Posted on 01/02/2014 5:48:01 AM PST by SoFloFreeper
The family of Terri Schiavo, a comatose woman who died in 2005, has become involved in helping the family of a comatose California teenager.
Jahi McMath's family hopes to transfer the 13-year-old from Children's Hospital Oakland to New Beginnings, a New York facility dedicated to Schiavo's memory, the San Jose Mercury News reported. Jahi's family has gone to court to force Children's to keep her on a ventilator, while the hospital contends she is brain dead.
Schiavo was the focus of a lengthy legal battle between her husband, who wanted to remove her from a feeding tube and allow her to die, and her parents. In the months before her death, the case attracted national attention.
The Terri Schiavo Life & Hope Foundation said Tuesday it has been helping Jahi's family but has done so quietly because of the case's "sensitivity."
"Jahi McMath has been labeled a 'deceased' person. Yet she retains all the functional attributes of a living person, despite her brain injury," the foundation said. "This includes a beating heart, circulation and respiration, the ability to metabolize nutrition and more. Jahi is a living human being."
(Excerpt) Read more at upi.com ...
I'm sure medicaid got cut off the moment she was legally pronounced dead. As she has yet to be pronounced undead, the hospital is probably eating the roughly $10,000/day it costs to keep Jahi on life support as her parents patiently wait for God Himself to miracle her back to life.
How the hospital is going to recoup these costs, I don't know. But I can guess...
Someone who is brain dead is dead. Their brain cannot metabolize, produce hormones, regulate body temperature, etc. There is an an exhaustive list of medical tests and procedures, (the most accurate and certain are the EEG/EKG, and radioactive isotope tests that detect blood flow into the brain) that three (3) independent doctors have gone through with Jhai.
She is brain dead, there is no recovery. Even on life supporting equipment, she will die very soon as the body cannot exist without the brain for very long, even with our wonderful medical technology.
What is sad is that she could be an organ donor and save more lives, but with the time that has passed, her organs will probably be non-donatable.
Here is a non layman article on coma vs. brain death to help readers to become educated on the two very different medical definitions.
Prayers for the little girl. Her soul is in Heaven, her body dead here.
If her brain is dead, then what’s regulating her heart and digestive systems? Those things can’t continue without a living brain, or a part thereof. If those autonomic systems can function, then it means there is at least somesb
Give the kid a chance, give her family a chance to absorb it all. A couple of months isn’t going to hurt anything. If her brain CAN do any healing, it tends to happen slowly anyway. There’s obviously some circulation there or else her autonomic nervous system wouldn’t function at all, and it’s functioning.
The Medula oblingota. Her brain will liquify, or already has started to dissolve and will pour out of skull into her sinus' and into her lungs/stomach. Without bloodflow, her body will slowly decompose until her heart finally stops.
Coma is not synonymous with a vegetative state. But you’re right, it’s also not synonymous with brain death.
The question I have is whether or not she really is brain dead. It seems likely to me that she is, but I’m not convinced. The media lied about Terri Schiavo, Haleigh Poutre, Lauren Richardson, Scott (can’t remember his last name), and how many others? Are they lying again?
Agreed 100%
This is why, before I open an account, I have my clients visit an estate attorney and get a trust set up. In the trust should have provisions upon death of either one or both spouses, to include their medical DNR, medical will, legal will, and who makes the decision to pull the plug.
Thanks for the link.
On a page other than the one you linked, it says, “Although the patient has a dead brain and dead brain stem, there may be spinal cord reflexes that can be elicited (a knee jerk, for example). In some brain dead patients, when the hand or foot is touched in a particular manner, the touch will elicit a short reflex movement.”
I wonder if that is what the mother observed when she says that her daughter responds to touch.
These people need a good chaplain to talk to them and encourage them to accept the reality. Prolonging the time the body is kept on a respiratory and keeping their false hopes up is just going to make the crash that much harder when the body inevitably fails completely.
It is called the Lazarus effect or sign.
Were do you get the state is footing the cost?..The girl had surgery at that hospital...that hospitital screwed up...the hospital is on the hook for the cost...and the hospital is making the call that ...hmmmm...just so happens is the lowest cost option to the hospital
Jeepers... thanks for the ping.
She's already dead by any rational definition of the term.
I haven’t yet heard that the hospital screwed up. Was that just announced?
Ok ..she went in for a tonsillectomy and came out ??? So you saying the operation was a sucess? Or just one of those things?
If what I’ve read is true, she had her tonsils and adenoids removed and her uvula reshaped/reduced. Of course, the media could be lying about this. Both of us are only going on what we’ve been told by them. If the report is true then this is not a simple procedure; however, regardless of the simplicity every surgery carries a risk. That risk is increased on a child, especially an obese child like this poor soul. Did the hospital screw up? Did the hospital do a marvelous job and this child’s indulgent family (children don’t become obese on their own) break protocol and bring her food, causing the problems that led to this? Was it a frightening freak issue that sometimes tragically happens without any reason or explanation?
The real tragedy here is that her parents wanted a quick fix for her sleep apnea instead of cooking healthy food for her and themselves and getting up off of the couch and exercising together.
That's the problem in these things no body perfect even with the best intentions..all have conflicting interest on both sides.
Put her in an independent facility before the call is made
The family hasn't been able to find one willing to take her.
The facility mentioned in this article, "New Beginnings" is an outpatient center run by a former hairdresser who offers a "holistic approach" to dealing with traumatic brain injuries.
From what I’m reading, no facility will take her because they do not accept dead people. Again, if what’s being reported is true then this family needs professional help because they are just not getting that it’s over. I desperately feel sorry for them, and if the hospital is at fault I hope it is found accountable.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.