Posted on 12/30/2013 4:47:11 PM PST by Morgana
The judge who is adjudicating the case of the family of the teenage girl in California who is the subject of a national debate over whether a hospital has the right to yank life support has granted an extension.
A county judge extended the order for the hospital to keep Jahi McMath on life support until 5 p.m. on January 7. Her mother and family say she is alive.
Jahi’s family has a door-to-door ambulance flight contracted to take her to a New York facility that will care for her.
“The family has located a licensed facility in the state of New York which has agreed to take Jahi,” Jahi’s uncle, Omari Sealey, said Monday afternoon, only about an hour before an Alameda County judge’s order keeping the girl on a ventilator was set to expire. “We have contracted with an air ambulance willing to take her from door to door. We have a doctor here in California who will be with her throughout the transfer.”
Sealey said Jahi has been responsive to her mother’s voice.
“Jahi is moving when her mother speaks,” he said. “We have video our attorneys have just produced it to the hospital’s attorney. We have a pediatrician who has seen Jahi who has sworn that she is not dead. We are hopeful that one of these (legal) actions will forestall the hospital’s rush to extinguish Jahi’s chance at life.”
Meanwhile, just three hours before the deadline, the girl’s grandmother, Sandra Chapman spoke to the media and suggested Jahi was moving her body, saying there was leg and body movement as well as response to touch and voice.
“I know one’s [an alternative care facility] gonna come through. I know it. I feel it. Jahi’s moving. If she’s moving, the doctor should pay attention to that,” she said.
Jahi McMath’s family had found a new care facility that will continue her medical care and treatment. But the hospital she is at now won’t cooperate to move her.
A judge had ruled that a hospital in Oakland, California can remove life support from Jahi McMath, 13, who has been declared brain-dead days after undergoing surgery to have her tonsils removed. Her family is already devastated enough but has had to fight the hospital, which wanted to take her off life support against their wishes.
On Thursday, the lawyer for the family, Christopher Dolan, asked Children’s Hospital of Oakland to cooperate by performing a few procedures needed to move Jahi McMath. The hospital said no.
The Los Angeles-area long-term care facility that had been willing to accept Jahi has withdrawn its offer, leaving a New York hospital as the only apparent option for. That is happening as a deadline of 5 p.m. today reaches, whereby the hospital will officially cut offer her life support.
“I just found out that the facility my daughter was supposed to be going to has backed out! Children’s hospital has once again interfered with the placement of my daughter we still have a chance at 1 more facility so let us all pray,” family member Latasha Nailah Winkfield said.
The San Jose newspaper has more on this teenager’s case:
“I just found out that the facility my daughter was supposed to be going to has backed out,” Jahi’s mother, Nailah Winkfield, wrote on the family’s fundraising website early Sunday. “My family and I are still striving to find a location that will accept her in her current condition.”
That leaves an unnamed New York hospital “as our last, last hope,” Jahi’s lawyer, Christopher Dolan, said. The facility is run by an “organization that believes in life,” Dolan told The Associated Press.
But in a statement issued Sunday, a spokeswoman for Children’s Hospital Oakland said its doctors said no one from any other medical organization has been in contact with it to discuss a transfer of the 13-year-old.
“Our physicians have yet to receive a single call or message from the facility under consideration,” Cynthia Chiarappa wrote. “We have been waiting since Friday — when we were first told by the family lawyer of a potential facility that might accept the body of Jahi — for a call from a physician to discuss with our medical staff what may be necessary to transfer the deceased.”
Dolan said the unnamed Los Angeles-area facility withdrew its offer because it didn’t want media attention or to jeopardize its relationship with its doctors, who refused to treat someone who’s been declared brain dead.
As Jahi’s family prepared for a Sunday afternoon fundraiser at an Oakland church to help pay for a possible airlift, it remained unclear what will happen in the hours ahead.
Doctors at Children’s Hospital have refused to perform a tracheotomy for breathing and insert a gastric tube for feeding, procedures that are needed in order to transfer Jahi, saying it is unethical to perform surgery on a deceased person.
Jahi’s family is raising funds for her support. You can help by going to www.gofundme.com/jahi-mcmath
Jahi arrived at the hospital on a Monday and was supposed to be released Tuesday, the family said. A member of Jahi’s family , a veteran nurse at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, noticed her granddaughter was bleeding from her mouth and nose. She later went into cardiac arrest. Jahi spent Tuesday on a ventilator. By 2 a.m. Wednesday, doctors said she had swelling in her brain, and Thursday, she was declared legally brain-dead, family members said.
Judge Evelio Grillo ruled that Jahi must be kept on the breathing machine until at least 5 p.m. December 30. The verdict came after hearing testimony from two doctors, one an independent expert appointed by the judge on Monday and the other a 30-year veteran of the hospital. Both testified that the teen is brain-dead and that her body is alive only because of a ventilator hooked up to her since December 12.
The family has appealed the decision but pro-life attorney Wesley Smith said it is unlikely they will prevail.
