A Life That Matters (29 page)

2. My knowledge of Terri Schiavo’s situation is indirect. I have not been provided an opportunity to review the medical record, nor to examine Ms. Schiavo. What knowledge I have about her situation derives from the news media and conversations with individuals who have followed the case carefully.

3. Based upon this information, I am concerned about the management of Ms. Schiavo’s condition. As a neurologist who cares for the dying, I have a considerable interest in the rational management of such cases, both by attending physicians and by the court.

4. My first concern regards the quality of the information used by the court to establish Ms. Schiavo’s intentions in the event of serious neurological injury. I have never met a 25-year-old outside of medical school who seriously considered such unusual possibilities regarding her mortality. In my experience, where an individual’s wishes are uncertain (that is, where they have not previously been expressed in writing), the medical community defers to the more conservative course of action. This is especially true when there are family members who are willing and able to assume the burden of care. I am concerned that if patients’ intentions are extrapolated from verbal reports, then physicians in general, and neurologists in particular, will be asked to terminate life support based upon less than definitive evidence of an individual’s wishes. Surely the criteria for ending someone’s life should be stringent and well-defined. Based upon what I know of Ms. Schiavo’s situation, neither of these conditions has been met.

5. Secondly, I am concerned that the medical information under consideration is not contemporaneous with the decision at hand. It is my understanding that Ms. Schiavo has not had a medical, let alone a neurological, evaluation since 2002 or before. Since her neurological status is disputed, a decision should not be made based on outdated information. Given the uncertainty of her neurological status, current technology should be brought to bear on her current situation. It is my understanding that Ms. Schiavo had a neuroimaging test some three or more years ago and that her last electroencephalogram was more than ten years ago. Unless these tests were conclusive (i.e., showed indisputable, severe or extensive brain injury), they can hardly be considered relevant to her current neurological status. A quality and unbiased neurological evaluation and appropriate diagnostic tests need to be obtained at the time of decision-making, even when the decision-making process has been prolonged. Failure to do so in a high-profile case such as this can only lower the threshold for inappropriately withholding lifesaving medical support for other neurologically compromised individuals.

6. I have discussed this mater with other neurologists. While all neurologists understand that some cases of coma and PVS are logically managed by not continuing life support, there is a general concern regarding management of highly uncertain cases. Even if it can be established that Ms. Schiavo’s chances for a meaningful neurological recovery are very low, it cannot be established that her chances are zero. If there is no written indication that she would not wish to remain alive under these circumstances, and if there are family members willing to assume the burden of her care, then good neurological practice would give these family members the opportunity to provide that care. Established ethics societies and committees, some independent and some associated with national neurological organizations, should consider this matter and its implications prior to a final decision being rendered.

I declare under the penalty of perjury under the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts that the foregoing is true and correct.

Executed this 8th day of March 2005, in Needham, Massachusetts.

