Parents 'dealing with reality'

2005-03-28 18:45

Pinellas Park, Florida - Terri Schiavo's parents know their brain-damaged daughter is dying and are "dealing with reality", a family spokesperson said on Monday, even as their supporters pledged to take their fight to Washington.

As Schiavo went a 10th day without food or water, supporters of her parents, Bob and Mary Schindler, were heading to protest outside the White House gates on Monday. President George W Bush's aides have said they ran out of legal options to help the woman.

"Everyone is willing to write this woman's obituary except one person. And that's Terri Schiavo herself," said Paul O'Donnell, a Roman Catholic Franciscan monk and a family spokesperson.

Doctors have said Schiavo, 41, would probably die within a week or two once the feeding tube - which kept her alive for 15 years - was disconnected. She relied on the tube since suffering catastrophic brain damage when her heart stopped beating and oxygen was cut off to her brain.

Schiavo smiled, raised her hands and made guttural sounds late on Sunday while being visited by her father, Bob Schindler, and a friend, who was talking about how she liked to go out dancing, O'Donnell said outside Schiavo's hospice on Monday.

Neither Schiavo's parents nor her husband offered new, specific details on her condition, but one of the two priests who visited her hospital room on Easter Sunday said the brain-damaged woman's "death is imminent".

"They are dealing with reality," O'Donnell said of the Schindlers in an interview on NBC's Today. "They know their daughter is dying. They know what is about to happen."

Schiavo's parents dispute that their daughter is in a persistent vegetative state as court-ordered doctors have determined. Michael Schiavo contends his wife told him she would not want to be kept alive artificially.

Last rites

Schiavo's mother, Mary Schindler, did not visit her daughter on Easter, emotions keeping her from the hospice for the first time since Terri's feeding tube was removed 10 days ago, O'Donnell said.

"If she goes in there again, we might have to take her to the hospital," O'Donnell said.

But the woman's parents claimed one Easter victory: Schiavo's husband, Michael, allowed her to receive communion wine.

As her brother, sister and brother-in-law watched, the Reverend Thaddeus Malanowski held Terri's right hand as he and the hospice priest, the Reverend Joseph Braun, placed the droplet on her tongue. Malanowski also anointed her with holy oil, offered a blessing and absolved her of sin.

"She received the blood of Christ," said Malanowski, adding he could not give her a fleck of communion bread because her tongue was too dry.

- AP