Months ago, news about Terri Schivo dominated the airwaves with every talking head throwing their two cents into the fray. I didn’t not take up the debate here because, quite frankly, it seemed like none of our buisness. I felt saddness and pain for everyone involved. Now, the autopsy report for the 41-year old has been released by the AP. Below are a few excepts and a link.
An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband’s contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state, finding that she had massive and irreversible brain damage and was blind, the medical examiner’s office said Wednesday. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused.
Autopsy results on the 41-year-old brain-damaged woman were made public Wednesday, more than two months after Schiavo’s death March 31 ended an internationally watched right-to-die battle between her husband and parents that engulfed the courts, Congress and the White House and divided the country.
Thogmartin (Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner) also said she did not appear to have suffered a heart attack and there was no evidence that she was given harmful drugs or other substances prior to her death.
She died from dehydration, Thogmartin said.
He said she would not have been able to eat or drink if she had been given food by mouth as her parents’ requested.
“Removal of her feeding tube would have resulted in her death whether she was fed or hydrated by mouth or not,” Thogmartin told reporters.
He also said she was blind, because the “vision centers of her brain were dead.”
“The brain weighed 615 grams, roughly half of the expected weight of a human brain,” he said. “This damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons.”