Posted on 12/10/2004 1:57:57 PM PST by nickcarraway
Orlando, FL (LifeNews.com) -- The man at the center of a debate between his wife and a Florida hospital has died after the hospital won the right to terminate his life support. The hospital and wife disputed whether or not 73-year-old terminally ill patient Hanford Pinette had any hope of survival.
Pinette stopped breathing less than two hours after doctors at Lucerne Hospital removed him from a breathing machine.
"He was trying to breathe on his own," Pinette's wife Alice told the Associated Press.
She is still upset at the actions a court took to allow the hospital to end her husband's life.
"These people, they actually killed the man," she said. "They know what they were doing. Hank was alive, mentally. They pulled the plugs and killed him."
However, doctors maintained that Pinette was in a terminal state, could not make decisions for himself and would not likely recover.
That led to a legal battle and Orange Circuit Judge Lawrence Kirkwood ruled that the hospital had the right to follow Pinette's living will, even though Pinette's wife also had a durable power of attorney form from her husband.
Written in 1998, the documents authorized Alice to make his medical decisions.
Yet, Pinette also said he did not want "to prolong artificially the process of dying." It stated that he wanted "to die naturally" and receive treatment only to "alleviate pain."
David Evans, the hospital's attorney told the Associated Press that the hospital notified Alice and her attorney last weekend that the breathing machine and medication helping Pinette stay alive would be removed Wednesday.
They did not indicate they wished to appeal Judge Kirkwood's decision.
Alice and her family maintain that Pinette was alive and aware and responding with them. They taped a video of him Wednesday they say showed him interacting with his family and telling Alice he wanted to go home with her.
Alice previously said that, if her husband were in a coma and unresponsive, she would carry out the direction in the living will. She says her husband watches football and told family members who recently shot a deer to "save me a steak."
She said Hanford picks and chooses to whom he will talk and showed pictures at the trial of him seemingly alert.
But Pinette's pulmonologist Juan Herran told an Orlando newspaper that he has not seen a cognitive response from Hanford in weeks or months. Herran said Hanford would not likely recover from the congestive heart failure that led to the shutdown of other vital organs.
Nancy Valko, a representative of Nurses for Life, said some people may be surprised that Pinette stayed alive for two hours, breathing on his own even after he was taken off of the ventilator.
"People often assume that when a ventilator is removed the person just peacefully stops breathing," Valko explained. "However, I've personally seen people continue to breathe (and even struggle to breathe) for hours, even days before finally succumbing."
Valko pointed to the case of Jason Childress, a Virginia man who is still alive and breathing on his own months after he was removed from a breathing machine following a severe automobile accident.
Valko said patients who are removed from a ventilator should be given oxygen. If they recover they could have brain damage as a result of too little oxygen.
ping
Seems to be a problem here!
Great criteria. Let's see. EVERYONE is in a terminal state. NO ONE will recover (with apologies to millenialists). I question many people's ability, especially children, to make decisions for themselves. I hardly think that disqualifies those people from medical care.
Probably used livingwill.com. HAHA
Very tragic.
Soon, we'll have special dying rooms.
They couldn't wait for him to die: so the hospital killed him to get him out of the way. That's how I see it. I suspect that he would have died in a few weeks anyway based on this report. People don't realize how living wills can be abused.
Does anyone know if young Jason Childress still has the feeding tube? Did he regain any mental acumen?
This is relevant...
I also have both documents (professionally prepared)...
I wonder which one supercedes the other?
Guess I'll have to make a call....
This is always bad---when there is a difference between the family wishes and the patient's previous stated wishes. Courts are always the last resort when all else has failed.
I would suggest that you make the needed changes ASAP so as to avoid the problems of this guy.
My father had advanced directives. He also gave me his Durable Power of Attorney. We discussed his wishes at length. Ultimately, the decision to continue and or add more agressive treatments was my decision irrespective of the papers. The brothers were unhappy about this.
In light of this case, it would seem that explicit wording in the durable power of attorney with respect to whether the living will is paramount over the attorney's decisions wouldn't be a bad idea.
Either way it is a tough decision to be sure.
I am sorry that there was disagreement within your family. Designating a Durable Power of Attorney who will carry out ones wishes is so important (especially if there are many family members).
