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 Schaivo Case: The Right to Die?
Greetings and Salutations to all of you, this morning!
Hope your coffee is poured and ready.
This morning, I want to bypass the usual pleasantries and laughs about our coffee, our “vitamins,” our tea and all that and get straight to a serious discussion around the table.
Few cases have gripped the nation’s emotions like the Schaivo case. I can’t remember a time when so many people have been so worked up – where folks on both sides of the political aisle have taken positions often contrary to their normal stance.
I, for one, have avoided commentary thus far on this case because of some very strongly-held opinions. Not sure if I can avoid them today, but if at all possible, I would like to comment on some peripheral (?) aspects of this case without becoming too political or emotional.
Michael Schaivo has been blasted, roasted, fried and fricasseed for taking up with another woman who has become his common-law wife during the same time his wife, Terry, has been alive, semi-comatose and living (if you can call it that) in a vegetative state. I’m not here to support his actions nor condone them. Neither am I here today to roast him. What I’d like to do, if I can do so without becoming a raving idiot, is to talk about some issues that go beyond Michael Schaivo’s activities during the past few years.
We’ve all heard the stories of his lawsuit against a doctor for the malpractice that led to Terry’s vegetative state. We’ve all heard the stories about how he has used that money for himself, his common-law wife, his two children by the common-law wife, etc., etc.
There have been the stories about how he treated her, how he did everything humanly possible to restore her and reverse the chemical condition that resulted in her present condition, but those stories have been shuttled to the background in favor of the accusatory stories that paint him in the most evil possible light.
Don’t mistake what I’m about to say, or suppose that I’m trying to defend Michael Schaivo. That’s not what this is about. There are some larger issues here: legal issues, court issues, family issues, unresolved spiritual issues.
In order to address these issues, I need to go back a few years to talk about some things have happened in our own family.
In late 1985, following my father’s being diagnosed with terminal cancer, his health began to decline at such an accelerated rate it was extremely hard to watch. In a matter of months, he went from the picture of health and vitality to a mere shadow of his former self. The cancer began to eat at his internal organs causing internal bleeding at such a rate that constant blood transfusions became a necessity.
Della and I had been helping my parents at Saint Paul Island in the Pribilofs (about a thousand miles west of Anchorage in the Bering Sea) while Dad had been back and forth to the hospital Anchorage, to Oral Roberts’ hospital in Tulsa, and the Mason Clinic in Seattle. I was filling in for Dad, taking care of the church, and doing some repairs to the home and church that had been set aside due to his declining health.
It became obvious that he needed to be closer to a hospital. Saint Paul Island only had a clinic – no hospital, and no facilities for emergency blood transfusions.
Della and I returned to Anchorage and leased a home in preparation for Dad moving to the city. We were barely ensconced in a home when we received a phone call that Dad’s condition had worsened, that he was slipping in and out of consciousness, and that a MedEvac flight had been called for to fly him into Anchorage.
Dr. Kenneth Laufer was a family friend and Dad’s physician, and he was aboard the aircraft that flew to Saint Paul Island so he could administer a blood transfusion and keep him stable during the flight into Anchorage.
The pilot radioed ahead to let us know when they would be arriving, and we were at the airport when the plane landed. As they were taking Dad off the aircraft, I heard him say to Dr. Laufer, “Don’t you ever do that again!”
When I had a chance, I queried Dr. Laufer. He said that Dad had died on the flight – that his condition was so unstable when they arrived at Saint Paul he knew it was going to be a real fight to keep him alive long enough to reach the hospital. When Dad’s heartbeat and pulse stopped, they resuscitated him with electric shock.
Dad’s comment to Dr. Laufer, therefore, was predicated on the fact that he saw no reason to be resuscitated. He repeated himself to Dr. Laufer on several occasions in the weeks that followed saying, “Doc, I’m ready to go to be with the Lord. Don’t try to keep me alive down here. If my ticker stops again, let it stop! Don’t keep restarting it.”
Dr. Laufer looked at me when Dad made some of these comments and laughed, “Your dad is one tough bird. I don’t think I’ve ever met a man with a stronger will.”
The doctor DID resuscitate him one more time in the weeks that followed, but only because we told him that Dad had promised to perform my brother’s wedding. In the meantime, Dad’s two sisters, Avis Daniel and Dorothy Argue, and his brother, Everett Capener, flew to Anchorage and stayed in our home so they could spend some last time with their brother. My brother, Howard Capener, flew in from Colorado with his fiancée, Barbara Martinez, so that Dad could perform their wedding.
