Posted on 12/23/2015 6:56:19 AM PST by marktwain
HOUSTON — A Texas father has been released from jail after police say he brought a gun to a hospital to stop the staff from taking his son off of life support.
George Pickering II’s son was declared "brain-dead" after he suffered a massive stroke in January. The hospital ordered a "terminal wean" which is a process that slowly ends a person’s life by removing life support. The staff had even notified an organ donation organization that Pickering’s son was a donor.
Pickering, however, wasn’t ready to let go — now, his son, George Pickering III, is still alive and well because of it.
"They were moving too fast. The hospital, the nurses, the doctors," Pickering told KPRC. "I knew if I had three or four hours that night that I would know whether George was brain-dead."
Pickering decided to take matters into his own hands and marched into Tomball Regional Medical Center with a gun.
He admitted to being drunk and aggressive that night but said it was only because he knew there was still some life left in his son.
(Excerpt) Read more at fox13now.com ...
My father died of a massive heart attack, I was talking with him about laundry, and in the middle of the conversation, he died. His heart literally exploded in his chest. We were not able to donate his kidneys or liver because of I think they said “lack of oxygenation”. We were able to donate his eyes and skin for grafts. My mother got a letter from the person who received my dad’s eyes. He can see now because of my father.
My cousin Liana is still alive because someone donated bone marrow for her transplant. Her donor is alive and doing well.
My guy is currently in end stage kidney failure. He’s on the transplant list. He designated me his medical POA because his mother is adamantly opposed to organ donation on religious grounds. The next of kin can stop organ donation even if the person in question wants to donate their organs. When I set up my living will it specifically designates what measures I want taken. I’ve had it set up since I was 20. In this day and age there’s no reason not to.
But go ahead with your conspiracy theories, if that’s what it takes to help you sleep at night.
Yep. Apparently fully recovered now...
They were in a hurry to pull the plug because the child was an organ donor. They need to get those organs from living people, because once you die, the organs are unusable. So they can only get them from situations where someone is still alive, but comatose/unresponsive.
If he hadn’t been an organ donor, I have no doubt they would have been happy to keep him on life support for as long as the insurance would pay for it.
How about sympathy for the child who was going to be murdered by the hospital staff before the father stepped in to prevent it?
He made a full recovery, by the way, after someone at that hospital had declared him “brain dead” and was getting ready to harvest his organs.
That’s why I’m not an organ donor.
The reason the story is running now is because the dad is now out of jail.
Yeah, so?
If someone came into your home and was about to murder one of your family, wouldn’t most people at least threaten to shoot the perp, if not actually gun them down?
Nothing to see here except a technical violation of the CHL law. Glad he was released...wish that I was on the jury when this comes up for trial, but I’m no where near Houston.
“Either he is alive through artificial means or he is not.”
I’m sorry, but there are plenty of cases where people needed to be kept on life support, but later recovered fully (just like this case). Just because you need assistance to breathe, etc, does not mean you are dead. If that were the case, then we could declare most severely premature babies “dead”, because they cannot live without the assistance of machines when they are born.
365 days are not long enough to make the value of a child’s life less. The medical staff were wrong.
Your solution to this situation (which you had to tell us twice):
father and son dead
Actual result due to father’s actions:
father and son alive
Life isn’t always as black and white as you may hope. The man was obviously heartbroken over the very real possibility of losing his son. I certainly won’t judge his actions and looking at the charges against him, those involved didn’t judge him too harshly either.
Merry Christmas.
I was an organ donor for decades. I changed that in the last decade due to the propensity of hospitals to make decisions based on organ harvesting.
If it gets posted a third time, I'll say it a third time.
Using 'child' in the same sense as the anti-gun crowd? Not generally a term used for a 37 year old man, unless one has an agenda.
With a 9mm handgun in his waistband, George Pickering, 59, said he went into his son’s room at Tomball Regional Medical Center’s intensive care unit on Jan. 10 and was informed that the life support keeping him alive could soon be removed. The tragic news set Pickering off. He pulled out his handgun and ordered everyone to get out of the room because, the dad explained to TheBlaze, it was his time to be with his son.
The father put it ALL on the line and SAVED his sons LIFE:
“Amazingly, his son recovered from the stroke and is fine today. “There was a law broken, but it was broken for all the right reasons. I’m here now because of it,†said Pickering’s son, George III.”
I would certainely break the law to save my sons life; or give my own life if I needed to.
I assume you would as well.
“Using ‘child’ in the same sense as the anti-gun crowd?”
No, using ‘child’ in the sense that he is the child of the person you were talking about... it’s a common term to describe that familial relationship, is it not?
Actually, the entire story played out last January. The son’s stroke, the dad’s standoff. The son is fully recovered and the father is - just now - being released from jail.
The hospital was trying to kill the young man that night.
The whole point of life support is to support someone who is very sick and needs the opportunity to recover. Pulling the plug within a few hours is a bit much.
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