Dehydration: Terri's Health Deteriorating

(AP) Brother Paul O'Donnell wisks Mary Schindler, Terri Schiavo's mother, through the media as they leave a hearing Thursday night at the U.S. Courthouse in Tampa.

Mar 25, 3:08 AM (ET)
By MARK LONG

PINELLAS PARK, Fla. (AP) - As Terri Schiavo's health waned, her parents pushed on to restore the brain-damaged woman's feeding tube after the nation's highest court and judges in Florida defeated their latest legal appeals.

Bob and Mary Schindler held onto the slim hope that Gov. Jeb Bush would somehow find a way to intervene or a federal judge who had turned them down before would see things their way. Bush warned, however, that he was running out of options.

"We're minute by minute right now. But it doesn't look like we have much left," Suzanne Vitadamo, Terri Schiavo's sister, told The Associated Press late Thursday.

As of early Friday, Terri Schiavo, 41, had been without food or water for almost seven days and was showing signs of dehydration - flaky skin, dry tongue and lips, and sunken eyes, according to attorneys and friends of the Schindlers. Doctors have said she would probably die within a week or two of the tube being pulled.