PINELLAS PARK, Fla. -- As Terri Schiavo's medical condition worsened in her 11th day without food or water, the lawyer for her husband, Michael Schiavo, said his client has asked the chief medical examiner for Pinellas County to perform an autopsy on Schiavo after her death to give the public full knowledge of the extent her brain damage.

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The move, which also may be intended to dispel the allegations by Michael Schiavo's opponents that his wife has not received proper care under his guardianship, were yet another signal that Schiavo is very near the end of her life.

George Felos, Michael Schiavo's lawyer, said after visiting Schiavo yesterday afternoon that he believed her death was near. He and hospice officials said she has received two 5 milligram doses of morphine since her feeding and hydration tube was removed on March 18, but that those very small doses were administered by hospice nurses who noticed "slight moaning, facial grimacing and tensing of [her] arms."

Felos tried to make it clear that the morphine was not intended to hasten her death, contrary to rumors circulating among protesters outside Schiavo's hospice in Pinellas Park.

Felos said it was possible that Schiavo "might die momentarily," noting that changes in a patient's body chemistry after being removed from life support could lead to cardiac arrest. "But her breathing is not labored. Her skin tone is fine. It doesn't appear from at least me seeing her [that] her death is imminent."

Terri Schiavo's family members, who have fought since 2000 to overrule Michael Schiavo's decision to remove his severely brain-damaged wife from life support, told reporters yesterday that Schiavo was still trying to communicate with them and had not yet slipped out of consciousness.

"Terri was wide awake and very responsive," said Schiavo's sister, Suzanne Vitadamo after an afternoon visit. "She's weaker but she's still trying to talk. ... She's fighting.

"She's struggling, and does this sound like somebody that wants to die? I don't think so."

Schiavo collapsed 15 years ago after her brain was deprived of oxygen due to a potassium imbalance that some doctors believe resulted from an eating disorder. She has lived for the past 15 years in what doctors describe as a "persistent vegetative state."

Most of the doctors who have examined her have found that her brain is damaged to the extent that she has no ability to communicate.

Her physicians have determined that her movements and the sounds she makes are "reflexive" and not in response to events around her.

Michael Schiavo decided to take his wife off life support after accepting her doctors' diagnosis that she would never recover. He has said his wife told him she would not want to live in that state. Schiavo's parents' efforts to take over her care and to keep her alive have failed at every level of the state and federal courts.

Representatives for the family continued to pressure Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to take Schiavo into state custody, but Bush made it clear again yesterday morning after a public event that he will obey court orders barring him from doing so.

Efforts by a small group of the family's advocates in Washington yesterday to pressure Republican members of Congress to intervene also were unsuccessful.

The Rev. Patrick J. Mahoney, director of the Christian Defense Coalition and one of the most vocal advocates for Schiavo's parents, met with staff members from the offices of Republican House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and the House Government Affairs Committee asking them to enforce subpoenas for Michael and Terri Schiavo to appear before Congress -- a last attempt to keep her alive.

The House Government Reform Committee issued subpoenas on March 18 for the Schiavos, as well as for some hospice staff, to appear before Congress on March 25 in her Pinellas Park hospice room.

But after the judge went forward with the order, and after Schiavo's parents lost their case again in the federal courts this past week, the House Reform Committee postponed the hearing indefinitely.

In Washington yesterday, about a dozen protesters gathered at noon in rain-soaked Lafayette Park directly across the street from the White House.