was incapable of thought or emotion. After her death on March 31, 2005, an autopsy determined that the brain damage was irreversible.

Between her collapse — when she “departed this earth,” as her grave marker puts it — and her death — when she became “at peace” — the nation bore witness to an increasingly acrimonious battle between her husband, Michael Schiavo, and her parents, Robert and Mary Schindler. Mr. Schiavo wanted to detach the feeding tube that gave her nourishment. Terri never would have wanted to be kept alive that way, he said. The Schindlers insisted that the tube be kept in place. That, they said, is what their daughter would have wanted. To Mr. Schiavo, the woman he had married was gone. To the Schindlers, a sentient human was still in that body.

Full Article & Source:
From Private Ordeal to National Fight: The Case of Terri Schiavo

Saying Patients are PVS Allows Courts to Starve Them to Death, What if the Diagnosis is Wrong?

I have written time and time again about the dangerous and dehumanizing persistent vegetative state (PVS) diagnosis. Actually, we saw in my family’s battle to save my sister, Terri Schiavo, from death by dehydration, that a tremendous amount of debate raged over whether or not she was in this condition.

In fact, this diagnosis is what allowed the court to order the removal of Terri’s food and water. Yet despite continuing research validating that the PVS diagnosis is growing in its inaccuracy, the medical community uses this diagnosis to end countless lives of our medically vulnerable patients who are allegedly in this condition.

This latest finding is one of a continuous stream of reports that have been issued on the inaccuracy of the PVS diagnosis. From the Report, Brain Scans Show Vegetative Patients May Actually Recover:

The Journal’s report, released on Feb. 3, revealed that some patients who were believed to be in a PVS were actually able to understand and communicate. Through the use of functional magnetic resonance scanning (fMRI), researchers in the United Kingdom estimated that a percentage of those patients suffering from profound brain injuries possessed the capacity to comprehend and communicate in limited ways.

Indeed, every time these studies are published we should move to abolish the PVS diagnosis, in particularly, using it as a reason to kill. Sadly, however, despite these imaging studies and what they reveal about the human brain, the vast majority of the medical community sees nothing improper about using such an unscientific diagnosis for, what usually turns out to be, reasons almost never in the best interest of the patients.

Furthermore, not only can the PVS diagnosis be used as an actual death sentence for a patient, but as a death sentence figuratively speaking, as well. And it seems both are supported under the pretext to save health care costs. You see, the PVS can also be used to cut off funds for a person in need of vital rehabilitation. Because once insurance providers receive the PVS diagnosis in regards to the patient’s condition, no longer are they willing to pay for any rehabilitative services.

Full Article & Source:
Saying Patients are PVS Allows Courts to Starve Them to Death, What if the Diagnosis is Wrong?

The Right to Live: An International Struggle

As Canada edges toward legalizing euthanasia, France is facing a minefield of its own over the issue, spurred in part by a French court’s recent decision to refuse a wife’s petition to deny her brain-damaged husband food and water.

Thirty-eight-year-old Vincent Lambert was involved in a car accident five years ago that left him a tetraplegic – paralyzed in all four limbs and in a large portion of his torso as well. Initially, Lambert was considered to be in a persistent vegetative state, but according to LifeSiteNews’ correspondent in Paris, doctors have since changed that assessment to “minimally conscious state,” wherein Lambert is reported to perceive and respond to pain and a general condition of well-being, as well as move his eyes to respond to stimuli and react to the presence of his loved ones. While Lambert cannot, as far as the medical team can determine at this point, communicate meaningfully, he is otherwise physically in good health and is certainly not dead or dying.

That nearly changed nearly ten months ago, however, when Dr. Eric Kariger, head of the geriatric and palliative care unit of the Reims University Hospital, put Lambert on “end of life protocol,” a decision that entailed removing all food from the otherwise healthy man. Kariger based his decision not on Lambert’s physical condition, but on his belief that Lambert would not have wanted to be kept alive, and that his quality of life was essentially non-existent in his current state.

France has consistently denied a right to euthanasia or assisted suicide in the past but did, in 2005, legalize a procedure known as “passive euthanasia,” wherein doctors are permitted to allow death by removing or withholding the treatment necessary to prevent it. Under the law, this decision can be made only by the patient himself or, in the case of an unconscious patient, by a legally designated representative, chosen by the patient himself.

Yet despite the clarity of the law and the fact that Lambert is by no means dying, or even ill, it took 31 days and a vigorous battle by Lambert’s parents to see the man’s nutritional supply reinstated via court order. The emergency injunction was issued based on the fact that the doctor’s decision had been made without consulting the majority of Lambert’s family. The decision was appealed by Kariger and, in a move eerily similar to the United State’s case involving  Terri Schiavo,  by Lambert’s own wife and nephew, both of whom are also fighting for food and water to be removed from the handicapped man, arguing that the decision would be in accordance with his wishes.

