Did 'revoked' living willkill communicative man?

WorldNetDaily ^ | November 4, 2005 | Diana Lynne

[8mmMauser]

Family members are investigating what they consider to be suspicious circumstances surrounding the death of a nursing home patient at the center of a life and death tug-of-war reminiscent of the Terri Schiavo tragedy.

Seventy-nine-year-old Jimmy Chambers died in the early morning hours of Oct. 24 after the tracheotomy tubes that deliver oxygen from a ventilator to a hole in his neck became unhooked. Family members were told Chambers, a resident of the Anne Maria Rehabilitation and Nursing Center in North Augusta, S.C., apparently pulled the interlocking tubes apart.

"We're having it investigated. We're just incredulous," Chambers' daughter, Deanna Potter, told WND in reference to her siblings. "The last time I saw dad he was blowing me a kiss. I blew him one and he blew one back."

The retired dispatcher for Holland Motor Express died approximately 10 hours later. His death certificate indicates he died of "natural causes."

"Apparently, suffocation is a 'natural cause' when you're on a ventilator. We're contesting that," said Potter. "He suffocated. He didn't just pass away. He struggled and fought. And I'm just so angry."

Potter estimates it would have taken 10 to 14 minutes for her father, deprived of oxygen, to fall unconscious, and questions why the nursing home staff didn't come to his aid.

"The oxygen-saturation meter and his ventilator both would have had alarms going off. Four-thirty, five o'clock in the morning you'd think someone would hear this," she added. "That's the thing that really bothers me and makes me suspicious."

[T'wit]

No insult intended and I wasn't talking about cancer patients. Nor do I claim, or believe, that hospitals often act wrongly in harvesting organs. What I do suggest is that in certain kinds of injury causing "brain death," there is an unhealthy and large-dollar incentive for harvesting organs from a patient who still has chances for recovery. It happened in my extended family earlier this year.

My point was to rethink the whole practice and perhaps establish better safeguards for patients. The financial incentive to dismember them for their organs must be addressed.

The tests ("stimuli" in the following description from a medical site) are indeed pretty rough:

"Harvard Ad Hoc Committee on Brain Death... In 1968, this committee of the Harvard Medical School published a report describing the following characteristics of a permanently nonfunctioning brain, a condition it referred to as "irreversible coma," now known as brain death:

"1. Unreceptivity and unresponsitivity "2. --patient shows total unawareness to external stimuli and unresponsiveness to painful stimuli; No movements or breathing "3. --all spontaneous muscular movement, spontaneous respiration and response to stimuli are absent; No reflexes --fixed, dilated pupils; lack of eye movement even when hit or turned, or ice water is placed in the ear; lack of response to noxious stimuli; unelicitable tendon reflexes."

[andysandmikesmom]

Well, in your post you did not qualify that you were speaking of only certain types of patients who were brain dead...you just spoke in general terms of brain dead patients...

Now I had a friend, whose 2yr old daughter, had open heart surgery, and it was unsuccessful, and the little girl became 'brain dead'....she was kept on the ventilator for more than two weeks, before she was disconnected...there was no attempt to hurry her along, so that organs could be harvested...they took an amazingly long time, assessing the little girl, to indeed make sure that she was really dead...

I would agree, that the subject of organ transplants is a touchy one, and the methods used to determine brain death should always favor the person who may be experiencing brain death...

I just find your description of determining brain death by banging someone around, particularly around the head, to be a gruesome description, and one I hardly think is used as a normal way of determining brain death...of course, inflicting some sort of pain on someone who may be experiencing brain death is standard, as pain does elicit a response which can be measured...hitting, or pricking with a pin, or using ice water may seem cruel, but I dont believe that these practices are done in a manner which would inflict horrendous pain...they are done to inflict some lower level of pain, which would elicit a response...

I am sorry that your extended family had a bad experience, and that can be and often is the case in matters of life and death...nothing is more difficult or more important..

[Wampus SC]

"Crip is to Crap as Felos is to .........?"

Felos.

Felos has no precedent....

[T'wit]

>> Well, in your post you did not qualify that you were speaking of only certain types of patients who were brain dead.

No, I meant nothing more than mentioning a problem in outline. I only spent a couple of paragraphs on it.

>> I just find your description of determining brain death by banging someone around, particularly around the head, to be a gruesome description

In the case I mentioned in my family, the next of kin, who was present, described it to us as "brutal." I should think it would HAVE to be rough, to be sure the patient feels nothing. I don't see a problem with that. (Though you have to wonder: don't we have better and more convincing tests 35 years later?)

I myself am of the view that carving up the body for organ harvest is the gruesome part. There are many docs who agree. Imagine that happening to a patient with a chance of survival -- and I am tolerably sure that that is what happened in my family. (Another person in the family tore up her organ donor card afterward.)

[Wampus SC]

Wonder if Redner's got any pictures of Charlie? Just a thought...

[Wampus SC]

All I'll say about that is this: There better not be any kind of weird subgenre snuff films involved. Seriously, there better not be.

[Wampus SC]

"For what, marksmanship?"

