With His.Wife in Limbo - Florida Probate Counsel

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SUNDA Y, NOVEMBER
2, 2003.
Mr. Schiavo's belief that his wife
would recover had evaporated by
1997,his supporters say, whenhe lost
his mother to cancer. But the other
side points out that as early as 1993,
soon after he won the malpractice
money, Mr. Schiavodid not want to
treat an infectionhis wifehad developed and that he had stopped her
rehabilitation even earlier.
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With His.Wife in Limbo,
Husband Can't Move On
Schiavo Case Brings Unwelcomed Spotlight
By ABBY GOODNOUGH
CLEARWATER, Fla., Oct. 30 Mich~el Schiavo is 6-foot~6, with a
sCI1Jb-brush mustache and a gold.
chairi bearing the crosses his parents
wore. He is a nurse who works the
.graveyard shift, often pulling into his
driveway as his neighbors walk their
dogs in the moist Florida dawn. He
has a meticulously kept yard, a
screened-in pool where his friends
sometimes gather, a golden retriever, a girlfriend and a year-old daughter.
"My brother is a normal guy who
this tragedy happened t~," said Brian Schiavo, one of the four brothers
with whom Mr. Schiavo shared an
unremarkable
childhood in Levittown, Pa., near Philadelphia.
But because of the tragedy of Mr.
Schiavo's wife, Terri, 39, who suffered brain damage when she collapsed one night 13 years ago Mr.
Schiavo is also at the center of one of
the most debated court cases in the
nation. He wants to remove her feeding tube, paving the way for her
death against the wishes of her parents and supporters who have rallied
to their cause.
For this, Mr. Schiavo, 40, has been
depicted as a heartless fiend.
As the case has gained prominence
in recent months, Mr. Schiavo has all
but refused to tell his side of the story
publicly or answer the charges that
his in-laws, along with people who
have never met him, keep leveling.
Through his brother Brian and his
lawyer, George Felos, he declined to
be interviewed for this article.
But as the latest round in the legal
battle. over Mrs. Schiavo's fate be- I
gins, her husband's friends and relatives are speaking out. They describe
a man driven from his home by
death threats, who avoids going out
in public but for work and court
dates. He will not divorce his wife,
marry his new love and get on with
life, they say, because of his determination to carry out his wife's wish not
to live in a vegetative state.
"He's got ethics and values that
most people don't have, much less
the strength to adhere to them," said
Russ Hyden, a friend who said Mr.
Schiavo supported him through his
wife's death.from cancer.
Mr. Schiavo was two years out of
high school when he met Theresa
Marie Schindler in 1982, at Bucks
County Community College in Pennsylvania. She had been overweight
and frumpy until her senior year of
high school, when she started dieting,
and Mr. Schiavo was her first boyfriend, her family said.
"When she lost all this weight, this
was the first guy to come along and
pay attention to her," said Suzanne
Schindler
Carr, Mrs. Schiavo's
younger sister. "She was like a pig in
mud." The couple married in. 1984,
and two years later, decided to move
to St. Petersburg, Fla., into a condominium that Mrs. Schiavo's parents,
Bob and Mary Schindler, owned.
When they were not working - he
as a restaurant manager, she as a
they hung out
clerk at Prudential
by the pool at their apartment complex or in St. Pete Beach, thick with
bar~apd danc~clubs.
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While Mr. Schiavo's family describes those early years of the marriage as carefree, the Schindlers
who moved to Florida around the
-
time their daughter
did
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say they
became dark. Mr.. Schiavo was a
penny pincher who kept track of the
mileage on his wife's car and yelled
at her for spending money on -haircuts, they said. The couple worked
opposite hours
she all day, he late
into the night.
The Schindlers say that on Feb. 25,
1990, Mrs. Schiavo told her brother
that she and Mr. Schiavo had had a
violent argument
a claim Mr.
Schiavo denies. Mr. Schiavo has said
his wife was asleep when he arrived
home from work around 2 a.m. In the
..one interview that he granted recently, on "Larry King Live," he said
that he awoke at 4: 30 and heard a
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thud. It was his wife, whom he found
on the noor, he said.
