Posted on 04/28/2005 1:10:38 PM PDT by Cat loving Texan
San Antonio hospital set to remove man from life support
04/28/2005
Associated Press
A man in a persistent vegetative state whose family battled with a Houston hospital to stop his removal from life support is set to be removed from support Tuesday at a San Antonio hospital, his family said.
The family of Spiro Nikolouzos, 68, has vowed to keep him on life support and is trying to get him moved back to the nursing home where he was sent after leaving the Houston hospital. A nursing home official said Thursday they would take him back.
"I'm not going to let someone take his life support away now," said Nikolouzos' wife, Jannette. "They're trying to play God and I won't let them. I'll get him out of there if I have to get an ambulance myself."
A medical ethics committee at Southeast Baptist Hospital in San Antonio sided with doctors in a ruling a week ago that further medical care would be futile and unethical. Nikolouzos, who is ventilator-dependent and unable to eat on his own, was admitted with pneumonia to the hospital March 31.
About two weeks before that, he was transferred from Houston's St. Luke's Episcopal Hospital to Avalon Place, a San Antonio long-term care facility. At St. Luke's a doctor said on a scale of 1 to 10 — 10 being the "worst-case vegetative state" — he is a 10.
Nikolouzos' family said he has been an invalid since a 2001 surgery.
Experts have highlighted his ordeal as one of a handful of cases to test a 1999 Texas law signed by then-Gov. George W. Bush. When a hospital and family disagree, the Advanced Medical Directives Act requires that the hospital wait 10 days before discontinuing life support to give relatives time to arrange for a transfer.
Few such transfers take place either because a consensus eventually is reached or because other facilities side with the hospital and its ethics panel's conclusions.
Avalon Place's management company, Indiana-based Sage Health Services, cited its "pro-life" business philosophy as a main reason it took a special interest in the Nikolouzos case. The long-term care facility has a ventilator-dependent unit where Nikolouzos stayed before he was transferred to Southeast Baptist.
Joan Dugan, the chairman of Sage Health Services, said Thursday that the hospital will take Nikolouzos back as soon as he's discharged from the hospital.
Baptist Health Systems spokeswoman Karen May said she could not talk about his case in particular. She said Thursday that he is still a patient and that he's in critical condition.
May said that according to the law, if the family can find an acceptable place for him to be transferred, then they will make that possible.
The effects of the Terri Schiavo case continue.
Indeed. There are people who want to keep a body warm for their own selfish reason, but do not have the resources. The medical facility must have those resources available that may save some else, with a chance...
The hospital was discharging him... There is no promise broken!
flame suit on...
Medical technology is outpacing societies ability to pay, with huge bucks going to the companies that produce therapies that could keep PVSs alive for decades. .
Now, according to George Felos, he can become peaceful.
Be aware, there will be people showing up to tell you that people just need to die already.
However, this case is a little different from Terri's case. He is on a ventilator, Terri was not. Also, it looks like the care facility is willing to take him back, they even have a wing for folks just like him, so hopefully this one will work out a little differently.
Also, the wife wants him to live. I will be waiting on those Freepers who are for the spouse deciding. At least they were when it came to Terri.
Your time is up.
The title is not correct.
How much is a leaf blower?
Aaahhhhh, how far we've fallen. Unethical to continue treatment. And, food and water, however they had to be administered, used to be 'givens', not treatment.
I live in San Antonio and I have doubts about some of the staff at some of the hospitals here. St. Luke's has an excellent reputation, but I don't believe that's true of SE Baptist.
I wonder where the surgery was done that left this man in this state? There seems to be vital information missing here, given that he was only about 64 when he turned PVS.
God, maybe? Do you think you should be kept warm at my expense, without even asking me? What is different about my not giving a kidney to someone that matches me, and will die without it? What is different in taking money from me, for ?taxes?, and using it for a new yacht for the President?
I am well grounded in Scripture, and can find nothing which requires us to artificailly maintain a body. I will accept God's decisions... So far, I am alive, but I may not wake tomorrow! Or, I may get hit by a bus!!!
My reality is finite. God is infinite, and able to perform miracles, if HE chooses. Man usually wants to usurp God!
I hope all those who supported the murder of Terri Schiavo are happy with what they have wrought. One hopes not, of course, but perhaps one day one of the so-called wild turkeys will face the same thing.
No kidding--that would be like refusing to take medicine for something easily cured, because it would interfere with God's will--what a crock!
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