Schiavo-like case in Okeechobee garners interest

OKEECHOBEE (FBW)—Just a few years ago 57-year-old Karen Weber sat around the kitchen table talking about the Terri Schiavo case with her husband, Ray, and her mother, Martha Tatro, 80.

None of the three could have anticipated the chain of events that began in November when Karen Weber had a seizure and then a paralyzing stroke.

Now in a nursing home in Okeechobee, the woman is at the center of a dispute between family members over whether she is competent enough to make her own decisions about basic medical care.

Karen Weber breathes on her own, but the stroke paralyzed her left side, leaving her unable to speak or swallow.

Terri Schiavo is the disabled Florida woman who died in 2005 in a Pinellas Park hospice after a Florida judge ordered her nutrition and hydration cease. It took her 13 days to die. Her husband prevailed in a polarizing court case that reached Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Ray Weber, Karen’s husband of 34 years, sought to have her feeding tube removed in March and transferred to hospice. Weber’s mother, who says she is alert and responsive has indicated that she does not wish to go to hospice.

Okeechobee Circuit Court Judge F. Shields McManus in March issued an initial injunction to block the removal of the feeding tube and in May appointed for her an attorney and a committee of three to issue opinions on her competency. The three are: Laura Riley, a Jacksonville neurologist; and two psychologists, Anna Angeline, from Hobe Sound, and Stephen Alexander from West Palm Beach. A competency hearing has yet to be scheduled.

Family matters

Weber’s husband, Ray, and Martha Tatro have remained cordial and visit together at the hospital. The Webers have three children, Nick, 27, and Kasey, 25, who live in Calif., and Dusty, 33, who lives in Ohio.

Ray Weber told the Associated Press in early June, “I don’t want this to become a media event.”

Karen’s mother, Martha Tatro, who sought the court’s intervention, told Florida Baptist Witness her daughter is not a “vegetable” and that she has been doing well despite contracting a severe infection as a result of a leaky feeding tube placement during the Christmas holidays.

“She’s been fighting for her life,” Tatro said. “She moved all of her limbs. It’s not the stroke that’s killing her.”

Tatro said Karen Weber suffered the seizure in November when the younger woman and her husband, Ray, were enroute from Okeechobee to pick her up from the Orlando International Airport. Martha Tatro had been visiting Karen’s sister, Joyce Tatro-Manes, 40, who had just given birth to a new baby, Gracie.

Two weeks later, when it looked as if things were improving, Karen suffered a stroke and begin an uphill battle for her life. A $5,000 bed her mother purchased finally seemed to slow the fluid which has caused almost a constant battle with pneumonia.

First the nursing home was directed, according to court documents, to place a “do not resuscitate” bracelet on her wrist and then an order was written for Karen to be transferred to hospice where her feeding tube was to be disconnected.

“She loves life,” Tatro said quietly of her daughter, discounting the notion that people might think she’s merely trying to prolong the inevitable. “She doesn’t want to go yet. When they ask her, she knows what hospice is. She is a very intelligent woman.”

Joyce Tatro-Manes, Karen Weber’s sister, who lives near Toledo, Ohio, told the Witness it has been a heartbreaking journey for the once close-knit family.

Tatro-Manes, who attends Hope Baptist Church (GARB) in Toledo, said the Weber and Tatro families lived only blocks apart in Ohio and she has known Ray Weber since she was six years old.

Karen and Ray were married in Ohio but relocated to California where they raised their three children until they resettled in the Okeechobee area about seven years ago where Tatro and other extended family members live.

Although Ray and Karen Weber were guests in Martha Tatro’s house in Okeechobee for the past six years, Martha Tatro finally asked him to leave when the papers were filed in court.

“I pray for patience and understanding and the right words to say,” Tatro-Manes said, crying. “It’s hard, it’s really hard for our family.”

Tatro-Manes said she feels like her elderly mom is walking a “tightrope” in trying to care for Karen and provide whatever rehabilitation and stimulation that she gives her on her own. Meanwhile, the clock ticks and she believes her sister, who still cries, is fearful because of what has transpired.

Nearly 17 years younger than her sister, Tatro-Manes, who is working on her doctorate in education at the University of Toledo, said she is also afraid Weber is not receiving rehabilitation appropriate for a stroke victim.

“To me, if she’s a stroke victim, she needs to be treated like a stroke victim instead of somebody who is waiting to die,” Tatro-Manes said. The siblings’ brother, David Kinser, 55, lives in South Dakota, she said, and visited in May.

Calling her mom “spunky,” Tatro-Manes said that although she is supported by family members and church family at the Freewill Baptist Church in Okeechobee, “she is still 80 years old.”

Barbara Watford, Karen’s aunt who lives in Okeechobee, and at least one other relative has filed an affidavit with the court recounting visits with her in the nursing home and noting her responses to their communication including “nodding her head from side to side, blinking twice, holding and squeezing hands, raising her hand, giggling and waving bye to myself.”

Tatro-Manes said she is baffled by issues raised in what seems to her to be a simple case. “They’ve asked her, ‘Do you want to go to hospice?’ and she shakes her head ‘no.’ So I don’t really understand why we’re even having the competency hearing,” Tatro-Manes said. “I’m truly offended by this competency hearing.”

