A second nurse who cared for Terri Schiavo in the mid-1990s said Wednesday that she suspected the 41-year-old disabled woman was being abused by her husband as she lay paralyzed in her nursing home bed.
Reacting to an account by registered nurse Carla Sauer Iyer - who said Tuesday that she suspected Michael Schiavo had injected his wife with insulin to put her into hypoglycemic shock, nurse Heidi Law told ABC Radio's Sean Hannity:
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"I witnessed an occasion extremely similar to that and wasn't aware that somebody else had, where I had gone into her room and she had quite the clammy fever - or what felt like one - and I went to the charge nurse immediately.
"Everything that I was looking at told me that chances are her sugar [level] was off the charts," Law said, noting that the episode immediately followed a visit by Michael.
She said that nurses and staff and the Palm Garden Convalescent Home regarded Mr. Schiavo as a problem.
"It was not a secret there that you were to do what you were told [by Michael], not ask questions and not push your luck when it came to Terri's husband."
Asked if she knew nurse Iyer, Law told Hannity, "No, I do not." Pressed on whether she recalled ever speaking to Iyer, Law paused, then repeated, "No."
In a September 2003 affidavit submitted to Judge George Greer - the presiding state judge in the Schiavo case - nurse Iyer stated:
"When Michael visited Terri, he always came alone and always had the door closed and locked while he was with Terri. He would typically be there about twenty minutes or so. When he left Terri would would be trembling, crying hysterically, and would be very pale and have cold sweats.
"It looked to me like Terri was having a hypoglycemic reaction, so I’d check her blood sugar. The glucometer reading would be so low it was below the range where it would register an actual number reading.
"I would put dextrose in Terri’s mouth to counteract it. This happened about five times on my shift as I recall. Normally Terri’s blood sugar levels were very stable due to the uniformity of her diet through tube feeding. It is my belief that Michael injected Terri with Regular insulin, which is very fast acting."
Judge Greer has rejected affidavits by both Iyer and Law, calling their accounts "incredible."
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