In the nine months following the court’s life-saving order, Lambert’s wife and nephew have, along with Kariger, fought vigorously to end the man’s life, forcing France to face the euthanasia debate once again. Most notably, little of the appellate arguments centered on interpreting the actual law. Instead, counsel for Kariger and Lambert’s wife focused mainly on making philosophical arguments that Lambert’s condition renders his life meaningless, and that he would not choose to live this way, if he could.

Full Article and Source:
Wife of France's Terri Schiavo Files Appeal Contesting Court Order to Provide Nutrition, Hydration for Disabled Husband

Remember the Humanity of Jahi McMath

As in the case of Terri Schiavo, people with severe brain injuries are treated like second class citizens, often being denied the treatment, care, and love that their humanity demands

The tragic facts surrounding 13 year-old Jahi McMath are now well known. She underwent routine surgery at Children’s Hospital Oakland December 9 for removal of her tonsils and some other tissue to alleviate her sleep apnea. After surgery she was alert and sitting up in bed, chatting with her family. However, as her family watched, Jahi began bleeding profusely, the blood on her gown matching the pink popsicle she held in her hand. The bleeding went on for several hours before she went into cardiac arrest and was medically declared  brain dead on December 12.

Ever since, Jahi’s family has been locked in a battle of attrition with Oakland Children’s: The hospital says she’s dead; her family says she’s severely brain-injured.

Oakland Children’s position is brutally cold: Because Jahi has been declared brain-dead, she is therefore completely dead, only staying warm via the life-giving oxygen being pumped into her system by a mechanical ventilator. The hospital leadership has taken every opportunity to make clear that they are following California's legal definition of brain death to the letter. For the hospital, Jahi is a hollow mass of flesh devoid of meaning; the administration has refused to refer to her as a child of a loving family. Instead, they have said that she is a “dead body” and a “deceased person.” Hospital spokesman Sam Singer rubbed even more salt into the wound, noting that “no amount of hope, prayer, or medical procedures will bring her back.”

The hard-nosed corporate line is very simple: Jahi is a mere shell, bereft of humanity, and using up precious resources only because of the naïve and uninformed hopes of her loving but pesky family.
Unsurprisingly, Jahi’s family sees things differently. They watched a vibrant young teenager morph into a starkly silent child, her hopes and potential dashed by a relatively simple medical procedure. They have also made clear that despite her current condition, Jahi is still their beloved child, not some washed-up husk ready for disposal. They have also been clear that Jahi is perhaps not as “dead” as Oakland Children’s Hospital would have us all believe. Jahi’s mother and several family members report that Jahi has responded to familiar voices. They have made the case that at the very least Jahi’s medical condition should be given some time before a radical hospital decision deprives her of her life for good.

For the hospital, Jahi’s medical diagnosis is certain and final, a diagnosis they want to leverage to close the book on a public relations crisis that has already badly diminished the reputation of the facility.

It’s not that simple, however, because no medical diagnosis is absolute. The research literature is rife with clinically observed instances of patients outstripping their physicians’ dire predictions by months, years, and even decades.

And that includes diagnoses of brain death.

Full Article and Source:
Remember the Humanity of Jani McMath

Girl brain dead after surgery: Terri Schiavo family joins fight over Jahi McMath

The family of Terri Schiavo has joined the battle over Jahi McMath, a 13-year-old girl on life support who has been declared dead by doctors.

"Together with our team of experts, Terri's Network believes Jahi's case is representative of a very deep problem within the U.S. healthcare system -- particularly those issues surrounding the deaths of patients within the confines of hospital corporations, which have a vested financial interest in discontinuing life," the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network said in a prepared statement.

The organization said it has been overseeing the efforts of several groups to help get Jahi transferred out of Children's Hospital Oakland and brought "to a safe place."

Jahi's family said Tuesday it had found a facility in New York willing to take her. The Oakland hospital "refused to agree to allow us to proceed in that matter," Jahi's uncle Omari Sealey said.
The hospital denied the accusation.

"We have done everything to assist the family of Jahi McMath in their quest to take the deceased body of their daughter to another medical facility," hospital spokesman Sam Singer said.

"To date, they have been unwilling or unable to provide a physician to perform the procedures necessary, transportation, or a facility that would accept a dead person on a ventilator. Our hearts and thoughts go out to them in this tragic situation, but the statements being made by their attorney and some family members are misleading and untrue."

Family attorney Christopher Dolan had accused the hospital of being "hell bent" on ending Jahi's life.
A judge has declared Jahi brain dead as well. Doctors say there's no chance she will come back to life.

Omari Sealey, Jahi's uncle, said Wednesday that the family still hopes to move her to another facility.
He accused the hospital of starving his niece by not using a feeding tube to provide her with nutrients.

Full Article and Source:
Girl brain dead after surgery: Terri Schiavo family joins fight over Jahi McMath

When 'life support' is really 'death support'

(CNN) -- Two young females, both brain dead without warning, remain on ventilators while their devastated families challenge the judgments of their hospitals.

In one situation, the family believes a miracle is possible, and wants to prolong the patient's biological functioning. In the other case, the family wants to disconnect the patient to honor her wishes. But both families are facing obstacles.

