Posted on 01/02/2014 1:08:18 PM PST by Anton.Rutter
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — A California hospital is unwilling to allow an outside doctor to fit a 13-year-old declared brain dead after tonsil surgery with the breathing and feeding tubes that would allow her to be safely transferred to another facility, its lawyer said Tuesday.
Children's Hospital Oakland will not permit the procedures to be performed on its premises because Jahi McMath is legally dead in the view of doctors who have examined her, lawyer Douglas Straus wrote in a letter to the girl's family.
"Performing medical procedures on the body of a deceased human being is simply not something Children's Hospital can do or ask its staff to assist in doing," he said.
The refusal appeared to reverse the position articulated Monday by a hospital spokesman. He said the hospital would allow a doctor retained by the family to insert a feeding tube and to replace the oral ventilator keeping Jahi's heart beating with a tracheal tube — surgical procedures that would stabilize Jahi if she is moved to a facility willing to keep caring for her.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Like probably most, I was initially outraged by the media stories. I have researched it to some extent, as you have, and I agree with you.
This is NOT Terri Schiavo redux. This little girl is not in a “permanent vegetative condition,” able to swallow, eye reflexes intact, etc. She is DEAD.
Sad but true. Short of a literal miracle of God, she isn’t coming back. Meanwhile, this cadaver is taking up an ICU bed that might save an actual living human being’s actual life.
What is the hospital trying to hide?
How did this “simple” procedure get F’d up?
Your bedside manner must be amazing.
The hospital hasn’t put her in the morgue yet.
Technicalities and all that. They can declare her dead but they aren’t treating the body that way.
I obviously have no way of knowing if you are a real doctor, or just play one on the internet -- but what you wrote is what I have been thinking for quite some time. If a person is truly brain dead and being kept alive by some machines that keep her breathing and her heart beating -- then it is time to admit that she is dead. This is different from the Shavio (sp?) case, who was truly brain damaged - but only needed the machines to swallow. Forcing her to die by starvation and dehydration, was wicked.
This young girl, on the other hand, just seems to have her dead body kept in a somewhat animated condition due to Media distortions of the facts. It is time to mourn, and move on.
You may or not be completely correct.
Yet what you wrote is beside the point.
How tragic. But it’s likely her sleep apnea was due to being overweight, and obese people generally have more risks than non-obese people.
I would imagine the liability issue was settled when she became brain dead/dead as per the opinion of docs at the hospital into whose care she was placed.
Yet Michelle Obama gets away with it all the time.
Jahi McMath isn’t there anymore...
It is an organism shaped like a previous person
Being kept alive by the unnecessary efforts of many
I’ve seen this all too many times...
3 doctors have said she is brain dead.
2 from the hospital and we can give latitude to those
that say they MIGHT have a conflict.
The third and INDEPENDENT Dr.Paul Graham Fisher,
a pediatric neuro-oncologist at Stanford School of Medicine,
backs their assessments.
Thank you Drango for this clarification
Generally, and in my experience...
One of the examining MD’s should be
a Neurologist or Neurosurgeon as they have an elevated awareness of how to assess CNS function in the presence of mechanical supports.
Any Board Certified Neurologist or Neurosurgeon would
understand the complexity of thought
that goes into this...
1) No evidence of drug induced coma, hypothermia, or other reversable cause of coma.
2) No evidence of Cortical, Sub-cortical, or Brain stem activity by expert exam.
3) No spontaneous respiratory activity, in the absence of metabolic parameters that inhibit Brain stem activity.
Generally, great sensitivity is required to guide family
in understanding what Brain Death is.
Even persons with considerable understanding
struggle with seeing a loved one,
who appears alive, but is in fact no longer human.
But asking Nurses and Physicians
to continue aggressive care
causes an injury that is
difficult to explain to non-medical persons
That’s right. She’s dead by every reasonable test medical science considers indicative. I think the family’s lawyer is just prepping the jury pool with this disrespectful charade.
“If a person is truly brain dead and being kept alive by some machines that keep her breathing and her heart beating — then it is time to admit that she is dead”
Perhaps so. Perhaps not.
But who are you, or me, to decide.
Children’s is currently providing care that Children’s thinks should cease. Children’s has not yet ceased this care. Another medical institution has offered to continue care, thus allowing Children’s to cease their care.
Yet Children’s is actively, purposely obstructing this transfer of care to take place.
Can a heart beat on its own, unassisted, in a dead body, if other organs are mechanically maintained? From what I’ve read, she is on a feeding tube and a ventilator. Nothing else. Some reports claim the ventilator maintains the heart and lungs. Could you clear up this confusion for me?
Your analysis is ludicrous.
As for this:
Meanwhile, this cadaver is taking up an ICU bed that might save an actual living human being’s actual life.
It is specious or disingenuous, at best, given that the hospital itself is obstructing moving the patient, thus choosing to take up the bed.
That is because they don’t want to give the lawyers any more ammo than they already have. Imagine how a judge issuing an injunction against taking her off the support, only to be told she’s already been sent to the morgue, would be taken by a jury in the inevitable civil proceedings surrounding her tonsillectomy.
Exactly. Reporting is so poor that no one reading reports can know what the actual situation is, despite the omniscient experts on this thread.
Knee jerk responses indicting the hospital are sad to see. You cannot keep giving million dollar treatments to a dead person. The fact that this person died after tonsillectomy does not automatically mean something was done erroneously.
Does every family who has a family a member die in a hospital deserve a billion, or only the ones that can get the media in on their story? Geez, and you wonder why Hospital costs are so high.
Jesus Raised Lazarus from the Dead. Nothing is impossible for him, I pray/ask that he heals this little girl, heals her from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, that she gets up and walks! In the name of Jesus Amen
Thanks Lizavetta!
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