Posted on 06/09/2014 11:22:41 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Casey Kasem’s eldest daughter broke down in tears Monday over news her estranged stepmother won a court order to restore feeding and hydration to her dying dad.
Kerri Kasem has been with the “American Top 40” star at a hospital in Washington State for nine days and said the decision to stop her dad's nutrition and fluids was the hardest one she's ever had to make.
“We have tried everything to keep him alive. We did put him back on fluids, but we had to take him off again because his lungs were filling up. It sounded like he was drowning. It was excruciating to watch,” Kerri, 41, told the Daily New Monday. “The feeding was backing up because he can’t digest,” she said, her voice choking with emotion. “This is breaking my heart. We’re been trying for nine days to keep him alive. There’s nothing we want more than for our dad to be here with us.”
Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Judge Daniel S. Murphy made his surprise order Monday morning after Jean, 59, traveled from Washington State to make a personal appearance in court. Before the hearing, Kerri along with her brother Mike, 40, and sister Julie, 38, released a statement saying they’ve been keeping vigil at the radio icon’s hospital bed since June 1 and wanted Jean to join them.
They urged Jean to return to St. Anthony Hospital in Gig Harbor so all the relatives could be together for their beloved dad’s “last moments.”
“It’s very important to set everything aside and focus on my dad,” Kerri told The News last Friday. “We will set aside our differences to be with my father, all of us, because if he opens his eyes and sees us standing there together, I know it will give him so much peace. I pray to God we can do this.”
In his order, Judge Murphy said the broadcasting personality should be placed back on pro-active nutrition and hydration while a court-appointed attorney travels up to see him in person and meet with his doctors.
The judge set a follow-up hearing for Friday.
Casey Kasem, the voice of Shaggy on the TV cartoon “Scooby Doo” is in the late stages of Lewy Body Disease, a progressive form of dementia that robs many patients of the ability to walk and talk.
He was admitted into intensive care June 1 in critical condition with an infection related to a “serious” bed sore, the hospital said in a statement last week.
"Only God knows when to take someone," Jean said in court Monday, according to the Associated Press.
She expressed a desire to regain her role as her celebrity husband’s caretaker and dropped to her knees in a courtroom hallway wailing over and over, “Please don’t kill my husband,” according to NBC News.
A judge granted Kerri a temporary conservatorship over her dad last month upon learning that Jean left the state with her sick husband of 34 years without any warning to the court or his three kids from a previous marriage.
Before arriving at a friend’s home in the Seattle area, the couple were on a strenuous road trip that made stops in Nevada and Arizona, Kerri said outside a Washington State courtroom last week.
Jean denied the travel claim Monday.
Upon learning her dad was outside California, Kerri filed a missing persons report and challened Jean's claim her dad was on a voluntary vacation.
Kerri arrived at a private Washington State residence to transport her dad to a hospital via ambulance June 1. In a bizarre twist, Jean threw a pound of raw meat at Kerri while quoting scripture.
“He was in that house for three weeks with no pain medication. When we got to him, he had severe leg contractures. The doctor said the pain is like having your legs broken all over. The bedsore on his back was infected and huge, bigger than my hand," Kerri told The News on Friday.
“This ‘vacation’ was torture for my father,” she said.
See my prior post to you.
I have been accused of not making sense, of being an advocate of euthanasia, and a worker of satan. That I am offended would be an understatement. You understand what others refuse to. I’m so sorry you had to go through this. Caregivers have a very special place in my heart. One more reason I love being a hospice nurse. To take care of the patients and to be a support to their families and caregivers. God bless you.
Please have the talk with your wife.
The toughest part of the discussions my husband and I had was figuring out the DNR issue, in case either of us had a heart attack.
We did our homework. We researched how hard CPR had to be done to restore heart rhythm, and we were shocked to discover that to be done effectively, our ribs would probably be broken, and that the resuscitation statistics in the elderly weren’t very promising.
In younger people, it is different, of course.
He decided against it, considering how his Parkinson’s would complicate a recovery. Even though I am in better health than my husband, I have decided to make my end-of-life wishes very clear, so our children will not end up arguing about these matters.
I am very afraid of one or another of the children trying to keep me alive at all costs. I pray to go quickly, but only God knows.
Yes the issue of aspiration always comes forth. It is due to the neurological degeneration. The timing is not right to keep food or liquid out of the lungs. A body normally does this unconsciously, autonomically.
Usually this is near the end because of the associated pneumonia.
But there is no problem at all with eminent death at that time or organs shutting down.
A simple feeding tube in to the stomach solves the problem completely.
But medical professionals, in general, are resistant to doing that and will not suggest it and will try to have the family opt for the starvation euthanasia you describe.
But this simple feeding tube to the stomach causes them to never need to take anything by mouth ever again. Allows them excellent nutrition and makes them physically more healthy than they have been in years as their Alzheimer’s or other age-related dementia disease progressed.
They can live years quite physically healthy with this simple supportive care.
My goodness you are exasperating!! Please understand, I just agreed with that. I even gave you an example of that very thing.
Let me state again. I would never advocate, our be a part of euthanasia anymore than I world work for Planned Parenthood!! I am a Christian and believe with ask my being that life begins at conception and should end at natural death.
I fear with Obamacare they may begin to push for euthanasia, and that will be the day I no longer practice as a nurse. But it isn’t here yet. I’ve never worked for a company, a Dr., or with other nurses who would even consider it. In fact, you would be surprised to know there are many hospice companies that have been created by Christians.
I think Comes a Time is from the 70’s.
As for this.