 

The way we talk about neurological death has created a misperception, ethicists say: that "brain death" is somehow not as final as cardiac death, even though, by definition, it is.

 

The term "life support" exacerbates the problem, too, because those who are brain dead do not have a life to sustain, said Arthur Caplan, director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center. This seems to be a fundamental problem in both cases that have entered the national spotlight, he said.

 

"I think these cases have been botched, horribly," he said. "They're giving the impression that dead people can come back to life."

Full Article and Source:
When 'life support' is really 'death support'

Patient in So-Called “Vegetative State” Knew Doctors Were Dehydrating Him to Death

We dehydrate to death helpless people in this country because they have a catastrophic cognitive impairment. Advocates for dehydration say it is just medical ethics, the withdrawal of the medical treatment of tube feeding. (Now, there is even a lawsuit to compel starvation by withholding spoon feeding–not a medical treatment!)

Dehydrating helpless people to death was once unthinkable. Then, in the 80s, bioethicists began advocating withdrawing tube-supplied food and fluids. And so it came to pass.

Advocates for dehydration started by claiming it should be reserved strictly for those who are unconscious. They have, of course, broadened the dehydration caste since. But recent scientific studies have now also shown that many supposedly unconscious patients aren’t unaware at all.

And now we learn some are paying attention to their surroundings!  From the Cambridge University report:

A patient in a seemingly vegetative state, unable to move or speak, showed signs of attentive awareness that had not been detected before, a new study reveals. This patient was able to focus on words signalled by the experimenters as auditory targets as successfully as healthy individuals. If this ability can be developed consistently in certain patients who are vegetative, it could open the door to specialised devices in the future and enable them to interact with the outside world.

And get this:

These findings suggest that some patients in a vegetative or minimally conscious state might in fact be able to direct attention to the sounds in the world around them.

If this is true of other patients, imagine the horror of hearing doctors and family discussing removing your food and water. Imagine the pain of the actual event!

Actually, we know what that is like. Kate Adamson, thought mistakenly to be unconscious after a brain stem stroke, underwent abdominal surgery with inadequate anesthesia. She was then left unfed (but hydrated via drip) during the healing process–and it was more painful than the sensation of being cut open!

Full Article and Source:
Patient in So-Called “Vegetative State” Knew Doctors Were Dehydrating Him to Death

Terri Schiavo's Brother, Bobby Schindler, Working to Help Others

By now, eight years later, the details and debate over his sister's situation - her diagnosis, her prognosis, her wishes, her autopsy - are no longer that important to Bobby Schindler.
For him, one thought dominates. Terri Schiavo deserved to live.

Schindler now heads a growing foundation to help others in similar situations. Every year since her death, they've held a "Terri's Day" of remembrance.

This year, the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network has moved from Florida to the Philadelphia area, where both the Schindler and Schiavo families are from, and the event has grown.

At 5 p.m. Friday, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput will celebrate a Mass dedicated to Terri Schiavo at the Cathedral Basilica of SS. Peter and Paul. Sarah Palin will speak afterward at a fund-raising dinner at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown. A ticket is $150, and 350 have been sold; $25,000 gets you a visit with Palin, but no takers so far, Schindler said.

Terri Schiavo died March 31, 2005, after 15 years in what doctors termed a persistent vegetative state. Her case was marked by an excruciating public family battle that traversed the courts, prompted an unprecedented session of Congress, drew the attention of the Vatican, and inspired countless Americans to complete "living wills" spelling out what care they did - or did not - want in the event of severe injury or illness.

Her husband, Michael, said she would not have wanted to live this way. Her parents and siblings said she would have chosen life, no matter what.

It is a decision that daily is facing many families, although rarely in such a public arena. Mostly, it's in a hospital conference room with a box of tissues on the table.

Schindler, 48, a former math and science teacher in Florida, thinks many patients are being warehoused. Last year, the foundation established a Center for Disability in the Public Square - a data-gathering and information-sharing network. In his office, he has a sketch of a rehab facility he would like the foundation to build, although he concedes it is likely a long way off.

The foundation, begun in 2000, has seen its revenue grow steadily, from less than $20,000 in 2005 to nearly $700,000 in 2011.

That year, contributions were bolstered by a $100,000 prize from the Gerard Health Foundation, a pro-life philanthropy in Natick, Mass., that praised the Schiavo network for helping 1,000 families, and giving them "safe haven amidst the pressure of the so-called 'right to die' movement."

 

One of them is Sara Harvey, of Horseheads, N.Y., just north of the Pennsylvania line. She has been battling officials over her husband, Gary, who has been in a persistent vegetative state for nearly seven years, after falling down steps and suffering a traumatic brain injury.

A judge had named the county Gary Harvey's guardian in 2007, and in 2009, officials planned to remove his feeding tube. Sara Harvey contacted Schindler, who has petitioned the court to name him a legal guardian.

No decision has been made, but Sara Harvey credits Schindler with saving her husband's life so far.  "Bobby's like an angel over my husband."

Full Article and Source:
Terri Schiavo's Brother Working to Help Others