As mentioned in some earlier posts, there is really not enough information given in the article to judge about prognosis, but it would guess that the family in the article had some fairly unrealistic expectations about recovery and the physicians were uncomfortable with continuing aggressive care for the patient---especially with the prior advanced directives. Very important for family to know your wishes and for you to designate someone who is reliable to make decisions.
Part of the problem is medical shows on TV. While medicine has provided some wonderous cures it can't fix everything. Really, people see CSI and ER and General Hospital and think that's the way it really is, but it ain't.
For me it came down to 'Do I want to recusitate him so he can suffer because I don't want to let go'. That is so remarkably selfish.
Yes, this was back in 1975-76. Quinlan was her last name. I believe her parents wanted her removed from life support, after she was in a coma for many years. She continued to breath on her own, but I believe she was fed through a feeding tube. As I remember it, her family was Catholic and their family priest was at their side, when they went public with their decision. This was long before, I believe, living wills were an option. She was a young woman, maybe eighteen. I doubt she would have had a living will, even if they were available.
As far as I am concerned with this current case, if this man had a living will--the hospital should follow it. I realize many people object to this. IMHO, if they object because of religion, then I believe if it were God's will that this man survive--he would have. This man was not born with a respirator strapped to his back, if his lungs failed--then it was meant to be.
Often the family cannot accept the person's dying when they go no matter what. If you have ever experienced anyone close to you on a respirator, you can understand the anguish of all involved.
Ping
How Dutch.
I guess they don't call it Orange County for nothing.
I knew my brother was dead when I walked in the ER room last August. He was on a ventilator and the neurologist said that he had had a massive cerebral hemorrhage. I could not stand to see in him that state with a ventilator keeping his chest moving up and down. I asked my sister-in-law if she could say it and she said no. I then had to tell them to remove it. When we went back in the room we held his hand till his heart stopped beating. It was the hardest, saddest day of my 57 years. But we had all agreed long ago that none of us wanted to be kept in that state. Sometimes you just have to let them go.
He and I had not long before that sat and watched our father stop breathing. I have always felt fortunate that we were at his side when he passed. But to lose your brother so suddenly at 54 still hurts. One of us had to go first but so young..... He's in a better place and did not have to endure Kerry's BS.
I'm so sorry for your loss. It's so hard at any time.
Years ago my best friend died at the age of 30. She had a brain tumor. After they took her off the ventilator her heart beat for about 10 minutes. Her mother nearly had the doctors hook her back up. You could see that she wasn't there anymore. Since she didn't have standing do not recusitate orders the hospital recusitated her at least once.
Ah Florida. Home of the coming euthanasia epidemic.
Karen Ann Quinlan........This became a major media event. Media from all over the world if I remember.
ProLife Ping!
If anyone wants on or off my ProLife Ping List, please notify me here or by freepmail.
That was her name. She lived a number of years after being taken off of the respirator. Her parents still visited her faithfully. She never regained consciousness, as far as I know. It was probably their faith in God, his will, and her own that sustained her.
I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong, but I believe this was the first really publicized case in the country. It was also probably the birth of ethical questions such as the case we are seeing today. This case came to light not too long after the first heart transplant.
There are so many things they can do now to revive people. Only ten or twenty years ago, they would never have made it. Some people come through, they are able to be rehabilitated, and they are functionable. It's the people that are revived that make it, but they never make it beyond breathing that cause so much grief. They could not survive without intense professional care. It's tough all around for the family's and for the caretakers.
Coming? it's already there. Here's is what happened to my stepfather in Aug. Hospice told my mother she could fix him food, milkshakes anything he wanted. BUT....after he was admitted they put up nothing by mouth signs and berated her when she tried to feed him. A nurse came in when my mother was giving him a drink of water and yelled at her, asking her what she was doing? They also began administering high levels of pain meds. Mother spent his last days pleading for someplace else to take him, but because he was in hospice no one would. He had a living will and even though it didn't specify the witholding of food and water that's the way hospice acted on it. My mother had power of attorney. It was worthless.
She is convinced that they hastened his death and has a terrible time living with this. I hope her pain will lessen as time goes on, but I am doubtful. She has nothing good to say about hospice, because they lied to her and as she says they killed her husband.
Aslo friends of ours went to update their wills and found the living will parts are now routinely included. Their advice and mine READ your will and know what's in there!
Kalee
PS. By the way, my stepfather was ALERT and TALKING when admitted Monday morning. He was denied antibiotics, food and water from that evening on and was dead in a week.
This is VERY troubling!