Some idiot really did nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize.

He collected his prize for marksmanship earlier this week.

[Wampus SC]

"The irony is nearly unbelievable. Libs in California claimed bloodthirsty Tookie was innocent, killed by the State. Those same would applaud the State of Florida for killing a real innocent."

They did applaud it. To their way of thinking, a man who brags and jokes about the murders he has committed is "an innocent man".

The time is supposed to come when good will be called evil and evil called good - and here we are. Just look around.

[T'wit]

>> Some idiot really did nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Now and then an innocent person wins the Nobel Peace Prize (Mother Teresa for one). But many are glorified gang leaders like Tookie (Nelson Mandela, Yasser Arafat), fakes (Rigoberta Menchu), pompous asses (Desmond Tutu), nasty (Jimmy Carter) or corrupt beyond belief (Kofi Annan). Tookie also has another quality in common with the majority of Nobel Laureates: he's dead.

[andysandmikesmom]

For myself, I dont find the harvesting of organs to be the gruesome part, so long as the person is dead...harvesting organs from someone who is still alive, is indeed gruesome and immoral...

Most doctors have certain things they will or will not do, with their own particular morality in mind...I can see where some doctors wont harvest organs, from someone who is dead, as they just dont believe in it...and there are doctors who will do it...

You sound like my husband...he is always thinking that medicine should have new and better and more effective and less intrusive tests that can be done on people...(me, I wish they would come up with a better way to do pap smears)...but it appears, medicine marches along at a certain pace, and sometimes it appears, new and better methods of testing are not necessarily on the horizon...

[8mmMauser]

Be sure to follow floriduh voter's post above at #877. WND is open for stories to nominate and we may have just the story. I gave them my two cents worth.

Help pick biggest cover-ups of 2005

Beware of the ACLU

The wolf cloaked in sheep's clothing writes. Sounds like an innocuous article of mainline opinion. Cleverly hidden are the American Communist Liberal Union origins. It sounds almost as a legitimate debate over the judiciary.

'Activist' judges are in the eye of the beholder

8mm

(this includes Ohioan from Florida's ping list, update to 12/09.)

[8mmMauser]

I sympathize with your perspective. I think I might trust many of them to do the right thing from my view. But we have experienced some unnerving stuff.

Our extremely handicapped son was under hospital care for awhile, and one day we found him suffering in agony. We had to seek out why. They had used him as a practice for a student dentist to fill some cavities. (His teeth were sound anyway). We asked why our son was so stressed and what kind of Novocain treatment they used. Oh, they explained, they couldn't use Novocain because that would be too much of a risk. They used nothing at all. Practical. Consideration of his pain and suffering, not practical.

So I wonder if I am laying in a hospital bed, OK, but having some usable parts, will I draw the same luck, especially if someone nearby needs one of my usable parts? What would they use to ease the pain as they sawed out my giblets? If they used painkillers, it may damage my spare parts. If they waited until I were out of it, my parts may spoil. Practical is to just hold me down, carve out the right pieces, and shut me up. Practical.

[floriduh voter]

This is all I have at the moment from the morning radio show in Tampa Bay: Guess what? WFLA 970 am did a blurb that Florida Health Care announces they are going to BE PRO-LIFE.

8:45 am est Jack Harris says "It seems the Florida Health Dept. has gone pro-life on us."

MORE COVERUP????? What does this mean???? This is huge unless it's just propaganda.

Maybe pro-lifers are finally being heard?

Jack Harris reads from the WIC BROCHURE: "WIC Program eligibility guidelines -"to judge the size of your household for a pg woman, each unborn baby counts as one extra person." This is in the WIC GUIDELINES saying a fetus is counted as a person.

FV SAYS: Jack Harris does all of Hospice Woodside's commercials "Let's talk about it." He's a shill for the death care system. His "gone pro-life on us" remark doesn't surprise me a bit.

[floriduh voter]

UPDATE: Pinellas County Courthouse NOW has a Christmas tree in the lobby.

[floriduh voter]

Somebody had to go before horse's greer about a month ago. I had to zip my lip as the party was grieving at the time. When I hear horse's greer's name, my talking points are ready to go.

I have some great impeach greer banners that I have collected through the past few years. I'll upload them sometime. Horse's greer should NEVER get a pass.

[floriduh voter]

Battaglia is a big GOP like Sembler is. And B's girth is similar to Jim King's. Can you say connected? It's possible that B had his own place in DC he spent so much time lobbying there.

Fat cat gop'rs make me sick.

[floriduh voter]

no, but charlie looks like a nephew of Dr. K.

[floriduh voter]

Remember that the first action when I was taken to a local hospital was that they shoved a living will in my face. I shoved it right back and quickly.

Do some hospitals harvest organs more than others? That would be an interesting study.

[floriduh voter]

Judge Downey looked at porn in his chambers.

http://www.northcountrygazette.org/

(see story about Judge Downey's robe, dirty old man.)

[Theodore R.]

I believe that the unborn child is counted for "welfare" purposes in all states, FV. This could even be an incentive for some late-term abortions by liberal women.