Posted on 08/21/2006 3:43:35 PM PDT by wagglebee
DALLAS, Texas, August 21, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The children of a comatose woman are challenging in court the “compassionate reasons” for a Texas hospital’s decision to remove their mother’s life-saving treatment, asserting that their mother, a devout Baptist woman, never would consent to anyone but God ending her life.
On August 8, just days after 61-year-old Ruthie Webster's insurance stopped full coverage of her long-term care, the Regency Hospital’s bioethics committee in North Dallas, Texas, unanimously told the Webster family that they would discontinue life-preserving dialysis treatment for their mother within 10 days. The hospital claimed that Ruthie Webster's physician "has seen no appreciable change in your mother's medical condition" and that continued treatment was an exercise in futility.
The decision shocked family members, since their mother is not brain-dead, but comatose, and has been making slow progress, breathing now on her own without a ventilator, ever since she suffered a bad reaction after undergoing kidney dialysis in June rendering her mostly unresponsive. The family, however, has said their mother told them to take care of her in such a situation, saying that she believes only God has the right to take life away.
"My mom spent her life in the church. She always felt like, 'Who are we to decide? God decides,'” said Lacresia Webster on Thursday. "If this is the way she's going to be, she's still my mom. I'm not giving up on her."
However, the Regency Hospital board defends its decision citing a 1999 statute in Texas' Health and Safety Code that gives a hospital’s ethics committee the last word about continuing a patient's care. Under the law, if the ethics committee decides to end a patient’s medical care, including life-saving treatment, a family has only 10 days to transfer to another medical facility that will care for the patient.
Although Regency has offered to help find another medical facility for Ruthie Webster in Atlanta or Indiana, the family does not want to move their mother, unless they can help it.
"I find it hard to believe this is a law, because you're basically saying if this person is a burden to someone, let's just kill them, and that's unacceptable," Lacresia Webster told Dallas’s NBC 5.
"When God is ready for her, God will take her, not anyone else," Lacresia Webster vowed.
Intent on keeping this vow, Lacresia and her family have enlisted the aid of pro-bono attorneys who have filed a lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott challenging the constitutionality of the state's “end-of-life” law. The family then won a temporary restraining order imposed on Regency Hospital to keep Ruthie Webster alive there until a hearing set for August 28.
Robert Bennet, a lawyer for the Websters said the law “allows a doctor to completely ignore what I’ve told them I wanted to do.” He added, “Mrs. Webster was a Baptist. She told her daughters very clearly that God would take her when it's her time to go. This statute violates her freedom of religion."
"My mother, she's breathing on her own, just like you and I are today," said Helena Webster Hill, who lives in Atlanta. "As long as she's fighting to live, we believe we ought to stand with her and fight with her."
Is dialysis normal care that a dying person must receive? I do not think so.
I suppose that's why hundreds of hospitals are closing
because they aren't treating many illegal aliens for
no reimbursement.
Because there are other people, other patients, with their own circumstances and their own set of issues. This case has NOTHING to do with her.
This is my last post to you about Terri. I'm cutting you off under my own "Futility of Further Debate" policy.
Uh, this thread is not about the treatment of illegals.
You guys are so predictable. Nowhere to run. I think that is very sad. I do hope to be your friend someday - don't laugh.
Nonsense... not only have many of us discussed the circumstances of this case, but many of the hard questions we've asked have gone unanswered.
Does a private hospital have a right to be paid for it's services or to transfer patients who cannot pay to another hospital who is set up to care for charity patients? If not, who pays?
I think that some very valuable questions have been asked here, and it brings to the forefront, questions that many on FR will have to deal with, whether for their loved ones or for themselves...
Decisions that need to be made when one, or their loved ones are very ill should be carefully considered...
Each case will be different, the circumstances of each case will be different....you cannot take what happens in one case, and think that it applies to another case...
My husband had a friend whose wife died, because she decided to stop dialysis...she found it quite unbearable to endure the dialysis, as it was not greatly improving her quality of life, and she just felt it was not worth the time and pain it caused her...she had a husband and four sons...the sons were all teen-agers, and certainly hated to see their mom make this decision, but they also understood the great pain and distress she was in, as they witnessed it every single day...so she stopped her dialysis, and within a few weeks she died...but during those few weeks she remained alive, she and her husband and her children, made the very most of the time remaining, and when she died, nothing was left undone or unsaid between all the family members....
Now, that was her choice, others will chose differently...
As I said, each and every case is different...
I agree... and thanks for your example :~)
I should remind you all that this is exactly the kind of thing that I predicted would happen in the wake of Terri Schiavo's death, as the next step in the slippery slope, where insurance plan administrators and self-anointed "ethicists" get to decide who lives and who dies.
Sorry if you don't want to hear about Terri any more, but this is the kind of thing we were warning you about back then.
That's what I was thinking.
The slippery slope neither started, nor ended with 'she who has been overdiscussed on this forum'.
There will ~always~ be ethical and moral dilemmas in life, medicine and death. Our job is to be functionally able to debate them and come to enough agreement to have a functional set of laws and a functional society. Technological advances will continue to renew and change the debate. It will NEVER be over.
This issue is over private hospitals and their right to be paid for services they provide. In the case of long term very expensive hospitalization of a comatose patient, the dollar amounts are not trivial. Who pays?
But these are questions we must address. If we want to be a country that keeps bodies alive no matter what circumstance...fine...do it...but be prepared to fork over 70% of your income in taxes.
Whether it was illegal or not, there were plenty of armed government personnel to prevent it.
Only to those who want to see the hospital stay in business.
The rest are more concerned about other things, even if it means that the hospital must close its doors.
When my friends husband was close to death, in a coma from a severe stroke..She asked the Doctor if he was going to get scheduled his "dialysis" that day. The answer was NO. They didn't use the words "futile care"...but a person can't survive a many days in total renal failure without dialysis. But he was near certain death with no chance of recovery.
He only missed one dialysis, and died that same evening anyway.. PS..I have no opinion on this case..
sw
I don't think they want to talk about that. : )
Thanks for the link. Fascinating concept and it wouldn't be the first time the medical community made a real blunder.
Good point. What if it were an illegal who needed serious long term care. Would they be turned down?
The Texas Futile Care Law took effect in 1999, so "this kind of thing" has been going on long before Terri Schiavo, with absolutely no publicity whatsoever.
Exactly. They're using the fact that dialysis isn't curing her, as an excuse deny her dialysis. If that's reason enough, then nobody should be allowed to get dialysis.
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