Posted on 06/12/2014 7:34:14 PM PDT by Morgana
FULL TITLE: Casey Kasem could have died from wife disconnecting his feeding tube, snatching him from nursing home — EXCLUSIVE
Casey Kasem could have died after his wife disconnected his surgically implanted feeding tube and snatched him from a California nursing home against medical advice at 2:30 a.m., staff members claim.
The shocking details — revealed in documents and an exclusive interview with a private investigator — paint a desperate portrait of Jean Kasem, who grabbed her husband out of Berkley East Convalescent Hospital on May 7.
“She disconnected his G-tube, which provided his only source to nutrition and hydration,” Dr. Paul Leitner, who was Kasem’s doctor at the facility, wrote to Santa Monica police. “She was informed of the risks of doing so and was told she was placing Mr. Kasem in great bodily harm or possible demise.”
Jennifer Kusiappiah, a registered nurse, also signed a statement, saying Kasem’s wife was concerned about her 82-year-old husband’s privacy after his daughters, Kerri and Julie, visited their father.
“Mrs. Kasem insisted on taking Mr. Kasem out of the facility, even though I have clearly explained that it was dangerous and can be fatal due to his medical condition,” she said.
(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...
Natural death didn’t used to include IV’s and medical intervention for people who have no hope for recovery. That makes it different from Terri Schiavo.
My father died of an inoperable Glioblastoma IV. It had taken over most of his frontal lobe and rendered him blind and unable to speak. He was a vibrant man, a triathlete at 77 and he had a living will. The cancer made him unable to eat or drink. He would not wanted to live that way or prolong his life in the hell that tumor wrecked on him.
Everyone’s situation is different. Broad brushes do no one favors.
“When someone has difficulty swallowing and therefore receives food and water through a feeding tube, taking away that food and water doesn’t “allow them to pass.” It kills them. The cause of death is not the disease process but dehydration. And it’s a very bad way to die”
You should have read the whole article.
I’ve read all of them about this case so far. What do you think I missed? The claim that he’s dying and the food and water is simply causing him discomfort? I’ve seen hospices tell families that when it clearly was not true so please forgive me if I’m skeptical.
“The claim “
Reviewed by a judge.
Terri was only receiving food and water by feeding tube. She was receiving no other life sustaining treatment and would not have died if it weren't for the removal of her food and water.
I suspect this case is very similar. He has Lewy Body Dementia which makes it difficult for him to swallow. If not for the removal of hydration by feeding tube he most likely would not be at immediate risk of death. Sepsis is dangerous but usually treatable, as are bed sores.
Terri Schiavo’s case was reviewed by a judge too. I still don’t see your point. I generally don’t trust judges at this point in our history to do the right thing when it comes to medical ethics.
Amen to that. My father passed from this very diagnosis. It is a horrible end. There is no “cure” and all these “heroic” efforts only prolong suffering.
” I still don’t see your point.”
Your posts implied that they were arbitrarily pulling the tubes to kill him. My point is that there is more to the story.
Brian, I shouldn’t post on this thread, because I have done so on earlier threads, much to my regret. This subject is too close, and extremely painful to me, personally .
I recognize and respect your opinion on general medical emergency life-threatening issues, but not when it involves Parkinson’s, complicated by probable Lewy Body dementia, & consequent brain destruction. This is not in your area of expertise as a Podiatrist.
My beloved husband of 45 years, a brilliant MIT graduate with a master’s degree, died in March of 2011, after suffering for 14 years. I did my very best to care for him, constantly arguing in the later years with hospitals and rehab care after several Parkinson’s crises, to please respect the medical importance of scheduling his needed meds and meals, so the meds would work.
He suffered so when he was hospitalized and in rehab. The med team and the food delivery team didn’t/couldn’t deal with the timing issues - too complicated. If these are not controlled, the Parkinson’s meds aren’t absorbed, and don’t work.
As his autonomic nervous system shut down, gradually at first, and then cascading, he lost his desire to eat and drink, in spite of my best efforts to make his favorite foods, provide his favorite beverages.