“The judge gave the family, still fighting the determination, until Monday to appeal or adjust to the tragic reality,” he said. “I hope the family spends the remaining time loving Jahi and making preparations, as there is zero chance in my view that the court’s ruling will be overturned on appeal. If a miracle is to happen, it will have to be when the breathing assistance is removed. People who are brain dead have no ability to breathe on their own.”
“It’s also a shame the hospital has handled the tragedy so maladroitly. I was speaking about this to a former pediatric nurse who used to work in Children’s Hospital Oakland’s ICU. She said the facility has a real calling to serving the African-American community, and this has hurt trust. That’s why I was upset to hear a hospital spokesman say he was “gratified” that the court validated the hospital’s diagnosis,” Smith continued. “No, the proper and decent thing would have been to say that they were sorry the original diagnosis was affirmed. Good grief.”
I wish I had been older at the time. No... a coma isn’t the same as being brain-dead... but the docs were telling my uncle that she was beyond hope and they felt they should cease the life-support.
Removal of tonsils and adenoids is protocol for childhood sleep apnea. The c-pap mask is not the first option. If the child is overweight (like this poor soul) then the doc should make that the first protocol, followed by the mask. It’s frightening that the medical “profession” goes straight for surgery.
Judges didn't declare McMath dead. Doctors did. All of them. And a coroner.
Clarification for my post 22: By “that” I mean weight loss.
Dr. Alexander went into a meningitis-induced coma. Parts of his brain shut down, or went "off-line."
He was never declared brain dead. His brain was still functioning, still receiving oxygen. There's a world of difference between Dr. Alexander's condition and that of Jahi McMath, for whom there is no brain activity whatsoever.
That is so not true. Her heart is beating. She is not dead.
The concept of 'brain dead' is a new concept. It was developed to help families cope with the sorrow of organ donation. Families were able to give permission to donate organs if they were told the loved one was dead.
Yes, exactly. This dispute was almost certainly kicked off by the hospital's high-handed and supremely arrogant behavior toward this family.
Having been on the wrong end of such officious treatment by doctors and hospitals myself, I understand how this family feels. Many families are quickly cowed into submitting to having the plug pulled prematurely on a loved one. But every once in awhile, some relative will stand up and say "Like hell you won't!"
I wonder if there was a "transplant team" lurking in the background, just waiting to swoop in and "harvest" the girl's organs?
That is often the motivation behind hospital pressuring parents into too-hastily consigning their children to death.
And how many people know that the definition of "brain death" was conjured up just in the last few decades ... for the very purpose of promoting transplantion of "fresh" organs from still-living patients (i.e., still alive, by the traditional definition of death).
Such a rosy picture is painted by the organ transplant industry, that few people know the ugly truth about what actually happens when organs are "harvested" from a patient who has been declared "brain dead" (who, at that point, ceases to be considered a patient).
As the transplant surgeons cut into the un-anesthetized patient's donor's vital organs, his or her body often thrashes about violently ... even a "brain dead" patient resists this atrocious assault on his or her body.
Okay. I’m just saying that miracles can happen.
Might have been the parent’s choice.
"Brain dead" is not a new concept. It has been around for at least 45 years.
My local California paper reported the cost is $10,000/day.
I was researching childhood sleep apnea because my son (who is actually very skinny) snores so badly. That’s when I learned that anesthetizing a small body then slicing and dicing is the first protocol. I’m appalled by that. If my son does have this issue I will insist on other options and not slicing and dicing; however, some parents might want what they think is a quick fix. Perhaps this poor soul’s parents wanted the quick fix instead of stepping up, being parents, and cooking good food and exercising with the child (if her sleep apnea was weight related).
Not to people in Jahi's condition.
And this is part of the problem. Everyone is filling this family up with false hope, with anecdotes of loved ones who miraculously pulled through. But these tales were of people who weren't brain dead! This girl's brain is quickly turning into putrefied jelly. She is NOT coming back.
The only thing that is taking place is a media circus pressuring the hospital to continue ventilating a corpse at great expense on a machine that could otherwise be used to actually save someone else's life.
No it is not. One who is in a coma can have brain activity. One who is brain dead will have no electrical evidence on testing. The brain ceases to function and without mechanical support by way of ventilator, the body will stop functioning as well. When the ventilator is turned off, there could still be a heart beat for a short time and other organs may function but it will stop, all functions and systems will shut down.
My husband was not in the actua ICU, he was in an acute care room one the med surg floor and our charge for each day was 12,000+ per day. I too am in CA.
There is no one definition. There is no consensus. "Brain dead" varies in different countries.
It's fine with me if you are willing to donate your organs while you are "brain dead" according to one of the many definitions and according to whatever definition the doctor attending you is using.
let her family pay as well....
I am not in support of the ghouls in organ donation.
I understand why they are interested in pushing the button for harvesting her for valuable parts to save others. But that’s not what I’m talking about.
She’s been on life support for a week, and in that time, I would hope that they have tested her repeatedly (daily?) for brain function.
Think of it like a PC, the CPU is fried, and it won’t pass POST. Yet the power supply still works...should I leave it plugged in hoping that it will somehow start up again ?
That’s kinda where we’re at here.
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