Posted on 04/26/2012 6:52:49 AM PDT by SumProVita
This wiki entry on brain death is interesting and discusses the differences between UK and US.
They don’t rely on flat EEG in the UK - which is exactly what the father of this boy requested.
So...according to the US standards, this boy never was “brain dead”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brain_death
They did the same thing when my 4 year-old daughter was dying. At the time, they came across so sweetly kind and caring - I was almost beguiled by it due to the grief. Two full days while she was on life support, they came by every few hours to check on me and ‘see how I was holding up’, then got into their pitch again.
It ended up being irrelevant anyway, as a full autopsy was required. They couldn’t harvest anything from her, but having to choose burial clothing that hid all the incisions from the autopsy was equally damaging to me.
what state are you from?
I do think it differs state to state as to how this is handled.
My daughter was 2 months shy of her 4th birthday.
No one put any pressure on us...for one thing, the team of doctors had nothing to do with the donation group.
Once our daughter was declared legally dead, the doctor informed us that there was no legal obligation on their part to keep her on the ventilator.
They were kind and told us we could spend the evening with her to say goodbye, and to let them know when we were ready.
We were the ones who brought up the subject of donation.
At that point we realized there were two choices....sit with her and hold her while the ventilator was shut off, or pursue the donation route.
Once we made that choice, a phone call was placed and it was only then that the donation organization even knew we even existed.
If we had ever felt someone was watching over us like vultures to pressure us - I’m sure our decision would have been much different.
I am very sorry for your loss.
I write on the back of my driver’s license, “Not an organ donor.”
I have a huge moral issue with a sick person actively hoping that someone who is alive and healthy right now will die so that they can get their organs. Because, essentially, anyone on an organ waiting list is doing just that.
Organs must be donated from a living body, the organs are useless if time has lapsed between death and harvest...
But as I said earlier, I'm using up mine.....
Still relevant, maybe more so.
Until a few months ago, I worked at a hospital in Texas. One of the items on the death checklist there was notification of the organ donor registry, whether or not the dead/dying patient was a potential donor. I read the hospital's entire organ donation protocol... I can't say it reassured me at all regarding the whole topic of organ donation, and I am still as against the practice as ever.
If I were so sick that my physicians were suggesting putting me on an organ waiting list, I would decline. I cannot, in good conscience, hope and pray for a healthy someone to die so that I get a few years' extension on my life.
what a terrible thing for you to go through.
Yes...it is under rare circumstances that the organs are of use...and even then it is often difficult to find a proper match.
While they found a match for my daughter’s heart, her kidneys, lungs, and liver were not donated.
:O) I’d be at the hospital tomorrow if that was possible....
My only experience with this was NY State.
No one approached us about it & no one pressured us.
If someone had, I do think that would have made us uncomfortable.
A year later we were invited to participate in a roundtable discussion with the donation group.
They were interested in hearing the reasons why we made the choice we made, and how did we think they could encourage donation.
My suggestion was that less pressure was better. To offer information when it was requested but not to give a sales pitch.
And when people do not choose donation, they should not have to cope with a guilt trip.
My cousin is a donor recipient, and we also experienced this process as parents of a donor.
I can see why people might think someone is hoping and praying for someone else to die.
I’m not sure if that is a fair characterization.
Maybe some people are....who knows.
I would described it more as....we all know that everyday people will die from a wide variety of causes.
If circumstances line up where some good can be brought about from a tragedy....then you may as well be on the list.
Thirteen years later her heart still beats.
Thank you for sharing your and your daughter’s story. Out of such a terrible tragedy, something good came from it; what a blessing for you and your family and to that little child and her family and that’s why I am an organ donor.
While I think it is very important to protect the right to life, I get angry when some people dismiss organ donation out the unfounded and irrational fears that they will have their organs ripped from their still living and breathing bodies for fun and or profit. I also think it’s wrong to paint the entire medical profession as ghoulish profit driven monsters. That was not my experience as was also so in your case.
In ’96 my mother was rushed to the hospital with what was at first thought to be a heart attack but was soon determined to be acute pancreatitis.
Within 36 hours of being admitted she had respiratory distress and was put on a ventilator. Then one by one her organs started failing.
The doctors and all the staff at Johns Hopkins were wonderful, caring, and compassionate and very dedicated to saving her life. But even with all means and brightest minds available to one of the best hospitals in the world, there was nothing that could be done for her. They never pressured us to remove her from life support but after they explained the toxins and acids from her pancreas had pretty much liquefied its self along with most of her other internal organs and that the toxins, after having gotten into her blood stream, was doing the same to her brain, we made the decision to remove her from life support.
Organ donation was of course out of the question. But the doctors did ask our consent for a full autopsy, not to determine the cause of death as that was already known but to perhaps find an underlying cause. They were very puzzled as to why a relatively healthy woman; someone with no signs of cancer, gall stones, no prior symptoms and someone who didn’t drink or smoke would have a pancreas that went so bad so quickly. They explained that it was our decision and they didn’t put any pressure on us but did explain that perhaps what they might learn from her case might help others. And so of course we consented. And I’m confident that my mother would have wanted this as well.
I tend to think that the vast majority of people on a waiting list for an organ transplant are very acutely aware of just how precious life is.
It’s not a matter of hoping and praying for someone else to die, but rather that sadly tragic accidents happen, and will happen whether or not the accident victim is an organ donor or not and whether or not anyone, including themselves is on an organ transplant waiting list. I think it’s more likely that a waiting recipient is hoping and praying that one of those who died, and would have died anyway, is an organ donor and a match for them.
I am friends with a gal whose husband needed and received a heart transplant. That was well over twenty years ago and he’s still doing fine.
Patients are often overmedicated to give the appearance that there is “no hope”. Do not fall into the “no hope” trap. There’s big money in harvesting and the organs are free. So, it’s like indenturued servitude which is against the Thirteenth Amendmene to The Constitution if they can take your body parts.
FYI: If they don’t have a lot to choose from, they are rabid to get eyes. HCA Hospitals pick inopportune times to ask family members to get body parts. We have no hospitals in the land of Terri that I trust at all. Hope I stay well. lol
It's about profit above all.
I’m sorry you and your mother went through that.
It’s an awful feeling for things to go so terribly wrong so quickly and you can’t do anything to stop it.
We were very fortunate to have an MD in the family, who came in and stood by us the whole time we had to make decisions.
So....important questions we never would have thought to ask - he asked them for us.
At the end - when the very crucial tests were being conducted - he was right there. Even though they didn’t have to allow him to observe, they understood that his reassurance was helping us.
The doctors I observed in this hospital were hardly a bunch of ghouls.
It’s sad what is going on and unlike this boy’s dad, some good-hearted loved ones might be too hasty in giving up. It makes me sick.
“Also keep in mind that you should get a neurologist immediately in an emergency. Don’t let your loved one wait all night or all weekend in an emergency room after a brain injury.”
Thanks for sharing that great advice!
If you took your car to a mechanic, (I mean a really good one, that has been to car college and everything,) but after 2 weeks your car is still broken and he admits to you that he has no idea what is wrong with it and cant fix it for you......would you pay him?
....do you know what the call the guy who graduated last in his class at doctor school?
....now my blood pressure is up........
You may want to have DNR tattooed on your chest too.
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