I called my friends in the television news media because I knew this would be newsworthy and a remarkable human interest story for the news. They televised my brother’s wedding, performed from Dad’s hospital bed.
With a lot of fancy medical footwork, Dr. Laufer managed to keep Dad alive for a few more weeks – time that allowed him opportunity to prepare his final will, and give directions to the family on issues of importance. On a Thursday night in March of 1986, sitting in our living room, Dad started to get out the easy chair and say, “I think I’ll go to bed.” His sentence was cut off as his voice suddenly stopped and he dropped to the floor.
Della called Dr. Laufer, and we called 911 for the ambulance. Dad was in a coma. When Dr. Laufer arrived at our home, I said to him, “Looks like this is it.” He said, “Yeah, I promised him I wouldn’t ‘hit him’ again, as he called it, with electric shock to bring him back.”
Dad hung in a coma for nearly 24 hours at Providence Hospital in Anchorage. All of us were there in his hospital room to see his face suddenly brighten into a big smile, his eyes opened for a few seconds, and he was gone. He died on Good Friday of 1986.
Fourteen years later, my mother was suffering from congestive heart failure when she was MedEvac’d into Anchorage. Della had been caring for her following an incident a couple months before when it appeared she had breathed some toxic fumes and was flown unconscious into Anchorage.
All of us knew that whatever time remained for her was relatively short. The Schaivo case had been in the news off and on (as it has been for many years), and Mom remembered the story of this woman who was being kept alive in a vegetative state. “Don’t you dare do that to me,” she ordered. “If I can’t take care of myself, don’t you dare try to keep me alive on feeding tubes and medications. That’s not alive: that’s living death!”
In September of 2000, she was placed into an extended-care home in Anchorage, and three weeks later slipped into a final coma. The doctors insisted on keeping her alive, and hooked up enough tubes to her to make her look like something from outer space.
A couple months before, despite Mom’s direct orders to the doctors not to keep her alive artificially, she had slipped into unconsciousness, and they ignored her orders. When she regained consciousness, Della had presence of mind to ask for a form Mom could sign specifying her wishes. Mom signed a DNR order, and a medical power of attorney giving Della the final word on her medical care.
Nevertheless, when Mom slipped into unconsciousness the last time, the doctors were adamant that they were not going to pull the plug. We had to show them the DNR order before they would comply. Her previous verbal instructions to them apparently were worthless. Even after showing them the DNR order Mom had signed, the doctors still insisted on calling Mom’s original doctor to find out if indeed she had told him verbally that she did not want to be kept alive artificially.
It was exasperating. I said to the doctor who finally did pull the plug, “What does a person have to do around here for their wishes to be carried out? Threaten you guys with a gun? Mom has made her desires abundantly clear: to her original attending physician, to the doctors at Providence Hospital, to us, and to you. She even signed a DNR. What more do you want?”
They finally pulled the plug, and she died three days later peacefully.
In 2003, my aunt, Avis Daniel, was in failing health. She had been hospitalized several times with congestive heart failure, and Della had been taking care of her off and on. The Schaivo case was one she was very familiar with, and one in which she took an interest because of her background and training as a nurse.
She called me up on the phone one day and said, “I’ve told the doctor that I’m not going to the hospital if something happens to me. They’re not going to do to me what they’re doing to that woman in Florida.”
I said to her, “So what are you saying? You want to die at home? You don’t want medical treatment at the hospital?”
She responded, “The medical society today has become a culture of death. They want to keep you alive, but it’s not really alive. It’s a living death. This way, they can keep on collecting their ridiculous medical fees and milking people’s finances until their broke and in debt. I won’t have that!”
Auntie A (that’s what we called her) didn’t quite get her wish not to be hospitalized. The neighbor across the street kept tabs on her daily. She came over one morning and found Auntie A barely conscious and on the floor, unable to move. She called for an ambulance, called the doctor, and then called me. I told her to have the doctor call me.
He called a few hours later to say that they had stabilized her, and that after she had regained consciousness, she demanded to be removed from the life-support equipment and sent home. They kept her for a couple more days, then sent her home.
She called an attorney, had a DNR order prepared and signed it; then signed a medical power of attorney giving Della and me the authority to make decisions for her in the event she was unable to.
Two weeks before Christmas of 2003, she called me on the telephone. “Reg,” she said, “I’m done. I’ve finished what the Lord sent me here to do. I’m tired and I want to go home. I want you to agree with me in prayer that the Lord will take me home.”
