Terri Schiavo--No signs of trauma

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She had an eating disorder and threw her potassium sodium balance out of whack and had a heart attack.

Edited to add link--a great title: "The Lost Lesson of Terri Schiavo"

http://www.sptimes.com/2003/10/26/Fl...on_of_Te.shtml

I read that the autopsy revealed no evidence of an eating disorder.

http://news.yahoo.com/fc/us/assisted_suicide

An autopsy on Terri Schiavo backed her husband's contention that she was in a persistent vegetative state and was blind, the medical examiner's office said Wednesday. It also found no evidence that she was strangled or otherwise abused. But what caused her collapse 15 years remained a mystery. The autopsy and post-mortem investigation found no proof that she had an eating disorder, as was suspected at the time, Pinellas-Pasco Medical Examiner Jon Thogmartin said.

...hospital records of her 1990 collapse showed she had a diminished potassium level in her blood. But he said that did not prove she had an eating disorder, because the emergency treatment she received at the time could have affected the potassium level.

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FOr some reason I thought the article I read said no sign of heart attack as well....I'll have to reread it.

I just listened to the coroner's statement on NPR. He said that there was a heart stoppage, not a heart attack, and that they may never know what caused it. He also said that he couldn't conclude whether or not she was in a persistent vegetative state, but that she had severe brain damage and no amount of therapy would ever have helped her.

The only thing that I've heard from her parents (on the same report) is that they're not convinced by the coroner's report that their daughter wouldn't have recovered. I wonder if their denial is genuine or if they're just trying to save face.

I hope that Dr. Bill Frist learns his lesson. He was diagnosing her on film to back his political stance based on her supposedly following her family with her eyes. Her vision was completely gone. There's no way she could have been responding to any sort of visual stimulus.