[signed by Peter J. Morin, M.D., Ph.D.], Declarant

¹
1. CBS later apologized for running it.
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²
1. Michael Schiavo claims that he called 911 before calling Bob. We know otherwise.
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³
1. Many of Bob’s friends cautioned him that Michael might have expected a position in Bob’s company after he and Terri were married.
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⁴
1. Fourteen years later, Bobby and Suzanne went to the courthouse to look for the papers and found they were not there. What they discovered instead were papers granting Michael guardianship over Terri which he had applied for and was granted in a court hearing in June 1990. Although Michael claimed otherwise, we had no idea that such a hearing was held, nor did we know its outcome. Dan Grieco was his attorney.
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⁵
2. Bob’s brother Fred’s business had flourished, but after Fred’s wife and daughter were killed in an automobile accident, he sold it to Bob and another employee. Bob served as president and CEO of the corporation, but in 1984 sold his stock. His income dipped even as his goal of spending more time with his family was achieved.
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3. Michael sued Prudential, but the suit was quickly thrown out of court.
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1. Among the best in the nation, it is particularly famous for its work with brain-injured patients.
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2. In 2000, one of the jurors contacted Bobby in a rage. He had found out from press stories that Michael was trying to have Terri’s feeding tube removed rather than trying to rehabilitate her. He said that he and the other jurors were suspicious of Michael from the start and that the only reason they awarded Terri any money was that they felt sorry for her.
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⁹
3. Dr. Prawer was later completely exonerated from any and all malpractice charges related to Terri.
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¹⁰
4. In a deposition he gave in 1999, Michael admitted saying this.
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¹¹
1. In a later deposition, Michael used her gallstones against us, claiming that we cared so little about her that when she had her operation, we didn’t bother to attend.
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¹²
2. During his research on our behalf, Sheehan was informed by the nursing home that Michael had refused medication for Terri’s UTI.
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¹³
3. It’s possible that pressure was put on them not to join the case, but that’s only conjecture.
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4. In a hearing before Judge Greer over the question of having Terri’s feeding tube removed, Sheehan testified that he had indeed never explained to us what the term meant and admitted he had made an error.
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5. If he’d divorced Terri, he would have lost access to her estate and guardianship.
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¹⁶
1. We asked Judge Greer to see Terri for himself, but he refused. As far as we know, he never visited her during the five years of court hearings.
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¹⁷
2. This disturbed many of the attorneys who studied the case, who felt one of the appeals courts should have overturned Greer’s decision, since he was acting as Terri’s guardian. That Terri was never afforded a guardian who wasn’t also the judge in her case, and that she was never afforded her own attorney, was in direct violation of Florida statute law.
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¹⁸
3. Quinlan’s case became a national story.
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¹⁹
4. In an appearance on
Larry King Live
, Michael used Felos’s hypothetical questions to attack Bob. “Well, if you listened to Mr. Schindler in the testimony back in the trial, he would cut off his daughter’s arms and legs and still keep her alive, and I’m not going to let any parent that would do that to their child ever take care of her.” The public thought we were fanatical nuts who’d go to ridiculous extremes to save Terri’s life. Say what you will about Felos, he was certainly a master manipulator.
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²⁰
5. Terri’s other good friend Diane Meyer also testified—about the fight she had with Michael in Pennsylvania.
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²¹
6. Jackie and her husband divorced soon after Terri collapsed.
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7. In 1996. Jackie had moved from Florida and came back to see Terri.
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²³
8. In Judge Greer’s ruling, he cited every one of the witnesses’ testimony except Jackie’s. None of us know why.
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²⁴
9. We could have provided uncles, aunts, cousins, and additional friends of Terri’s who were lined up to testify that Terri made no such comments, but Pam chose not to call them.
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10. To get Brian’ s testimony on record, Felos later questioned Brian in front of the court recorder when Judge Greer was absent.
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11. Life is never a burden, regardless of a person’s disability.
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12. He remains our bishop today.
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²⁸
1. We had been unable to locate an appeals lawyer in so short a time.
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2. I believe that God sends special people when you are in most need. For the next five years, Monsignor Malanowski had a tremendous influence on our lives. His strength and wisdom helped us maintain our sanity.
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³⁰
3. Felos resigned his position in the same time frame that Terri was transferred, but we have no doubt he still had influence.
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³¹
4. Sargent resigned from the hospice a few years later, though I’m not sure it had anything to do with the fight or with Terri.
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³²
1. Suzanne had been divorced from her first husband for several years.
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³³
1. We had to go in front of Judge Greer to rescind the ban, one of his few rulings in our favor. Bobby and Suzanne were allowed back into the hospice six months later, in October.
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2. About twenty-five miles east of St. Petersburg.
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³⁵
3. Under Felos’s questioning, Cindi agreed that Michael might not have been stalking her at the hospital where she worked—he had gotten a job at the same hospital—but that he would follow her in his car when she drove, and that throughout 1993, there were often twelve to fifteen phone calls a day that nobody answered when she picked up She was sure they were from Michael. On redirect, she said that when she found out that Michael had gotten a job at the hospital and was looking for her, she was shocked
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³⁶
and scared.
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³⁷
4. Padre Pio wasn’t a saint then. He has since been canonized.
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³⁸
1. Felos immediately filed suit to have it overturned. He was denied.
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³⁹
2. Meanwhile, on April 26, Pat filed a complaint in civil court accusing Michael of fraud and perjury. On May 6, she amended the complaint to include breach of fiduciary duty and conspiracy, among other charges. On June 14, Felos gave notice that Michael would not be available for his scheduled deposition. On two separate occasions, subpoena servers could not locate Michael. His and his fiancée’s whereabouts were unknown. The deposition was rescheduled four or five times. Michael didn’t appear for any of them. No penalty was leveled against him. Eventually, the civil suit was thrown out.
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⁴⁰
3. In August 2001, for example, Pat filed a “motion of bias” requesting Greer to remove himself from the case because his eyesight was so bad he could not see Terri’s reactions in the videotape. Greer turned down the motion.
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⁴¹
4. He had also ruled, in a different appeal, that Bobby and Suzanne could once again be admitted to see Terri, provided they made no effort to feed her. But terms were strict: no pictures could be distributed to our doctors to assist them in their evaluation of Terri’s condition, and Michael would have exclusive rights to any videotapes or still photographs of Terri.
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⁴²
5. Kind of a recliner on wheels.
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⁴³
1. To this day, we don’t know what it said.
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⁴⁴
2. In his 2005 book,
Silent Witness: The Untold Story of Terri Schiavo’s Death
, author Mark Fuhrman lists six possible scenarios of Terri’s collapse, one of which is that Michael and Terri struggled the night of February 25 and that he unwittingly got her in a choke hold, cutting off oxygen to her brain, which, at that time, could not have been visually detected or later revealed in Terri’s autopsy.
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