After working all day, Josh, a 19-year-old sophomore, was driving back to his college in Stephenville, Texas. As he made his way around a sharp curve, his car flipped. In extremely critical condition, Josh was flown to a trauma hospital in Dallas.

Josh had sustained a traumatic brain injury and was unresponsive for several weeks. A neurosurgeon met with his father and his grandmother to show them Josh’s brain scan, stressing that there was “no hope for any recovery.”

Praying that the doctor’s prognosis was wrong, his family refused to give up and committed to doing everything they could to help Josh. After being transferred to a rehabilitation center, Josh made remarkable progress over several months and eventually moved back home to live with his family.

With the help of an outpatient rehabilitation program, he progressed from being unable to speak or move any of his limbs—relying on an eye-gaze device to communicate—to being able to eat, walk, and do many things for himself.

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Josh’s story has a happy ending because of his wonderful family’s unconditional love, nonstop prayers, and doctors who were willing to give him a chance. There are countless stories, like Josh’s, of individuals who are given the opportunity to recover.

However, there are also countless stories where a patient will receive a (figurative or literal) death sentence after a quick prognosis of “no hope for any recovery.” These stories end either with the patient denied rehabilitaive resources and warehoused in a nursing home or dead after their treatment is terminated.

Every year in the United States, roughly 2.5 million Americans experience a traumatic brain injury (TBI) or an acquired brain injury (ABI). Among those Americans are hundreds of thousands in the military returning home from war-torn regions.

When someone sustains a brain injury, what happens after they are admitted to the hospital depends on numerous factors. The most likely to codetermine a patient’s outcome are treating facility and medical staff, the patient’s insurance coverage, and family dynamics.

Our impulse is to trust doctors to work in our best interest and care for the ones we love. However, blind faith in today’s healthcare system can be dangerous as care is controlled by bureaucrats, a powerful health insurance lobby, and doctors who are more than willing to violate their oath to “do no harm.”

Financial incentives are driving hasty medical decisions. Death is being imposed on too many of our medically vulnerable neighbors because they have “no hope of [making] any meaningful contribution” to society or have harvestable organs—a 20-billion-dollar-a-year industry. Families encounter exceptional difficulties in trying to stop or even question such rushed conclusions.

Quick decisions run counter to recent research findings about the time individuals who experience brain injuries require for healing. In 2018, the American Academy of Neurology (AAN) revised its recommendations to advise clinicians against telling families that a patient’s prognosis is hopeless during the first 28 days following a brain injury.

A 2021 study published in JAMA Neurology supported the AAN’s recommendation, suggesting that decisions to withdraw life-sustaining treatment from patients with moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injuries should not be made in the early days following the injury.

More recently, on May 13, 2024, the Journal of Neurotrauma published a seven-year study on patients who had sustained traumatic brain injuries. The researchers found that those who received a poor recovery prognosis had their life-sustaining treatment withdrawn within days of their injuries. The study also revealed that 40% of patients who were afforded time recovered and reclaimed at least some independence.

The research underscores that life-or-death decisions should not be made in the days immediately following a brain injury. In addition to being contrary to scientific evidence and many families’ express wishes, quick determinations that a life has no meaningful hope are immoral and unacceptable.

Propaganda encourages the public to believe doctors’ prognoses and that removing sustainable treatment is kinder than continuing to care for cognitively disabled people. And in cases when a patient’s feeding tube is removed, they die a brutal death by starvation and dehydration.

After the 2005 death of my sister, Terri, our family formed the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network, a non-profit that advocates for patients. For 20 years, we have received calls from families in crisis who are given deadlines after which their loved one’s treatment will be terminated, and in some cases, this can occur mere hours after the loved one’s admission to the hospital.

The calls we’ve received over almost two decades suggest not much is changing; the medical community seems to be overlooking crucial studies about the amount of time injured brains may need to show improvement. The continued rush to end patients’ lives before allowing any time for their brains to mend spurred our family to open a recovery center to protect brain injury patients from an increasingly cost-conscious healthcare system.

In January of 2018, I was introduced to Jere Palazzolo, president of Catholic Healthcare International (CHI). In 2009, Jere signed a formal collaboration agreement with Padre Pio’s hospital in Italy, the Vatican-owned Casa Sollievo Della Sofferenza (“The Home for the Relief of Suffering”) to replicate Padre Pio’s faithful Catholic healthcare delivery in the United States.

This May, CHI agreed to purchase the Trinity Health Livingston Hospital in Howell, Michigan. The CHI / Home for the Relief of Suffering will house the first ever Terri Schiavo Home for the Brain Injured, Center for Neurologic Rehabilitation & Cognitive Enhancement—a home for our brain-injured brothers and sisters to receive healing treatment and loving care. The Saint Padre Pio Medical Center plans to open in mid-2026.

Indeed, a St. Pio hospital is desperately needed here in the United States. Sadly, our once conscientious healthcare facilities—including Catholic ones—have been infected by a virus rooted in nihilism rather than a biblical worldview and the Truth of Jesus Christ.

We believe that with proper clinical treatment, patients can improve cognitively, and, if given the chance, reach functionality milestones. We want to assure families that their loved ones will never fall victim to an irresponsible, quick, and hopeless prognosis by doctors and that they will not have to plead with their insurance companies for care. Above all, we want to teach families how to care for their loved ones so that they can eventually bring them home, where they can provide the best possible long-term care.

My sister died on March 31, 2005, after almost two weeks of being deprived of food and water. Terri’s death was wicked, needless, and grossly inhumane. When Terri died, supporters of her killing cheered with what they believed was a victory for the culture of death, boasting that they had “won” and that it was the end. They were wrong; it was the beginning.

Terri’s unjust death started a legacy that has brought hope to countless others like her. It will continue with a Home in her name that will care for the “least of these,” A Home for the Relief of Suffering that was inspired by a saint and will be guided by our Lord, Jesus Christ.

LifeNews Note: Bobby Schindler and his family work as patient advocates, establishing the Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Network in honor of his sister, Terri. Protect yourself and your loved ones today by identifying a healthcare agent to speak for you if you cannot. Click here to learn more.