A Life That Matters by Terri's Family:, Robert Schindler

or about his childhood, but he fought hard for his wife and was tireless in her care. A bond grew between us, which was not the case between Michael and Bob. In fact, Michael said in a deposition years later something to the effect that Bob “didn’t want to participate in helping Terri,” an accusation that stung because it was so obviously untrue.
    Still, by October, Michael and I decided we could care for Terri no longer. There had been too many trips to the hospital to have the
G-tube reinserted, too many calls to the paramedics when Terri had coughing fits we did not know how to stop. All the goodwill in the world couldn’t substitute for the sheer physical burden placed on us both. In retrospect, we had probably moved Terri home too early.
    It was always our intention to bring her home permanently at some point, to make her part of our family again—that was essentially what our battle with Michael was about—but this was not the time. Much of the hope that had washed over me when she was at Vina del Mar was replaced by blackness. I held firm to our conviction that Terri would live with us again; still, there seemed a long journey ahead, and there were nights when, exhausted, I came close to despair, only to revive in the morning.
    In the fall of 1990, Michael’s sister-in-law, a nurse living in Philadelphia, called with exciting news. Two doctors, Yoshio Hosobuchi and Charles Yingling at the University of California at San Francisco, were experimenting with a new kind of brain surgery aimed at curing people with Parkinson’s disease or traumatic brain injuries, people who had suffered lack of oxygen to the brain. (The medical term is
anoxia
.) We were electrified. Was there a chance that Terri . . . ?
    At our urging, Michael contacted the university hospital to enlist Terri in the program. The procedure involved putting a stimulator in the brain, very much as doctors routinely put a pacemaker in the heart. Technically, Terri didn’t qualify for the program, since her doctors didn’t know the cause of her injury—she may or may not have suffered physical trauma, and she certainly didn’t have Parkinson’s. But in December, they agreed to accept her, and our spirits were lifted higher than they’d been at any time since her collapse. The doctors would speed her recovery. Perhaps she’d even learn
to talk again, walk again—even live on her own, just like Bob’s brother.
    I didn’t go with Michael and Terri because by then I had to take care of my mother at the nursing home. Michael was angry; he didn’t want to go alone. Still, Michael reported the results. They were mixed. The operation didn’t work as well as expected, but there was still noticeable improvement. Further rehabilitation was prescribed.
    In January 1991, as a major part of Dr. Hosobuchi’s prescribed follow-up program, Terri was admitted to MediPlex rehabilitation center in Bradenton, Florida. There, her admittance chart notes that she was saying “No” and “Stop” and “Mommy” because of the pain of her physical therapy.
    Later, people said that Terri was in a persistent vegetative state from the moment she collapsed. The MediPlex notes are objective evidence that this isn’t true. More, they gave us ample reason to believe that with rehabilitation, including speech therapy, she would have been able to say more, interact more. Tell us she loved us.
    Because Terri was so obviously in pain during her therapy, MediPlex ordered a total bone scan on March 5, 1991, to determine its cause. The scan, which we only found out about some ten years later, revealed Terri had once broken her right femur, had suffered an “unusual” amount of rib injuries, and had sustained multiple other abnormalities to her skeleton. To the best of our knowledge, MediPlex did not investigate the radiologist’s conclusion of trauma. We’ll never know why they didn’t report any of these findings of abuse to law enforcement authorities. As a guess,