Della and I weren’t ready to let go of her, and I kind of stuttered, “Uhh, Auntie A, uhh…are you sure?” Before I could really say anything, she started praying out loud over the phone, “Lord, I’m done. I’ve done what you asked me to do. I’m ready. It’s time for me to go home.”
Most of us are familiar with folks who pray to stay alive – not folks who pray to die. Our society has developed a culture of living death. Folks are so afraid to die – and in many cases, if not most, they’re not ready for eternity – they do virtually anything to keep themselves alive. At any cost! It’s a spiritual condition. They suffer from the Fear of Death, and they haven’t made things right between themselves and the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus, they do everything humanly and technically possible to remain technically alive.
Not Auntie A. That was Monday night when she called me. December 8th. Six days later on Sunday morning, December 14th, her neighbor called me to let us know that Auntie A had gone through the house setting things out she thought we ought to be aware of, opened up her Bible on her nightstand, combed her hair neatly, then went to bed where she died peacefully during the night. The neighbor found her with a smile on her face.
Auntie A took things into her own hand. She wasn’t letting the medical society have the final say. She determined that she had finished her course, that she had fought the good fight of faith, and that she was ready to go home and be with the Lord Jesus Christ. She simply “gave up the ghost,” to use the Elizabethan expression.
Della and I have yet to put our desires and intentions in the form of a DNR, but we have said to each other so many times we’ve lost track, “Don’t you ever do that to me. That’s not living. Don’t keep me alive on IV’s and feeding tubes. If my time has come, I’m ready. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord.”
The Schaivo case – from all I’ve seen and heard – is one where husband and wife expressed their desires one to another during the course of their marriage: desires neither ever thought needed to be reduced to paper. When Terry Schaivo first lapsed into this condition, Michael apparently fought tooth and nail to keep her alive, not willing to let go of her. When the doctor failed to do something Michael thought he could have done to bring Terry back, he sued the doctor for malpractice, eventually winning the lawsuit.
When did Michael give up and finally conclude that he couldn’t bring her back? I don’t know. Was it while the lawsuit was being fought? Was it after the mental and physical exhaustion associated with the long legal battle?
Whatever the answer, the fact that he took the malpractice award and concluded that it was time to let Terry go has been treated by many as outright criminal. Whenever you hear his name, now, it is in the same breath as “murderer” because he has chosen to let her go. It is an emotional and highly-charged response that comes from folks who were not a part of their marriage, and have no knowledge of the things they shared in their intimate moments with each other.
The fact that Terry’s parents have insisted on taking charge of her in an abortive effort to keep her alive, and Michael has insisted that they are acting against her expressed wishes to him, has only created a flurry of accusations, charges and counter-charges. Motives on both sides are being questioned.
The culture of fear surrounding her impending death has evoked unprecedented legal maneuvering, actions on the part of Congress and the President of the United States, the State of Florida and Florida’s Governor, Jeb Bush.
It isn’t hard to identify with the parents in this case. It isn’t hard to identify with Michael Schaivo. It isn’t hard to identify with President Bush and our Congress, or Florida’s State House and Governor Bush. Everybody wants to make sure that Terry Schaivo has a fighting chance.
Tragically, it’s kind of like what Rush Limbaugh said on his talk show the other day, “the courts put more credence in a person’s handwritten shopping list than they do in the intimacies shared in the bond of marriage between husband and wife.”
It doesn’t matter that Terry Schaivo probably expressed her desire to Michael to never be kept alive artificially. It doesn’t matter that folks today think it isn’t “artificial” to feed someone through a tube because they have no natural ability to eat food. It doesn’t matter that our courts have usurped the sanctity of marriage, usurped the Constitution of the United States, usurped State Constitutions, and arrogated power to themselves to make life and death decisions they have no business being involved with.
Sticking our noses in everyone else’s business seems to be the order of the day.
Not me, folks! Not Della and me! We’re fixin’ to do what Terry and Michael Schaivo should have done in the first place: sign Medical Powers of Attorney and DNR orders. No one will get to interpret what they think we want to happen, or act in our stead against our wishes. We’re going to spell it out in black and white.
Beyond that, neither of us are the least bit afraid of death. As the apostle Paul said,
“For me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” (Philippians 1:21) We know what happens when we’re finished here. It only gets better.
Blessings on you.
--Regner
Regner A. Capener
EKKLESIA HOUSE
RR-15, Box 6180
Mission, TX 78574-9589
(956) 583-5355
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