Brain-injured man's wife
wants feeding tube pulled

In a case that echoes Terri Schiavo's, a brain-injured Florida man, who is reportedly responsive, could soon be transferred to a hospice and starved to death if his wife succeeds in her petition to the court.

Jacksonville's Scott Thomas suffered a brain injury in September 2004 at home that incapacitated him and left him in need of constant care, including the use of a feeding tube. According to the Empire Journal, Thomas's wife, Eliza, is seeking to have him moved to the Community Hospice of Northeast Florida Inc. as soon as his mother's temporary guardianship of the 34-year-old man ends.

Scott is currently receiving care at Brooks Rehabilitation in Jacksonville and his mother, Pamela Patton, says she has made plans to have her son examined by Dr. William Hammesfahr, a neurologist and 1999 Nobel prize nominee in medicine and physiology. Hammesfahr reviewed the Schiavo case in 2002 and reported that medical tests conducted after Terri's collapse did not support the finding of a heart attack. He found the injuries consistent with abuse.

According to Patton, Scott is cognizant and able to answer correctly when asked by doctors where he lives and where he went to school. He swallows on his own, but requires a tube because of concerns over aspiration. She says he remains responsive, tracking family members as they move around his room, smiling, crying, communicating with hand signals and eyebrows and forming words with his mouth. And the story he tells about his injury is very different than the one told by his wife.

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Eliza Smith, 29, a Polish immigrant who came to the U.S. illegally, says Scott fell backwards over the family dog and struck his head in the kitchen. She was not in the room, she adds.

Scott's mother reports her son communicating to her that his injury – a blow so hard it knocked his brain to one side – was intentionally inflicted by his wife. "The doctors say that his injuries are not consistent with such a fall and believe the severe head trauma was caused by a blow to the head," Patton told Empire Journal.

Patton was awarded a six-month temporary guardianship of her son in November. A June 3 hearing will determine if decisions for Scott's care will remain with her or will be transferred to Eliza who is seeking guardianship. Reportedly, Eliza unsuccessfully sought to have her husband moved to the hospice in October, only a month after his injury.

Scott has reportedly indicated he does not want his wife to visit him at Brooks Rehabilitation, and she has refused to bring their child for visits if she is excluded.

The Terri Shindler-Schiavo Foundation and the Schindler family have appealed to Eliza Smith to "err on the side of life."

Bob Schindler, Terri Schiavo's father, said, "The suffering our daughter endured and her death over the course of nearly two weeks was horrific. I am pleading with Mrs. Thomas to please reconsider her decision to seek the removal of Scott's feeding tube and to allow him to receive the therapy and rehabilitation he needs to improve. I beg Mrs. Thomas to give her husband a chance."

The Community Hospice of Northeast Florida Inc. is the facility where Republican State Sen. James King is director emeritus and former executive board member. King sponsored Florida's Death With Dignity law in 1988 and is a recipient of the Hospice Hall of Fame Award.

While King, who was president of the Senate in 2003, pushed Terri's Law through the legislature to reinsert her feeding tube, he later expressed regret.

"I had said then publicly and many times since: That was probably the worst vote I ever made in my years of being a legislator," he said. Last March, King and eight other Republicans were instrumental in derailing legislation aimed at preventing Schiavo's tube from being removed.

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"Had God not wanted what happened today to happen, he would have intervened," King said after the failed Senate vote. "I believe that there is a heaven and that's where Terri Schiavo is going to go, and that's a trip that's long overdue."

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