Terri Schiavo not a ‘vegetable,’ frequent visitor tells Witness

CLEARWATER (FBW) -- Is Terri Schiavo in a Persistent Vegetative State making her completely unable to communicate with others? That may be the view of the husband of the brain-damaged woman at the center of an international euthanasia controversy, but the opinion is not shared by one who spent numerous hours with Schiavo previous to the second time her feeding tube was removed in 2003.

Tom Brodersen, husband of Pat Anderson, a former attorney for the Schindler family, told Florida Baptist Witness Feb. 24 he believes the result of Michael’s pursuit of Terri’s death and his encasement of her in a Clearwater hospice where people are sent to die, has left her lonely and without stimulation.

“She married the man for love and she lay there all alone while Michael took his love down the street and lavished it on another woman,” Brodersen said. “Somebody younger who wasn’t disabled.”

Brodersen, who has degrees in speech pathology and law, was on the short visitor’s list for a period of time after his wife took the case in 2001. After introducing himself to Terri by leading a trio with her parents, singing, “Those were the Days,” Brodersen said the normally shy Terri appeared to accept him as one of the family and did not ignore him as she does people she is not familiar with.

“I was struck by how lonely Terri is,” Brodersen said. “She is shockingly lonesome.”

Brodersen said he was not allowed to continue to visit with Terri after a mix-up in visitation occurred over two years ago, but recalls putting to use his knowledge of speech training and broadcasting during his visits—even getting her to clearly articulate a pattern of “yes and no” type communication.

“I had started out kind of trying to replicate some of the things done before,” Brodersen recounted, like trying to get Terri, who is said to be functionally blind, to move her eyes in different ways. That didn’t seem to be one of Terri’s strengths, however.

“But she had really good vocal control,” Brodersen said.

It didn’t take him long to help Terri develop a moan that would be long and drawn out and a moan that would start and stop. One long moan for “yes” and two for “no” he said.

“I started out trying to have her hold a moan like she would hold it when singing,” Brodersen recalled. “You have a beautiful voice, I told her, to encourage rather than discourage. With a little prompting she would hold the note.”

Brodersen said he was impressed, though admitted the court had dismissed earlier videos and reports of Terri’s articulation as pure reflex.

Some doctors have said Terri is in a Persistent Vegetative State and has no awareness of her surroundings. Brodersen disagreed. He said Terri learned quickly and responded to two questions he posed to her on the last day he visited. He asked Terri if she was ten feet tall and if the color of her skin was purple. For the first answer, he said she moaned twice.

“I was delighted because obviously she understood the instructions and did her best to follow them and had the cognition to form a correct response to that question, said Brodersen. “So it was a context appropriate answer.”

In a somewhat repetitive sense, Brodersen said he again explained the process to her, with both her mother and father in the room.

“I asked Terri ‘are you purple?’ and she furrowed her brow like she was concentrating really hard and spontaneously she whispered the word, ‘no.’”

Later that same day, Brodersen said Terri again said “no” when she was asked if she was thirsty. He came to the conclusion that working on a system of repetitive moans was probably unnecessary and so he begin to work on a helping her to say “yeah” for “yes” since she had already said “no.”

Other instances where Terri appeared to recognize music and even be inspired by a Gregorian chant convinced Brodersen that Terri could not be considered unfeeling or simply put, a “vegetable,” he said.

“I guarantee you unless she was drugged or under the weather, if her dad called me and held the phone to her ear, Terri would give that telephone her fullest attention and laugh,” Brodersen said. “Terri Schiavo is a friend of mine and it really is that simple.”