As the school bus rolled to a stop outside her Lake County home, Beth Jones adjusted the bright yellow document protruding from the pouch of her daughter's wheelchair, making sure it was clearly visible. Posted on 12/10/2007 10:11:05 AM PST by Sopater
As the school bus rolled to a stop outside her Lake County home, Beth Jones adjusted the bright yellow document protruding from the pouch of her daughter's wheelchair, making sure it was clearly visible.
In bold letters it warned, "Do Not Resuscitate."
The DNR order goes everywhere with Katie, including her 2nd-grade classroom at Laremont School in Gages Lake. The school is part of the Special Education District of Lake County, where an emotional two-year discussion ended this summer when officials agreed to honor such directives.
Now, district officials find themselves in the unusual position of having planned the steps its staff will, or won't, take to permit a child to die on school grounds. Although DNR orders are common in hospitals and nursing homes, such life-and-death drama rarely plays out in schools, where officials realize how sensitive and traumatic the situation could be for nurses, teachers and students.
Katie's brain was deprived of oxygen before birth. She can't walk, talk or do anything for herself. She is fed through a tube in her stomach and has an increased susceptibility to infection. Violent choking and coughing spasms have signaled a turn for the worse in her condition.
A Do Not Resuscitate order is a doctor's directive, issued with the consent of the family, that cardiopulmonary resuscitation will not be used if the patient suffers from heart or breathing problems. It can also prohibit using such devices as a defibrillator or an intubation tube. 
The new DNR policy puts Katie's school district at the forefront of a growing national debate about severely disabled and chronically ill children whose lives have been extended by medical advances -- and whose parents must face heart-wrenching decisions about the future.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
I should have pointed out several posts back, when you said this is public and not private school, that this is a special needs school and as such I would imagine not in the same realm as public school. Without knowing what the other kids’ needs are, I really can’t comment.
It’s very possible that this isn’t the only student with a DNR, but I have no way of knowing that.
My guess if it is a SN school, there is a high percentage of kids with DNRs.
Very sad....all argumments aside. How horrible for this child, family and friends.
Lord, I lift this little girl and her parents up to You. Please heal her should it be Your will. Give her parents strength and faith through this Lord. Please have mercy on this beautiful child and heal her should You will it...or mercifully take her home with as little additional suffering as possible.
In Jesus name. Amen.
No argument here, except this is why homeschooling and private schools continue and always will produce a better prepared student.
yeah once my daughter gets to school age i have to start shopping for a good private school if i can afford it that is
I can understand the need to have professionals in a special needs child's life, but I do not think the public school is the right place.
DNR laws are upheld because they haven't been challenged, IMHO. The parents couldn't withhold care for her without facing criminal penalty for any other condition. If I observed the family starving the child, I would be bound to notify authorities of that. If she is having a seizure, and everyone just stands around and she could have easily been saved by keeping her tongue out of her airway, why is there no crime there?. Why not just beat her with a 2x4 to put her out of our misery?
There is a big difference between a flat line EEG and unpluging a machine, and choking on your own vomit. I think American need to study the "mercy houses" Hitler had to get rid of his non perfect people.
P.S. I have a nephew with CP and he has about 50 seizures a day and has a feeding tube. He is now 21 yrs old. He wasn't supposed to live past 9-10. If you kill these people, you are killing them. It isn't mercy. The beauty of inalienable rights is God gives you the right to life, and government is there to protect those rights. You don't have the right to decide that a person should die because they are black, ugly, or a little slower mentally. We decided this argument with the 14th amendment. If I were able to vote to kill people with a democratic popular vote or popular opinion, then liberals should go hide somewhere. Even nutjob, useless eaters, are protected by law. Liberals are the ones that want the power to say who lives and dies. In Australia, they are looking at taxing babies $5k for being born, and $800 a year for their "carbon footprint". China forces abortions and a one child rule. America is supposed to be different.
If you can't or won't help the helpless, then I grieve for your soul. I've been helpless before, and I relied completely on the mercy of others. Praise God there are still some left out there.
The school nurses WILL clear her airway and give oxygen. Read the article. The DNR is for CPR and defibrillation.