By the time paramedics arrived,
Mrs. Schiavo's heart had not pumped
for perhaps 10 minutes, doctors
found. The prevailing
.1
.
theory
is that
she had an undiagnosed potassium
deficiency, possibly due to extreme
weight loss or even, her husband has
said, bulimia. She had gone from
over 200 pounds in high school to 110.
The brain damage Mrs. Schiavo
suffered left her able to breathe on
.,her own but not to ingest food or
drink. Doctors have said she is in a
persistent vegetative state, meaning
her eyes are open and might widen,
stare and follow objects, but her
brain is incapable of emotion, memory or thought.
Brian Schiavo said that he immediately suspected Mrs.. Schiavo
would not recover. But his brother,
he said, was determined to rehabilitate his wife. "Everybody pulled together and said, 'This is not going to
be how it is,'" Brian Schiavo said.
"Because in Mike's mind, he was
going to bring her back."
Mr. Schiavo flew his wife to California for treatment, sleeping on a
cot beside her bed for a month. He
began studying nursing, to take better care of her. He and his wife lived
with the Schindlers for a while, and
he filed a malpractice suit against
Mrs. Schiavo's doctors for failing to
diagnose her health problems. In November 1992, the Schiavos won $1
million in damages: $700,000for her
care, the rest for ,him.
When the check arrived, the. war
began.
Both sides say that on Valentine's
Day, 1993, Mr. Schiavo and his father-in-law t1ad an ugly fight. in the
nursing home where Mrs. Schiavo
was then living. The Schindlers say
the fight was about what kind of
treatment the money would go toward, with them advocating rigorous
therapy and Mr. Schiavo wanting
only basic care. But Mr. Schiavo said
it was because Mr. Schindler wanted
.a.cut of the settlement.
Only after his mother's death did
Mr. Schiavo tell his in-laws that on
several occasions, his wife had said
she would not want to be kept alive
artificially. The timing of the revelation - after he won the malpractice
money and after he began seeing
Jodi Centonze, with whom he would
eventually have a child made the
Schindlers deeply suspicious.
The family rift kept deepening,
and in 1998,when Mr. Schiavo went
to court for permission to remove his
wife's feeding tube, the Schindlers
immediately challenged him. They
believed, and still do, that Mrs.
Schiavo is conscious and responds to
them especially to her mother,
'whose voice, they say, elicits frequent smiles from their daughter.
The five years since have been a
constant, pitched battle. The Schindlers have accused Mr. Schiavo of
strangling their daughter that night,
and have collected testimony from
nursing-home aides saying that he
verbally abused his wife after her
collapse and expressed eagerness
for her to die. But the courts did not
find the testimony credible.
As his wife's guardian, Mr.
Schiavo haS blocked her family from
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seeing her medical
records
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a sign,
they say, of .his controlling, retaliatory nature. But he has also let them
visit her through most of the battle a
sign, Mr. Schiavo's supporters say,
of his generosity and patience.
Shortly. after the legal battle began, Mr. Schiavo moved here with
his girlfriend into a middle-class
neighborhood.
Ms. Centonze, 38, often
washes Mrs. Schiavo's clothes and
accompanies Mr. Schiavo to visit
her, Mr. Hyden said.
For a long time, the Schindlers
accused Mr; Schiavo of wanting his
wife dead so he and Ms. Centonze
could spend her settlement money.
But Mr. Schiavo's lawyer, Mr. Felos,
said all but $60,000has been spent on
medical care and legal fees, which
have totaled more than $400,000,and
that his client would not see a penny
of what remains.
Brian Schiavo said his brother felt
betrayed by everyone from the
Schindlers to the media to Gov. Jeb
Bush, who used a law rushed through
the Legislature last week to order
Mrs. Schiavo's feeding tube reinserted. Mr. Schiavo has sued to have the
law ruled unconstitutional.
The Schiavos' 19th anniversary
will pass on Nov. 14. Mr. Schiavo had
hoped that by then his wife would
have left this world her wish, in his
words, fulfilled. But she remains in
her hospice bed, waiting for the resolution of Schiavo v. push.
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