When his internist, and neurologist specializing in autonomic disorders, then the Mayo clinic in Rochester MN could no longer help, hospice was my only hope to keep him out of pain, and free of fear, hallucinations, and overwhelming anxiety.
I looked for and found a wonderful Roman Catholic hospice, who came in, brought in a lift frame, hospital bed, a soothing Harpist playing his favorite music, and who helped manage his pain and make his final days quiet and peaceful, as he wanted.
While I respect your expertise in podiatry, I do not consider you qualified to express an opinion in this particular medical circumstance, or to pass judgement on those of us who are left to carry out the wishes of those we have loved for decades.
Please know that I am not alone in finding your general aspersions cast toward those of us who have had to make difficult and heart-breaking decision to let those we love so much go without the complications of extensive medical technology doing harm.
Do podiatrists take that oath - “first do no harm”? What happens when a feeding tube forces food into a stomach and bowel that are no longer functioning, when liquids are pushed into a dying body whose kidneys have shut down?
Tube feeding can do miracles in some situations, but not all. Stick to your specialty, or get informed about the complexity of end-of-life complicated issues.
This is rambling and long winded, probably because it comes from a dark place of pain and loss. This isn’t an intellectual discussion for me, it is deeply personal.
“I read earlier today that his daughter had either been given permission to or had made the decision to stop treatment and allow him to pass.”
I have seen talk of this but with all the in house fighting in the family it just does not look good, know what I mean? Really though it is wrong to say “in house” because it seems this family is doing a Jerry Springer all over the place if this story is to be believed.
In addition to being a Podiatrist I also work for a Catholic hospice (not in the clinical care of patients.) I also will be serving as the chairman of a national pro life group that is deeply involved in end of life care. And we have directly cared for loved ones at end of life in very trying circumstances.
So even though I’m not a clinician directly involved in patient care, I am familiar with the topic at hand here and I’m in communication with the prolife leaders in the field. The opinions I express are not uninformed and this is an important pro life battle. Many people are dying prematurely from arbitrary withdrawal of hydration and nutrition and over medication with opioids, sedatives and antipsychotics.
So while I truly respect your views and your experience, I also have extensive experience in this field and feel a duty to point out the pro life aspects of this debate. Thank you for sharing your opinion.
Good hospice care is carefully monitored with individualized plans of care and feeding is tapered and ceased when these unfortunate events occur. It's not difficult to handle these things on an individualized basis with proper staffing and properly trained staff. These are not reasons to deny assisted hydration and nutrition.
We routinely get calls from patients who have feeding tubes for years from things such as esophageal cancer, who are active, mobile and wish to continue receiving feeding even on hospice care, but have been told by numerous other hospice providers that they must discontinue tube feeding if they want to be on hospice. This is a lie. There is no reason whatsoever that patients who have been successfully maintained for years with tube feeding have to give it up just to get accepted onto hospice care.
There are circumstances where assisted nutrition and hydration is overly burdensome. In those cases there is nothing wrong with discontinuing them or not initiating them. There are individuals who make their wishes known in advance directives that they do not desire assisted nutrition and hydration should they become incapcitated and be unable to express their wishes. Their wishes must be respected.
But the idea that tube feedings and IVs are always bad or burdensome is simply false and it is a sad reality that many people are dying prematurely due to dehydration from premature withdrawal of fluids and food.
Julie Kasem, 38, Casey’s middle child and a licensed physician assistant with advanced training in palliative and hospice care, and her husband, Dr. Jamil Aboulhosn, a cardiologist at UCLA Medical Center, filed a conservatorship petition in Superior Court, charging that though her father had signed a medical directive in 2007 placing the couple in charge of his care if he were incapacitated, Jean Kasem had blocked them from finding out about his condition since the previous spring.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/casey-kasem-sad-strange-family-678902
From left: Kasem’s daughter Julie, Casey, daughter Kerri, Casey’s first wife, Linda, and son Mike at Kerri’s high school graduation. Says Mike: “Ever since we realized that there’s going to be no relationship with our stepmom, none of us has really been expecting anything. We knew that we better go make our own money. It’s so much more important to be happy and have family.”
According to Kerri and Mike Kasem, though their relationship with their father was a close and loving one, Jean, they say, never embraced the role of stepmother and friend to her husband’s children.