We already do. They're called hospice (rooms).
the hospital did not kill this man....this man's body was unable to carry on with out numerous plug-in devices...simple as that....
This is a tragic reversal of Terri Schiavo's situation. For all those who think living wills are the answer for every situation, they need to realize that living wills are pretty much "one size fits all" type of remedies--certain death. They are not always exactly what you were intending when you signed the forms.
There's no sweeter sound than the rustle of warm, crackling cockles.
many times,...when you have a nasal feeding tube you end up having to RESTRAIN the patients hands, because just moving the feeding tube out of place a little could cause life-ending aspiration pneumonia, which would feel kind of like drowning...
and, you can get reflux even with a tube feeding in your abdomen.....
I can't think of a worse thing to do then to have to have your hands tied down....
and with tube feedings, patients tend to get diarrhea....with sore bottoms, etc....
we put these poor people thru so much.....no quietness, no peace, no freedom of movement....
you acted out of love and when you do that, its always the right decision....it helped your SIL as well....
I would bet your brother is smiling down at you now...
i Agree with you, so many people PRESUME life support ONLY is a "machine", not realizing state laws INCLUDE (withholding) food and water as "life support"!
I have seen a nursing home pressure my elderly mother to urge my ill father to sign a DNR form, and told them he was dying, to get hospice, and to "talk" about his dying, that was 7 years ago and he has been home all this time after escaping the nursing home, Thank God he didn't get as far as hospice or they would have killed him quick!
slipery slope bump
I do. It happened TWICE in my family, and the hospital went against the living wills totally. I am enraged reading this.
Years ago, the terminally ill had special dying rooms--it was called home. It's a shame doctors don't make house calls anymore. People were allowed to die in their own beds. It incredible that we have advanced to the point that we actually can sit around and consider a living will. It is incredible that we have the time and the means to discuss this, when so many people then, and even now, are just thankful to have survived another day.
My mother, 80 next month, had a feeding tube installed on Nov. 19, 2004, when she stopped eating and could no longer swallow. A week after the tube was installed, she resumed swallowing and eating. We think that she had a stroke on Nov. 12 that caused swallowing to halt. She probably "relearned" to swallow after two weeks.
However, her doctor wants to leave the tube there permanently because he believes that she will at some time in the future stop eating again. So she has a tube that has to be flushed with water twice a day to keep it open, but she has no real need for it at this time. The tube is a very simple device inserted in the stomach. People should not revolt in horror at feeding tubes.
I have been urged by various hospital personnel to sign a DNR form for my mother, and yes it is setting on the shelf unsigned and will remain so.
Prior to her latest illness, which began with a fall on Oct. 31, my mother frequently had acid reflux. Since her feeding tube was installed -- it was used only for a full week to keep her alive -- she has had no more acid reflux. I don't think there is a correlation between the feeding tube and acid reflux in her case.
When she comes home, hopefully in a few days, I will be responsible for keeping the feeding tube flushed, but we won't be using it unless required. Her mind is not the best, but her long term memory is good, and she certainly knows what has happened to her in the past six weeks.
The feeding tube is a minor part of her health condition now. People exaggerate the "negativity" associated with feeding tubes.
The food in many nursing homes is so bad tasting that patients with a feeding tube in such facilities may be at a real advantage over other patients!
Some feeding tubes run 16 hours a day on a pump -- continuous feeding. They are expensive.
Other feeding tubes are used seveal times a day as needed to relive hunger and thirst. The liquid nutrition is inserted in the tube by means of a large syringe. It is a simple procedure.
Of course the skin around the feeding tube must be sterilized and watched to prevent infections.
A nurse friend also suggested hospice for my mother on Nov. 13, 2004. I checked into that and found it would give us nothing. I was primarily looking for a sitter while I was working. I later was told that the hospice in my city would not take a patient with a feeding tube. So I scratched hospice off the list, and my mother's insurance would have "paid" for hospice.
My husband does not want a prolonged life, if anything happens to him. He tells our sons this, as well as me.
Yes, but.
Some people change their minds when confronted with the immediate reality of death. It's "easy" to sign a "living will" eschewing extraordinary means to live. But isn't most medical care today "extraordinary" compared to what existed just fifty years ago?
I will never have a living will. I entrust that final part of my life to my family when and if it comes to that. I have seen first hand what happens when a living will, a hospital, and a patient are put together. It is ugly beyond belief.
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