On the other hand, Tatro-Manes knows the prognosis is poor.

“We know that she’s sick. I don’t want anyone to think, ‘they’re just delusional.’ We know she’s sick and we know that every minute that we have with her is a blessing from God. It’s borrowed time. We know that. But there is no way that we can just sit by and allow my sister, or my mother allow her daughter to be starved to death at the hands of a man that she’s married to. A higher sense of order has to kick in at some point.”

Sympathetic towards Ray Weber, Tatro-Manes said he had been by Karen’s side through another long struggle when she was rehabilitated after a stroke from which she fully recovered in the early 1990s. Karen Weber only in the past several years had began to slow down after a shunt at the base of her brain began to leak because of scar tissue.

Prior to moving in with her mom in Okeechobee, the busy, mostly stay-at-home mom had driven a car, danced, and served at her children’s school’s PTA meetings. Just before the incident she had attended the baby shower for her niece and was smiling and vibrant on the front row of a photo of the event.

“It’s my opinion, but I think that he’s just done with her,” Tatro-Manes said.

‘Competency’ is main issue

Typically, members of an examining committee have 15 days to return their reports to the judge, according to Florida statutes, but the timing might be affected by the distance of the doctors from Okeechobee and Karen Weber’s condition, her mother’s attorney, Joseph Rodowicz told the Witness.

“We’re sort of in limbo waiting for those reports to come back,” Rodowicz said. He is affiliated with the Alliance Defense Fund (www.alliancedefensefund.org) and was asked to join the case after Martha Tatro was unable to find an attorney in Okeechobee willing to assist her, according to Tatro-Manes.

Karen Weber’s competency is the question, Rodowicz said. “Does she understand what’s going on and can she communicate her medical issues as to what she wants to do. Does she want to go to hospice? And we have several instances where she has indicated she does not want to go to hospice,” he said. “We submit that life support measures, which is really just a feeding tube and nutrition, shouldn’t be removed.”

Rodowicz said Karen Weber has had an Okeechobee attorney, John Cook, appointed for her.

Although Rodowicz is cautious about calling for any changes in the current laws regarding the designation of food and water as life support, he said “family members should be respectful of life and to the extent, there is a standard of proof that exists in Florida that requires clear and convincing evidence that somebody is incompetent and two, that they would make the decision to end their life.”

“You can err on the side of life by having a higher standard of proof which would make it harder for somebody to take away or exercise the person’s right to end their life,” Rodowicz said.

In an Associated Press story, Ray Weber’s attorney, Colin Cameron, said his client “is of the opinion that Karen does not want to live as a vegetable.”

Bobby Schindler, Terri Schiavo’s brother, and host of America’s Lifeline on WGUL 860 AM in Tampa, told the Witness this case is a good example of what happens all around America every day.

“The disabled like Karen are being killed every day and the only time we hear about it is when family members object as in this case, as in Terri’s case,” Schindler said. “The whole notion that feeding tubes are now considered medical treatment is unacceptable. And we’re seeing what’s happening because of the law. People with disabilities are potentially in harms way of being killed, because food and water, which should be basic care is now being defined as medical treatment.”

Sympathetic to those who are facing deathbed decisions, but firm in his opinion of circumstances facing the disabled and patients who are not otherwise terminally ill, Schindler bristles at the notion that he is too harsh in characterizing the removal of nutrition and hydration in such circumstances as active euthanasia.

“You are killing someone by taking their food and water away,” Schindler said. “Otherwise, they wouldn’t die. How else would you describe it if you are taking away her food and water?”

The Terri-Schindler Schiavo Foundation (www.terrisfight.org), created after Terri’s death and staffed with family members, exists in part to provide resources and networking to family members who don’t know what to do when faced with situations similar to Karen Weber’s or to Terri’s.

Meanwhile, Martha Tatro said she recalls clearly a conversation around the kitchen table during the heat of the Schiavo controversy.

In it she sided with her daughter, Karen, who said she was on Terri’s side, while Ray sided with Michael Schiavo, Terri’s husband—Tatro remembered.

“I said, ‘they should just leave her alone and let her mother take care of her,’” Tatro said. After Ray Weber left the room, Tatro said she leaned over and asked her daughter if she heard what Ray Weber had said and told her, “we best get a paper signed for you.’”

It never happened, Tatro said, wishing aloud that she followed through on her impulse to insure her daughter spelled out her wishes on paper. “I should have got that paper signed,” the woman sighed, making clear that she filed her own end-of-life wishes with her personal attorney. “Everybody should get one.”

As for a “family” issue that’s once again in court, Rodowicz said that’s the nature of the American court system.

“I would respectfully say there are more family members other than one particular person in a family,” Rodowicz said. “The issue is, what would Karen do, at that point.”

As for Karen’s mom, Rodowicz said he believes she is trying to do what she believes her daughter wants. “I don’t know of any mother who would not defend their daughter, knowing what she knows,” Rodowicz said.

Randy Huckabee, pastor of First Baptist Church in Okeechobee, said his church will be praying for Tatro and their sister church.

“If she feels strongly that her daughter still has a will to live then by all means we have to support that to the fullest degree,” Huckabee told the Witness.