School is for learning. It’s not to leave a child who is not learning - can’t learn because the parent wants to leave the responsibility of a DNR to someone else. The school personnel are the ones who will have to face looking at that child while she dies. The parent should have that child at home and look at that child while she chokes to death if they don’t want a DNR. Not saying they shouldn’t have one if they feel it is right, but they shouldn’t turn that responsibility over to someone else to burden them. School is for learning. Not babysitting although that does go on.
speaking of READING the article:
“The school is part of the Special Education District of Lake County, ....” as in it is ALL Special Ed students, mostly equally handicapped, so no ‘normal’ students’ educations are being disrupted.
It seems the school district opposed the DNR for two years before finally acceeding to the wishes of the parents and the doctor. The alternative was likely a lawsuit that would outlive the child and her parents, but would cost the school district many millions more.
Actually nothing in the article indicated that this was anything other than a normal special ed program. In case you haven’t heard, a lot of REGULAR public schools have more than half of their students classified as “special ed” even though nearly all of those have nothing more than mild ADD, dyslexia, etc. One has to go to the school’s website (which somebody posted the link to later on the thread) to see that it is a special ed program for severely disabled students only.
If people find the legal requirements of their jobs to be in conflict with their personal beliefs, then they need to find another job. If you let people just refuse to their jobs because of personal beliefs, we’ll end with insanity like Jehovah’s Witnesses working in emergency rooms and refusing to participate in giving blood transfusions and Scientologists working in outpatient psych programs and refusing to prescribe drugs to people with advanced paranoid schizophrenia.
The protocol here called for the child to be taken to the nurse’s office in the event of a life-threatening seizure or collapse, and for the nurse to take minimal actions only, and beyond that to follow the DNR order. It is her JOB to do what doctors and parents, backed by full legal authority, have determined is in the best interests of a particular child. Likewise, if they have decided that it IS in the best interests of a particular child to be aggressively resuscitated, the nurse has no authority to act in opposition to that, claiming that her personal religious or philosophical beliefs dictate that nature must be allowed to take its course with a severely ill or disabled child person, rather than subject them to aggressive and invasive life-saving efforts that the nurse believes amount to pointless cruelty.
not true ... kids with ADD and minor learning disabilities or differences are “mainstreamed” .. the ‘special ed’ in the school’s name clearly indicated it was exclusively for special, i.e., severely disabled, students’ education.
Go back & read NCLB. With the exception of the profoundly retarded and disabled, most special ed students are now supposed to be able to pass the same standardized tests as the regular kids.
Some probably can, some never will.
If so, could you explain why? I keep wondering why we ought to try to keep people here when He is trying to call them home, but I admit that sometimes it seems like a fine line.
“I would not trust hospices either...”
Why is that? Because they provide end of life care? Which doesn’t include “heroic measures” at the patient’s request?
Depends on what you mean by 'most'. Do you mean the same test, or do you mean the same test administered without accommodation. (or alternative tests administered on the same day.)
You should check to see if Georgia has anything similar to Texas: Texas Education Code 39.023
(b) The agency shall develop or adopt appropriate criterion-referenced assessment instruments to be administered to each student in a special education program under Subchapter A, Chapter 29, who receives modified instruction in the essential knowledge and skills identified under Section 28.002 for the assessed subject but for whom an assessment instrument adopted under Subsection (a), even with allowable modifications, would not provide an appropriate measure of student achievement, as determined by the student's admission, review, and dismissal committee. The assessment instruments required under this subsection must assess essential knowledge and skills and growth in the subjects of reading, mathematics, and writing. A student's admission, review, and dismissal committee shall determine whether any allowable modification is necessary in administering to the student an assessment instrument required under this subsection. The assessment instruments required under this subsection shall be administered on the same schedule as the assessment instruments administered under Subsection (a).
Hospice can be dangerous. No doubt. It is an organization devoted to saving insurance companies money at the expense of saving people’s lives—yes, extending lives.
I remember Suncoast Hospice’s duplicity in the Terri Schiavo case...horrible.
http://www.hospicepatients.org/a-willingness-to-kill.html
Mainstreaming. :’(
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