Strikingly beautiful in a Marilyn-meets-Anna Nicole mode, Jean subverted her classic looks by adopting a highly eccentric fashion sense that exaggerated her 5-foot-10 height and earned her repeat mentions on various worst-dressed lists. With Casey beaming beside her, she wore her hair in towering top knots, mountainous ziggurats of curls and dreadlocks and donned alarming white wigs and assorted headdresses. She once sported a top hat adorned with a Barbie doll.
Having started over with Jean, Casey Kasem also embraced a newfound passion for political and social activism during the ‘80s and early ‘90s, though he was careful never to inject his liberal convictions into AT40. “I now have the celebrity status to do effectively what I want to do with changing the world,” said Kasem, and he contributed time, money and his famous voice to a host of causes: animal rights, world peace, vegetarianism, anti-smoking and homelessness. In 1984 and 1988, he and Jean hosted fundraisers and campaign events for the quixotic presidential campaigns of Jackson.
But the two issues that consumed him more than any others were continuing violence in the Middle East and discrimination against Arab-Americans. In speeches and articles, he took Hollywood to task for “the vilification and defaming of Arabs in motion pictures and television.” Although not a Muslim, he denounced negative stereotyping of the Islamic faith and became a staunch defender of Yasir Arafat and the Palestinian struggle. He loudly opposed the 1991 Gulf War and attended the signing of the Oslo Peace Accord in Washington in 1993.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/casey-kasem-sad-strange-family-678902
Perhaps it is time for you to get some direct clinical experience with those who are suffering from autonomic system failure, and consequent organ shut-down.
I do not doubt that there are people dying prematurely, improperly denied hydration and nutrition, and overly medicated, as you suggest.
But, do not fall off the horse on that other side, because there are medical situations that require much less medical interference than is “present protocol”. And, many docs pursue these, for fear of legal consequences or personal gain.
General comments made in an online forum that could intimidate loving relatives trying their best to provide comfort and care for those terminally ill, making them feel guilty for not “doing everything medically possible” could be (in my layman’s opinion) at least, considered insensitive to individual situations, and might verge on what we commoners consider “verbal malpractice”.
Who knows what someone might decide to do, based on a general statement you have made over the internet? Have you considered the impact that the initials behind your screen name might have on someone who concludes you are more qualified than you are, in fact?
We do not want to devolve into a world where our loved ones, no matter what their age or circumstance, become subject for medical experimentation, when weird tests and trials are conducted in the “name of science, and the betterment of mankind”.
This has happened in the past, as I am sure you know, and it is probably happening in the present. I hope it never happens to me, or anyone I love.
In conclusion, remember that saying about words being like feathers released from a pillow?
Most doctors would not generalize on an internet site, about a patient they have not examined, or express an opinion on someone who medical history and situation they have not studied.
So, why have you?
Continues Kerri, “He told me that Jean was very insecure. He always told me, ‘It’s going to get better, I promise.’ It never did. To Jean, anybody who truly loved my father was an enemy, a sworn enemy.
“When he found out he had Parkinson’s, he wanted Julie and her husband to be in charge of his medical care if he was unable to make decisions. My dad signed when he was completely coherent and knew exactly what he was doing — a conservatorship over health, not estate, no finances, and a durable power of attorney over health. We were pushed out. She didn’t want us knowing anything.”
In an echo of her father’s many causes and campaigns, Kerri’s nonprofit foundation, Kasem Cares, has been raising funds to lobby for changes in California law that would provide greater protection for the visitation rights of adult children and mandate notification if a parent is hospitalized or dies. State Assemblyman Mike Gatto, a Democrat, has agreed to introduce the bill.
“Nobody, nobody should go through what we’re going through,” says Kerri. “This should be illegal. And I’m not saying that every kid deserves visitation. There may be kids where the parents don’t want to see them, or if they’ve done harm. I get it. But if we prevail, at least it would allow a judge to rule on visitation. Not finances, not money, not the will, not the estate. Just visitation.”
