The Briefing Room
General Category => National/Breaking News => Topic started by: Rapunzel on December 30, 2013, 07:25:01 pm
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http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/12/30/family-of-brain-dead-girl-has-only-hours-to-find-new-facility-before-hospital-could-pull-the-plug/
Family of Brain-Dead Girl Has Only Hours to Find New Facility Before Hospital Could Pull the Plug
Dec. 30, 2013 12:46pm Liz Klimas
OAKLAND, Calif. (TheBlaze/AP) — A California family spent the holiday weekend looking for a facility to accept a teenage girl declared brain dead into its care lest the California hospital where she currently resides remove her from a breathing machine. They have only hours left today.
Alameda County Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo’s current order allows Children’s Hospital of Oakland to remove 13-year-old Jahi McMath from a ventilator at 5 p.m. Monday against her family’s wishes.
Tonsillectomy Brain Dead Girl
This undated photo provided by the McMath family and Omari Sealey shows Jahi McMath. McMath remains on life support at Children’s Hospital Oakland after doctors declared her brain dead, following a supposedly routine tonsillectomy. (AP/Courtesy of McMath family and Omari Sealey)
The family is pinning its hopes on a New York facility to care for the child after two California care homes withdrew offers to accept her.
Jahi underwent a tonsillectomy at the hospital on Dec. 9 to treat sleep apnea. After she awoke from the operation, her family said, she started bleeding heavily and went into cardiac arrest.
March for Jahi McMath in Oakland
Doctors at Children’s Hospital and an independent pediatric neurologist from Stanford University have concluded the girl is brain dead.
The hospital wants to remove her from life support, but her family believes she is still alive.
Chris Dolan, the family’s attorney, said he was waiting to hear from the New York hospital after its facility director and medical director speak.
“The family is together, and today everybody is praying and being together,” Dolan told the Associated Press Sunday. He said no decisions had been made about legal options for Monday, and would not comment on progress with the New York facility.
On Sunday, the hospital said it had not heard from the New York, or any other, facility about a transfer.
“We need to be able to talk to the other facility to understand what it is they are capable of doing,” Cynthia Chiarappa, a hospital spokeswoman, said. “This is not transferring an individual in a vegetative state, but a dead body.”
The hospital also said it would need to confirm there is “lawful transportation” included in any plan to transfer Jahi, and written permission from the coroner.
Dolan said previously that the family views the New York site as its “last, last hope.” He has also has said it was possible the family could ask Grillo for more time, or file a federal appeal.
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This is kinda sad; the mother simply will not accept that her daughter is dead. If the county coroner declares her dead, then by law she cannot be transferred to another hospital.
Why any hospital would agree to take on what could become a legal nightmare is beyond me.
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This is kinda sad; the mother simply will not accept that her daughter is dead. If the county coroner declares her dead, then by law she cannot be transferred to another hospital.
Why any hospital would agree to take on what could become a legal nightmare is beyond me.
Hospitals are placed in impossible situations by families who refuse to accept that their loved one has died and is not coming back.
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I feel so sorry for the family, but it really does look like they just don't want to face this sad reality of her death.
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Yep. It is sad.
But let her go. Switch off the machines.
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I feel so sorry for the family, but it really does look like they just don't want to face this sad reality of her death.
I don't think these things should be forced on families like this. They will always believe that they killed their daughter if they allow the machine to be turned off now. You have no idea how hard it is...
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I don't think these things should be forced on families like this. They will always believe that they killed their daughter if they allow the machine to be turned off now. You have no idea how hard it is...
I had to do it with my husband. I knew he would have wanted me to do it because we actually discussed these things.. They don't just turn off the machines, they remove you from the room and then remove all the tubes and administer morphine to the patient. He breathed on his own for about 20 minutes and then stopped.
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There's no winners in this story. So horribly, horribly sad.
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http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/12/30/22114290-brain-dead-teen-to-remain-on-life-support-pending-appeal-by-family?lite
Brain-dead teen to remain on life support pending appeal by family
Courtesy of McMath Family and Omari Sealey via AP
The family of a 13-year-old girl declared brain dead by three doctors received an extension from a judge on Monday to keep the 8th-grader on life support until Jan. 7.
With an hour to spare, Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo reinstated a restraining order preventing an Oakland, Calif., hospital from removing Jahi McMath from life support at 5 p.m. PT (8 p.m. ET) on Monday.
"We are hopeful that one of these actions will forestall the hospitals rush to extinguish Jahi's chance at life," said McMath's uncle, Omari Sealey.
McMath underwent a tonsillectomy and other operations to alleviate her sleep apnea on Dec. 9. She started bleeding profusely and went into cardiac arrest shortly after.
The young girl’s family has been in a legal battle with Children’s Hospital in Oakland since doctors at the hospital declared her brain dead three days later.
The family already had won a restraining order preventing doctors from removing the girl from a ventilator keeping her alive, but Grillo revoked her order Tuesday after hearing testimony from an independent physician who said McMath met “all criteria for brain death," according to NBC Bay Area.
Grillo said in that ruling that Children’s Hospital could remove Jahi from life support unless the family filed a formal appeal, which they did on Monday.
McMath’s parents have insisted that their daughter is alive, regardless of doctors’ opinions that her condition is irreversible.
"I would probably need my child's heart to stop to show me that she was dead. Her heart was still beating, so there's still life there," McMath's mother, Nailah Winfield told the Associated Press on Friday.
But David Durand, chief of pediatrics at Children's Hospital, said administrators did “not believe that performing surgical procedures on the body of a deceased person is an appropriate medical practice.”
In efforts to keep Children’s Hospital from removing the girl from the machine that was supporting her basic life functions, her family tried to move her to two other facilities in California. But doctors at both facilities refused to treat someone who had been declared dead.
But Sealey, the girl's uncle, said Monday that an unidentified hospital in New York had agreed to admit Jahi and on Monday, the family was organizing for an air ambulance to transfer the teen across the country.
On Friday Winfield wrote on a fundraising page, “My family and I are still striving to find a location that will accept her in her current condition … Let us pray that some one (sic) will have the heart to accept her despite what Children's Hospital says. So that we can get her air lifted away from this place as soon as possible.” On Monday, donors had contributed over $25,000 to Jahi’s cause.
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I wonder what this type of aftercare, costs per day? Is it covered under Obama care?
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I wonder what this type of aftercare, costs per day? Is it covered under Obama care?
If I was to hazard a guess this child is on Medi-Cal. Which means you and I are paying for this... and begs the question why New York has a hospital willing to take her since they would have to bill CA for the cost and wait to be reimbursed,
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If the machine is the only thing keeping her alive, then she's already dead. Turn it off. It's not like she'd live for days or weeks before dying of dehydration or starvation.
I pray I am never in a position to have to make such a decision, or to have it made about me.
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If the machine is the only thing keeping her alive, then she's already dead. Turn it off. It's not like she'd live for days or weeks before dying of dehydration or starvation.
I pray I am never in a position to have to make such a decision, or to have it made about me.
They likely have her on a drip as well as a respirator. If she is brain dead then she wouldn't live long off the respirator.