The Terri Schiavo case has been making major headlines of late, thanks in no small part to plenty of blog attention.

Of course, Shiavo’s story began a long time ago — 15 years ago, when Terri slipped into her coma and the first article about her appeared in the St. Petersburg Times.

Back then, her “last hope” of a brain-stimulator transplant had her seemingly on a road to recovery. I guess it’s been 15 years of “last hopes” since then.

The Schiavo story hits close to home for me, strictly proximity-wise. Terri was interned in 1990 at College Harbor. That’s literally next door to Eckerd College, which I was attending at that very same time (in fact, Eckerd owned College Harbor back then). Fast forward to the present day: Schiavo’s current location in Pinellas Park is maybe 15 minutes away from my front door. It was a local story long before it became a high-profile national one; I doubt most people in the Tampa Bay area were actively aware of it, but the Schiavos would periodically appear in the news as the situation evolved over the years, and I sure knew about it.

You’d think that would warrant some thoughts on this blog. It hasn’t, for a few reasons. For one, mere physical proximity doesn’t grant me any special proprietary rights; I don’t know any of the players, and aside from general awareness of the history, I don’t have any in-depth knowledge of the case. Beyond that, I generally try to keep it light around here, and this isn’t a light subject.

I haven’t done a thorough once-over, but I haven’t noticed any of the other Tampa Bay blogs out there saying much about it either. I’m sure they have their reasons too.

I do have some thoughts on the whole thing, but now’s not the time to reveal them. Once the whole thing comes to a conclusion — which appears to be only a few days away — I’ll speak up.