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

maybe they were afraid they’d be blamed for the injuries.
    Why didn’t Michael report the scan? He had to know about it, because on each of his visits he’d scrutinize Terri’s medical charts. If he believed MediPlex was at fault, we believe he’d have sued them. But to do that would have meant making Terri’s bone scan public. If we’d known about the scan when it was taken, we’d no doubt have been less trusting of Michael.
    Another major element of Dr. Hosobuchi’s follow-up program was for his associate, Dr. Yingling, to come to Florida to examine Terri. He determined Terri was improving and prescribed advanced rehabilitation. He recommended to Michael the Shands facility in Gainesville. We were ecstatic at Yingling’s evaluation. I barely noticed the one-year anniversary of Terri’s collapse. My spirits were good. Our Terri was going to get better.
    Money remained a problem, especially during the fall of 1990. Michael was living on Terri’s Social Security disability payments, and Bob was working, though not at the same financial level as in Pennsylvania, so it was a precarious existence. We were living from paycheck to paycheck and dared not think of what would happen if Terri suffered another cataclysmic event.
    We might not have been able to care for Terri financially if the St. Petersburg community hadn’t come to our rescue. Fund-raisers were held on Terri’s behalf, not only by our neighbors but also by Terri’s co-workers at Prudential. There were bake sales, a Valentine’s Day dance in her honor, a Terri Schiavo Day. Over Christmas, a mile-long line of candles placed on sandbags was set up along the seawall, and people could buy the bags as well as pray for Terri. Beyond the formal events, individual donations arrived from dozens of citizens, many of them strangers.
    And here, publicly, we are finally able to thank everyone for their generosity, financial and spiritual. They sustained our efforts for Terri in a difficult time.
    Altogether, some $50,000 was raised, money we used to pay for the plane trip to California, nurses, and other medical expenses. In the spring of 1991, we discovered that Michael had acquired a safe-deposit box at a First Union bank in St. Petersburg, in which he placed $10,000 in cash. We figured it probably came from the money raised in St. Petersburg, but Michael never said anything about it. From then on, we never got an accurate accounting of what he spent either on himself or on Terri.
    According to Humana Northside’s medical records, the doctors were mystified about the cause of Terri’s collapse that horrible February 25, 1990. Like the paramedics, their first thought was a drug overdose, but the toxicology tests were negative. A congenital heart anomaly was ruled out by an echocardiogram, which registered normal. A heart attack was considered, but no, Terri’s enzymes weren’t elevated. The only thing out of the ordinary was a low level of potassium in her blood.
    Based on Dan Grieco’s suggestion, Michael decided to investigate the possibility of suing Terri’s ob-gyn, Dr. Stephen Igel, and her GP, Dr. Joel Prawer, for not having detected that Terri was in danger. Michael and I went together to the law firm of Woodworth and Dugan for the first of many conferences on the feasibility of a suit.
    Glenn Woodworth hesitated, particularly since Michael’s lawsuit against Prudential had failed (the suit was brought by a different lawyer in Woodworth’s office). “There’s no malpractice suit. There’s nothing,” he concluded. “Well, something
happened to Terri,” Bob said when we reported back. “Somebody did something wrong.”
    Woodworth called Gary Fox, a malpractice lawyer in Florida, and the two men came up with a strategy based on the presumption that Terri was bulimic. In November 1990, nine months after Terri’s collapse, Woodworth filed a $20-million lawsuit against the two doctors on Terri and Michael’s behalf. The sum was based on actuarial