Goodbye,my beloved son:Father gives up court battle to keep his disabled boy alive-

Mail Online ^ | 10th November 2009 | Beth Hale

[pillut48]

In the end the young father could fight no longer.

For more than a year he had made daily visits to the hospital bedside of his chronically-disabled son.

For six emotional days in the High Court he had battled against the hospital - and the baby's mother - who were reluctantly seeking the right to withdraw life support.

Finally, faced with overwhelming evidence, he made the 'agonising' decision to let his beloved son go.

Both parents wept as the court was told he no longer opposed the hospital's application.

They said later they wanted to spend 'what little time remains with their beloved son'.

The father's heart-breaking move came after an independent expert said his son's quality of life was not good enough to justify prolonging it.

The 13-month-old boy, identified only as RB, has an extremely rare disorder that has robbed him of almost all muscle control.

His brain is undamaged, but trapped in an almost immovable body, unable to speak or even smile.

Incapable of breathing, he has been dependent on a ventilator since he was born.

Now it will be turned off within days. Doctors will administer a large dose of sedative to ensure the little boy does not suffer as he dies.

[Winniesboy]

Then please explain, in detail, what entails private health care in England. How does it work?

Perhaps you'd allow me to explain that, as I am a British patient both of the NHS and a private health insurance scheme.

When Aneurin Bevan founded the NHS in the late 1940s he did a deal with the British Medical Association, in order to secure the cooperation of the medical profession in the new service. All doctors would be able to continue in private practice, if they so chose, alongside their NHS work. That's been the case ever since.

I belong to one of the many private health insurance schemes in the UK. If my NHS family doctor provisionally diagnoses a condition for which she recommends I see a specialist consultant, I ask her to refer me to a private cardiologist (say), rather than to a consultant in the local NHS hospital. His fees are then paid by my private insurance. If he then decides I need, say, an investigative procedure in hospital, he may arrange to do it at the local Nuffield (private) hospital. However, the procedure may sometimes need specialist equipment only available locally at the NHS hospital, where he also happens to work. Rather than send me on a journey to a distant private hospital, he books me into the NHS hospital as a private patient. He then conducts the procedure there using the NHS equipment. My insurance company is then billed by my cardiologist for his fee, but also by the NHS hospital for the use of its equipment and technical staff.

As you see, the interrelationships can become quite complex.

[brent13a]

I appreciate your reply. Your following statement sums up some concerns we over here have: As you see, the interrelationships can become quite complex.

Our system is already beyond complicated between the private health care and the government programs already in use. Adding another huge program with hundreds of sub-bureacracies would make the system even more complex than probably britain's.

There isn't a single conservative out there saying that our current system is perfect here in the states. However, there also isn't a single politician of power willing to look at alternatives to the current 1.3 trillion hog that they are trying to implement.

Don't even get me started on the fact that the US has a 10.2-20% unemployment rate. That means <80% of the US population (taxpaying) would be paying for >100% of the populations health care costs. That is just downright socialism and is unconstitutional. It would be a system that would cause the US economy to fail even more rapidly that it already is.

[blueyon]

“Tears and prayers.”

Yes, Tears and prayers.

[reagan_fanatic]

Dear God in Heaven, thank you for not putting me in a situation like this. I don’t think I could take it. My heart goes out to that poor Father. What agony he must be going through.

[pillut48]

Cindy, you put my thoughts down very eloquently. I can’t add to them. Thank you.

[pillut48]

What do you think about neonatal preemie care? Because, after all "He (they) obviously can't survive on his (their) own."

*sigh* :*(

[pillut48]

Let’s contact Stephen Hawking and get his views on this subject!!!

[shakes head in sorrow at some of the death-approving comments here] :*(

[pillut48]

I respectfully disagree with both of you.

We cannot know God's plan for this precious little boy. Who knows how many lives he has touched? Maybe one nurse or doctor turned to God in desperation after ignoring Him all their lives...if I know people, there are doctors and nurses, etc. who love this little boy as much as if he were their own. His life was not a waste of time or energy or a mistake that God made that needs to be rectified by murdering him. :*(

Look at how he is touching OUR lives here, across the ocean. No matter what happens to him, God holds him in His arms, in this life, and the next.