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/casey-kasem-sad-strange-family-678902
Sorry, but I'm not going to be threatened or bullied into silence on this issue, by you or anyone else. Six years ago I had to stand by silently while they euthanized a close personal friend with Parkinson's by dehydration. His kind of case is typical of what is occurring in the hospice and palliative care field, I've personally witnessed it, and I'm not going to be silent about it.
Fr. Gerard's Story:I first met Fr. Gerard in 1998 while doing a house call for his mother. A brief initial conversation revealed that he was retired and living in a small apartment only a block from my office, and that we shared many Catholic and pro-life interests. Fr. Gerard soon became a close friend, and we met frequently for meals. I assisted him with various tasks around his apartment, and he called me often simply to talk. He got to know my wife and children well and relied on us for help, as his only sibling lived out of state. Fr. Gerard eventually developed Parkinson's disease. We offered to take him into our home, but knowing the chaos of our homeschooling household he politely declined, and entered a local nursing home. We continued to visit him often and took him out to dine at his favorite restaurants.
In late 2007 and early 2008, Fr. Gerard's health declined rapidly. He left a voice message on my cell phone late on a Wednesday in April 2008, asking me to stop and visit. By the time I was able to visit him two days later, he had been admitted to a local hospital for aspiration pneumonia, and had been diagnosed as "terminal" by the treating physician. He was transferred to the palliative care unit from the ER and the treating physician insisted that according to his Living Will, Fr. Gerard wanted no "extraordinary care" to prolong his life.
I was shocked that he was receiving no water, food or IV, only Morphine by slow IV drip. His Parkinson's was certainly advancing and the aspiration pneumonia was a serious crisis (aspiration pneumonia has a 20 to 60% mortality rate), but food and water did not constitute extraordinary care. We were permitted to wet a sponge to moisten his lips, and he would try to suck all the moisture from the sponge, but we were forbidden to give him a drink of water, because of the "risk of further aspiration pneumonia."
Fr. Gerard had shared with me his opposition to passive euthanasia in the past, and he was trying to talk to me, but he had become so dehydrated that he could not form words. When the attending physician made rounds, I told him my concern that Fr. Gerard was receiving no food or water. The physician asserted that "their hospice rules forbid IVs" as it only "prolonged the process." He then stated, "The public has a misconception that death by dehydration is torturous, but that's not true. It's the most humane way to do this, with the least discomfort. We will control any discomfort with the Morphine. That's what we're going to do."
With that the attending physician, a Catholic father of six, looked me in the eye defiantly, turned on his heels and left. I was speechless. The next day I pleaded with his sibling that Fr. Gerard would never have consented to passive euthanasia by dehydration, explaining that if he died now it would be due to dehydration, not the aspiration pneumonia or the Parkinson's, but to no avail.
I have always been pro-life. I had even attended pro-life conferences about euthanasia and had sat on the medical ethics committees of two hospitals, both in the mid 1990's. I had staff privileges at the hospital in question. But in April 2008, in Fr. Gerard's specific case, I simply did not know what to do. I called four good pro-life priests locally, begging for advice. They all agreed that something must be done but none could offer any specific advice, and because his sibling held power of attorney none could personally intervene to help their fellow priest.
Another priest I consulted recommended I request a medical ethics committee consultation. Late on a Thursday evening, eight days after Fr. Gerard had left the voice message on my cell phone, I spoke with a physician assistant who was on call for the ethics committee. I told her that he was a good priest and a faithful son of the Church who would never agree to being passively euthanized, and I discussed with her the relevant documents from the Vatican, the USCCB and the state bishops' conference. She asked me to enter these documents in Fr. Gerard's chart, and the medical ethics committee would be happy to review the case Friday morning on rounds.
Relieved that there was something I could finally do for this good priest, I went to the hospital Friday morning at 7:00am, asked the unit clerk to formally enter the documents into his chart for the ethics committee consultation, and headed down the hall to visit him.
His room was already empty. Fr. Gerard had died of dehydration several hours earlier.
Thank you for sharing your story. I can see how painful it was for you, and how deeply personal this is. Thank you for educating all of us. Your story is very moving and thought provoking.
I read that he did have a directive that instructed to NOT be kept alive if circumstances such as this occurred.
The family is so dysfunctional...who knows what is really going on.
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