Posted on 03/09/2005 12:09:48 PM PST by WilliamWallace1999
A judge today denied a request to block St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital from halting life-support measures for a 68-year-old Friendswood man.
The family of Spiro Nikolouzos had asked state District Judge Tony Lindsay for a temporary restraining order to prevent the hospital from stopping the ventilator and artificial feedings keeping him alive.
But Lindsay denied the family's request today, noting that she did so "with sincere sadness."
St. Luke's officials notified Jannette Nikolouzos on March 1 that life-sustaining care of her husband of 34 years would be halted in 10 days, which would be Friday.
Mario Caballero, the family's attorney, said he would seek at least a two-week extension to give Nikolouzos more time to improve and to give his family more time to find an alternative facility.
But Lindsay said after her ruling today that the family showed no proof that an alternative facility could be found.
Caballero said recently that he believes the hospital wants to discontinue care because Nikolouzos' Medicare funding is running out.
Nikolouzos, a retired electrical engineer for an oil drilling company, has been an invalid since 2001, when he experienced bleeding related to a shunt in his brain.
Jannette Nikolouzos, 58, had cared for her husband at their Friendswood home, feeding him via a tube in his stomach. He couldn't speak, she said, but recognized family members and showed emotion.
On Feb. 10, the area around the tube started bleeding, and Nikolouzos rushed her husband to St. Luke's for emergency care. Early the next morning, she said, the hospital called and said he had "coded" and stopped breathing and had to be placed on a ventilator.
A neurologist told her, she said, that he is not brain-dead and the part of the brain that controls breathing is still functioning. Although his eyes were open and fixed when he first was placed on the ventilator, he has started blinking, she said.
Family members today were considering their next move after Judge Lindsay's ruling.
ping.
Hopefully he will be in a much happier place when all of this passes. God be with him.
No kidding. What right does a judge or a hospital ahve to legally kill someone! it just isn't right!
Oh, my goodness, TX now has a case as bad as FL's Schiavo disaster.
Here it's clearly the hospital wanting to cut its financial losses and a loving wife trying to save the husband.
What, the hospital should keep footing the bill to keep him alive forever in a vegetative state? Come on, that's absurd. A judge wouldn't make that ruling if he were even remotely likely to recover. She would have stayed the order for 2 weeks if he had a chance. He doesn't, so let's not blame the hospital who cannot afford to pay for uselesslessy prolonging his life.
I won't even get into the rightness or wrongness of the decision. I'll just note that when you treat health care entirely like a business, what do you expect?
It seems to me that if he can breath on his own he should not be ventilated.
TERRI SCHIAVO PING!
Yes, we thought that electing all these "R's" in TX would stop such democrat foolishness, but it continues anyway.
I disagree, from Monty Python, "I'm not dead yet!". It sounds like the patient has yet to expire.
It is unethical for the hospital to let a patient die strictly due to money. However, you are correct that it is also unfair to place the burden on the hospital, and others without them voluntarily doing so. It sounds like the family needs to make other arrangements for the patient's care, and get some help with funding it. In the meantime, it is in the hospital's best interests to help them out in making those arrangements.
He was taken in for EMERGENCY TREATMENT - and now the hospital is wanting to kill him. This man has been cared for by his FAMILY, not the hospital, and they should be allowed to continue to feed him AT HOME, just as they ALWAYS HAVE DONE.
This has to do with the fact that the family WANTS to care for him, and now they are not being allowed to take him out, move him, or care for him on their own. The hospital put him on the ventilator on their OWN VOLITION - and now they say that because of it, they are going to remove his feeding tube?
Take a family member in for one thing, have him killed for another reason...
ProLife Ping!
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I would agree with you if there existed the option of simply sending him home. Maybe we don't know enough here but it sounded to me like he needed hospital/hospice care, not home care. Therefore, they cannot just unhook him and send him home. It said Medicare money was running out (doesn't say why though), and the family had made no provision to have him moved to another facility. Do you really think a judge would simply say "kill him" because he has no money? That's not what's going on here.
And to whom should the bill be sent?
It has more to do with precedent; this is becoming a defacto method of dealing with terminal or chronic conditions. The judge is doing what the hospital wants, not what the family or the patient wants. This is a problem - because the family has been in charge of his medical care from the beginning, and they believe that he can breathe without the ventilator. But no one can live without food - and his wife has been the sole person in charge of his feeding -
til now. Now the hospital is saying they are in charge, and they say he will be starved. The wife doesn't want it, the family doesn't want it, the patient doesn't want it, but the hospital trumps them all. When did the hospital become the ultimate arbiter of life and death, over the wishes of the patient and their families, even beyond the hospital walls?
Ah. It is a business and not a feel good altruistic venture.
This man paid taxes ALL HIS LIFE. HE HAS ALREADY PAID HIS OWN DAMN BILLS.
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