[wagglebee]

Have you ever noticed how cavalierly some are willing to decide that someone else’s life “isn’t worth living”?

[July4]

Within the year, a polio victim who spent most of her life in an iron lung, passed away after reaching old age. She had, despite her immobility and inability to breathe unaided, earned a college degree, written a book, and participated in her community.

Dear God, please remind us over and over that life is precious. Every life.

[wagglebee]

but this little boy was in the hospital for a year...a year....no culture, no society, no govt not even a millionaire family could afford to keep a sick one in the hospital for a year....most of us could not afford it for one month...

do all of us deserve one full year in a hospital...the 300 billion of us?....it can't be done....

what makes human beings os arrogant to think they can reverse naturally occurring tragedies?.....every sickness or disorder...every injury?

I seem to remember reading about a group proposing these ideas before, I just can't seem to remember who it was who proposed them . . . oh wait, now I remember.

“This person suffering from hereditary defects

costs the people 60,000 Reichmarks during his lifetime.

People, that is your money. Read ‘New People’.”

[pillut48]

"The mother has the primary responsibility and she is not willing to watch her baby suffer. Additionally, all the family were also against it.

Same exact arguments I've heard endorsing abortion. Feh.

[texmexis best]

I wonder what the docs in Houston would have to say about this child?

[pillut48]

Yes. :*( :*( :*(

[wagglebee]

The mother has the primary responsibility and she is not willing to watch her baby suffer. Additionally, all the family were also against it.

Interesting logic, twisted, but still interesting.

Why stop with just this child?

Why not give ALL families the right to kill some one off if they can agree on it?

Imagine how easy it would be to control unruly children if you could simply threaten to kill them if they didn't behave?

Decisions as far reaching and life changing as that cannot and should not be made on emotion by adults.

They damn sure shouldn't be made by people who think that a person's right to life is subject to a vote.

[July4]

I have seen this before: the mother and her family do not want to save a baby with a serious problem. Day after day, month after month, the father held the baby, rocked and sang to it, but the mother was deemed by the American hospital and physicians to have the most authority, although they were a married couple. The baby, without the procedures it needed to survive long-term, eventually died. Actually, there were two deaths; the father, after several years of insurmountable guilt and grief, died, too.

An American tragedy, with more to come under Obamacare.

[Cardhu]

Thank you Winnieboy, Exactly the same holds true here in Spain only you can see a private specialist and then be treated or hospitalized at Government expense. The Private doctors are the same doctors who work for the system in the morning and for themselves in the afternoon.

I used that procedure once at the insistence of a friend who had a Specialist friend. I was supposed to wear a heart monitor for 24 hours but would have to wait three days to get one. Three days is nothing but my friend took me to see his doc and he set me up straight away. It really only confirmed what they already knew and he changed my medication. I took the report to my doc and that was all there was to it.

Sergas, the people who run the system pay for the medication and the private doctor did not even charge me.

Of course, the whole exercise was totally unnecessary as it had taken me 80 years for my heart to get to its current state and three days to confirm what they already knew would not have been a big deal.

[Republic of Texas]

This should be no surprise to anyone. In America today, Men and Fathers in particular, are devalued in every way possible. They are below Mothers and Judges, even when they (Mothers and Judges) are proven to be unfit. It’s no wonder Women grow up thinking Men are not needed, except of course as a source of income.

[goat granny]

Agree with you, its heartbreaking but this baby would have died at birth 50 years ago. We play God when we use technology to heroically prolong the death process...This is a heartbreaking choice for the parents to make, they deserve compassion not condemnation from others.. ***Just because we can keep a person alive indefinately, does not mean that we should. God Bless those parents***

You are right with this statement...

[wagglebee]

Agree with you, its heartbreaking but this baby would have died at birth 50 years ago. We play God when we use technology to heroically prolong the death process.

Just out of curiosity, how far are you willing to go with this?

80 years ago people died all the time because simple antibiotics didn't exist. Are we "playing God" when we give someone an antibiotic?

What about the paddles used to start a person's heart, these didn't exist a few decades ago, are we "playing God" when we use them?

Has it ever occurred to you that God is the one that enables man to have this technology? Do you honestly believe that we would have ventilators if God didn't want us to have them? It seems to me that the only people who are playing God are those people who want to deny someone the resources that God has given us.