December 1, 2003

 By Patrick Goodenough, Pacific Rim Bureau Chief

 http://www.crosswalk.com

 To submit a Letter to the Editor: tom@crosswalk.com

Pacific Rim Bureau (CNSNews.com) - A woman who knows better than most what Terri Schiavo is going through, says the disabled Florida woman's husband should stop treading in God's territory by seeking her death.

"I support life over death, human dignity over indifference," says Kate Anderson. "I support the value of each person regardless of that person's disability."

Eight years ago, Adamson was lying in a U.S. hospital intensive care unit after a near-fatal brainstem stroke. Doctors described her as being in a "vegetative" state.

Unable to move or communicate, yet fully aware and sensitive to hunger and pain, the 33-year-old, New Zealand-born athlete and mother of two heard people around her discussing her condition, whether she should undergo surgery - and her death.

"It was terrifying," she recalls. "It the loneliest thing you could imagine. I had to find some way to be able to let people know I could understand what was going on around me. I was completely paralyzed."

Adamson was also acutely aware on the day she underwent surgery - without sufficient anesthetic - to have a feeding tube inserted.

"I was aware of what was going on around me, hearing the chit chat between the doctor and the nurse," she told CNSNews.com from her Los Angeles home. "It's a difficult place for me to revisit and the horror of having to live through that ... I could only endure and survive and pray that I could somehow live through it."

In Florida, Terri Schiavo was not fed for six days last October, after her husband Michael obtained a court order to have her feeding-tube removed. It was reconnected after the Florida Legislature passed a bill empowering Gov. Jeb Bush to intervene.

Adamson also went without food during her ordeal, in her case for eight days.

The memory remains vivid, and painful.

"It's not accurate to say I was hungry after the tube was turned off," she said. "It was much more painful than just being hungry. You could feel it in your whole body, every thought was about eating. I just wanted something to take the hunger pains away."

Schiavo has been in her present condition for 13 years since she collapsed at home in February 1990. Exactly what that condition is, is in dispute. Her family say she is neither in a coma nor a persistent vegetative state, but is "a responsive and aware woman suffering from cognitive disability."

Adamson's case was considerably different in many respects. Nonetheless, for around seven weeks in 1995, doctors around her, too, assumed she was in the state that some argue Schiavo is in now.

"During those 50 days, I was conscious and could feel everything," she said in testimony before Congress in 1997. "I could feel pain, but was unable to move any part of my body ... My body was trapped, unable to move and remained in a rigid death-like position, that my body had assumed."

Unlike Schiavo, Adamson had a husband at her side who fought the assumption that her case was hopeless.

Michael Schiavo continues to use the courts in his bid to hasten his wife's death, arguing that she would not have wanted to be kept alive artificially.

Adamson's husband, Steven Klugman, a lawyer, took a very different approach.

"I threatened to sue the whole world," he said in a recent television interview. "I told them that their best course was to try to save her, and maybe they wouldn't get sued ..."

Adamson, while acknowledging the differences between the two cases, believes she has a perspective into what Schiavo is going through.

Referring to videos posted on the Internet of Schiavo responding to her mother and to music, smiling and tracking movement with her eyes, Adamson said "It's clear from the videos that Terri is aware. The responses she can give to her family are touching."

'You never give up'

Adamson came through her ordeal, but it was a long, hard fight.

In time, she began communicating through blinking her eyes while those around her pointed to the letters of the alphabet. (One of the messages she blinked to her doctor: "Am I going to die?")

She could not talk for months, as she had had a trachea tube inserted into her throat to enable her to breathe, and not until it was removed could she begin the slow process of "learning to speak" again during her many months of convalescence.

Before her stroke, Adamson was "a mother, a wife, an athlete, and a person vitally interested in my community."

Now, without the use of the left side of her body, she remains a mother, wife, and someone vitally interested in the community.

The 41-year-old is an inspirational speaker, a spokeswoman for the American Stroke Association and other organizations, and the award-winning author of a book entitled Kate's Journey, Triumph over Adversity.

She wonders today where Terri Schiavo, who turns 40 this week, would be had she been given "a chance at recovery."

"Medically the cases are different; however you never give up."

Asked what her message would be for Michael Schiavo, Adamson said that while death cannot always be avoided, neither is it "something we should seek to embrace."

"Nature knows when to end life; we don't have to worry about that. Terri only needs to be fed the same as any other person in order to live. Michael should leave God alone and let God be God and Michael be Michael. If Terri is such a burden to Michael, let her family love her. Move on."

Adamson has been in contact with Schiavo's parents, Robert and Mary Schindler, encouraging them that "if I could have a miracle ... Terri could have one too."

"We both agreed actually that what the Florida Legislature has done is a miracle in its own right."

Adamson said she wrote her book to tell people that even in the worst circumstances, hope remains.

"When the only person I could talk to was God, I made a promise that if I could have my life back I would do anything ... it would be a betrayal to the world if I didn't speak up. To be a voice to so many who never get a voice is a blessing."

Copyright 2003 Crosswalk.com