____
I was NOT, and do NOT, advocate euthanasia. Alleviating the pain of a person who is in the process of dying is NOT euthanasia.
I deeply resent those who refuse to understand the difference between hastening death, and relieving the someone’s pain, when nothing can be done to prevent the death process.
____
Alleviating pain does not cause death.
Withholding nutrients does. That is euthanasia.
If you are talking about the final hours or days when the body is shutting down and nutrients make no difference, then that is a different topic and not relevant.
Also, an incurable illness is quite different than age related neural degeneration, which what this topic was about.
I have noticed a lot of conflation on this thread. That causes problems of understanding on all sides.
We can only respond to what people write, not what is in their head.
ifinnegan, if you were one of my children, I would be running to my lawyer as fast as my old legs could take me, in fear that you would try to keep me alive for many years, with an advanced case of dementia.
and, Lil Flower, please know how much I respect and appreciate hospice care, and how much it meant to me and my beloved.
Our care here was from St. Croix, a wonderful Roman Catholic hospice, and you are right, ifinnegan is completely wrong in all he believes.
I can only guess that many who have such uninformed beliefs about end-of-life care have little or no experience or understanding of how complicated these matters can be, and also do not know that Hospice, in many cases, actually prolongs life, compared to current hospital care.
Our family had no say in the matter as my grandfather was coherent, had a living will and a DNR...he accepted the doctor’s prognosis and made his own choice.
My grandfather’s situation was what it was...not all are the same.
God is in control of all things. Not doctors.
excuse me, ifinnegan, this thread is not about age-related neural degeneration.
It is about Casey Kasem’s Parkinson’s, and probable Lewy Body dementia, not Alzheimer’s and other age-related dementias. Kasem’s symptoms sound very like my husband’s at the end of his life.
If I am correct, Kasem would do much better in Hospice care, not in a hospital.
Here is the quote from the article:
“ “We have tried everything to keep him alive. We did put him back on fluids,but we had to take him off again because his lungs were filling up. It sounded like he was drowning. It was excruciating to watch,” Kerri,41,told the Daily New Monday. “The feeding was backing up because he can’t digest,” she said,her voice choking with emotion. “This is breaking my heart. We’re been trying for nine days to keep him alive. There’s nothing we want more than for our dad to be here with us.”
Please read this and try to comprehend.
This is just a quick explanation of the difference between Lewy Body dementia and Alzheimer’s.
and here is an explanation of what happens at the end stage. Please read it carefully, particularly the paragraphs under “Loss of Appetite”, and understand why tube feeding is not helpful to a dying patient.
http://livingwithlewybodyebook.blogspot.com/2008/03/last-stages-of-life.html
Also, try to have more respect for the feelings and experience of those of us who have made that long slow walk.
Yes. I did say Parkinson’s is different in an early post.
I think don’t realize how insulting you were to call keeping loved ones alive torture.
Don’t assume others haven’t also made the slow walk.
I appreciate your posts.
I don’t believe Kerri for one.
She is not qualified to speak in this regard and her words are gibberish.
If this were organs shutting down, he’d be dead by now.
Sounds like complications of pneumonia and other issues that are treatable.
With holding nutrition until death does not seem to be the only alternative.
I think his wife has the decision. It’s a shame his kids want to starve him so bad they go to court.
They’ve been together a long time. And she wants him to live longer. That tells me a lot.
Still, none of us can really know the details of their situation.
You’ve kind of made your side be known.
You also seem to think you are better than other people and feel no compunction insulting them, personally or generally.
That’s ok. We all hurt on these issues.
God bless.
One more comment,
You know as well as I do that there is not enough information in that article for you, me or anyone else not personally involved to be able to assess what is happening to Kasey Kasem.
It can take Weeks for a persons organs to shut down. You choose not believe her and that’s fine. I don’t know her so she could very well be lying. My comments are directly related to the article.
This illustrates semantic issues.
Weeks to shut down indicates to me, not a shut down, but a progressive degeneration that will eventually lead to a shut down.
Still, the issue and point is the same. You are talking about the death process where nothing can help when I am not and have never been talking about that.
I am talking about deliberately withholding food or nutrient prior to this point. But, that with holding will insure that point very soon.
We have no idea where Casey Kasem stands in this process.
If he is dying, nutrients won’t help, nor will they hurt.
If he is not dying, nutrients will keep him alive.
If he is not dying with holding nutrients will kill him, which is euthanasia.
His wife would rather he live, which seems to me to give her the most credibility.
It is clear that you have no medical training and little idea of how a human (or any other species) body functions.
In cases of extreme pathology, organs can and do shut down. Feeding tubes do no good when the digestive system doesn’t work. IV fluids do not help a patient whose kidneys stopped functioning.
You have probably seen those horrible pictures, usually out of Africa, of starving children, whose bodies are little more than skeletons. Those children reach a point where their organs no longer function—where even if you try to feed them, they cannot process the food. There really is a point in starvation at which the patient cannot be saved.
I watched my grandfather starve to death. It was his choice. He was not sick, but he did not want to live any more after his leg was amputated and no one could get him to eat. I remember being on the death watch in the hospital, and the nurse came into the waiting room to tell us that he did not have much longer, since all his organs were shutting down. He lasted a few hours in that condition.
The thing is, organ shut-down is a normal part of the dying process for many people. I would hope you realize that if you are ever in the position of keeping a loved one company while he or she dies. Because if you insist on the use of tubes, IVs, and whatnot, you will make their passing torturous instead of peaceful like it should be.
If he is dying,nutrients won’t help,nor will they hurt.
And THAT is where you are wrong! And if you were a medical professional you would know that.
You are wrong and obtuse.
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