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 ...
“Of course paid aides were doing her school work while she stared obliviously and without cognition.”
Kafka lives.
She can’t walk, talk or do anything for herself.
What the heck is she going to school then. This is insane. Keep her at home. How can she take tests and things of that nature? Answer questions?
I am reading this thread and I am just amazed. Seems most of you are offended that this child is costing taxpayers so much money. Others think the child should not be out of the house. What do you want institutions, lock these kids away so your eyes won’t be offended. Oh yeah and all those poor kids shouldn’t have to be exposed to such a child. Kids don’t need to be sheltered death is a part of life. Before we sanitized death kids slept in the same house while a loved one was laid out on the couch for viewing.
Yet you call the mother cruel.
What if your doctor told you that you were dying! What would you do? Maybe you would want to go like Tim McGraws sings skydiving. But wait the pilot gets freaked out and refuses to let you go skydiving. Hey he doesn’t want someone to die on his plane. He also doesn’t want to look at someone so skinny and pale, he doesn’t need to be subjected to that. Why ruin his day. It is just too sad for him. Hahha Sad for him - what about you!!!!!!!!!!! You are dying and the pilot doesn’t want to ruin his day. That’s compassion (sarcasm on)
So you just sit in your living room and wait for the grim reaper. Hopefully while your waiting for death your friends aren’t too upset to see you in that condition, because if they are you will be all alone. Believe me lots of people use the excuse “I just can’t see him like that” that translates into “I just don’t want to ruin my day” More compassion (sarcasm) Or maybe you will call another pilot and try your best to go skydiving.
Dammit you are dying, no one is going to stop you from doing what you want, what will make you happy. Your dying YOU do deserve to be happy, not institutionalized.
Well, this child enjoys school, If I were her mother I would move mountains to get her to school.
This mother needs a break, this child enjoys school. Sounds like a win, win to me.
Have any of you ever been faced with caring for a disabled adult. It is harder than you ever imagined. Believe me if you are ever faced with that challenge you will lose 90% of your friends and relatives. Oh they will be around making all kinds of comments about how you are handling it but they won’t darken your door to offer a hand. You will be alone, you will never sleep more than 2 hours at a time, you will spend all your waking hours thinking about your loved one, you will spend all your energy taking care of your loved one and you will go broke. So whoever posted I hope they sue this mother into poverty, your hopes have been answered, this mother will be in debt all the days of her life.
Now for DNR, if your ever seen a real resuscitation you would all run and scream like little girls. I have to question how many times this child has been resuscitation? I’m sure more that the mother can count. Watching your loved one flipped onto their side to get a board under her, or dragged to the floor, then you get to sit and watch as someone literally jumps on her chest over and over again. They shove and yes I mean shove a tube down her throat. (Time is of the essences no time to do it slow, need to move fast so shoving is normal) All the while some big paramedic is still pouncing on her chest. Then someone will grab her arm, tie a tourniquet then jabbed a needle into her arm, if she is lucky the first try will hit a vein if not they will jab again and again. Oh yeah did I mention someone is still pouncing on her chest. Then they will drag her out of her home, away from anything familiar and rush her to a hospital. Where I’m sure they give her some IV fluids, maybe an antibiotic, drag her from her bed to a gurney, to a lab table to take a test. Back onto the gurney, back onto the bed, then they repeat that until every machine in the hospital is used. I’ll bet in a few days after all the results are in they tell the mother. Sorry nothing we can do she can go home now.
You think this is a quality of life? This is cruel and it takes mothers longer to realize that than most. So I applaud this mother. She is doing all she can to make her daughter comfortable and the hell with all those so call know it all’s who think they know what is right for this child. God bless this mother and her child.
You are constructing a straw man I have already demolished.
Ah, I knew the “find another job” would come up. It’s true, but it ain’t always so easy. Depends on the area and the school situation, etc. I know, I know: bottom line...
The point is, this is at the very edge of morally acceptable job requirements. It’s not just a matter of “you must wear red on Wednesdays”. This is a major moral question.
And your comparison to JW and scientology is specious. We’re talking about people already in the job when the requirements change, not people who can sign up after the fact.
Stop yelling Pam. If it would do any good, I’d say yell. But you’re not going to sway any opinions in capital letters.
Once I replied in a post about motorcycle helmets. My son was killed in a motorcycle accident because he wasn’t wearing a helmet. All I asked was that they consider their freedom a little less and consider the pain of those they left behind.
OMG, you’d have thought I’d had asked them to sacrifice their first born child or something. And I didn’t even capitalize!
I immediately recognized I’d taken the discussion too personally because it was so near to me and asked the one who attacked me not to write me again, that I would not respond, but he couldn’t resist. He had to call me names and threaten me, it was all I could do not to respond in anger, but it would have done no good for such a closed and limited mind.
Just as your all caps will antagonize the very ones you are trying to reach.
God bless you and your family.
I sort of see his point. He’s not trying to make decisions for the family, but to draw a line for himself, that he will not participate in the death of another human being.
I think maybe if the parents want a DNR order, they should forego sending her to this school and keep her at home.
I think that they are asking a lot of others when they send her with a DNR order.
I don’t have experience with this, but I’m thinking that it would be too hard to watch a child die that you could help save.
But maybe that’s just me.
I think your post makes this more clear to me than any other post. I think I finally understand the order and the parents and the issue.
And you didn’t even have to scream to get me to understand.
Thank you for your explanation.
Given the DNR I would speculate that the child is in school so that the parents do not have to deal with her at home and they can get someone else to put her down and relieve their lives of the “burden.” They have the vestiges of conscience in that they want someone else to be the agent but it is only the tiniest trace.
he DNR is a request for an abortion.
“he DNR is a request for an abortion.”
Your comment is an embarassment to everyone here. You know nothing about the situation.
I understand that you don’t like the directive being ‘forced’ upon teachers and staff, even if it is a special needs school.
But it is not being forced upon you. It isn’t your place to decide for the staff what they should have to withstand. I’m sure anyone who objects is free to request another assignment or leave.
Excellent point,
If you work in a facility and you don’t approve of the policies and procedures, you look for another job....
You don’t demand they change them for you.
And you for sure don’t demand that individuals change their believes or desires to suit yours.
Thanks, najida. I’d imagine most of the staff are fairly special people in their own right, wouldn’t you think?
Anyway, the Lord never gives us more than we can handle.
I have a niece in almost that same situation from the same cause. Her parents will care for her until God takes her. They do not ask other humans to make the decision for them. She does not speak but she makes known emotion and that she understands things. She smiles at jokes. Her parents may make that DNR decision at some point but they will be there and will have determined that she has no awareness left or no future sans intense pain. It is their responsibility. For the school administration to have accepted that DNR order themselves illustrates in yet another field what I have long percieved- that sending one’s child to public school is prima facie child abuse.
Allow me to reiterate: the placing of the legal document on this young girl's person and the parents' expressed directive demonstrates that they intend to sue anyone who disobeys them and have such a person dismissed. This is an act of intimidation by the parents.
It is not a teacher's job to stand by while a child dies. A teacher should not have to lose his livelihood, his savings or even his assignment for refusing to violate his conscience.
If they really want to make absolutely sure that no one dares to help their daughter, they should keep her home and wait for her to die in an environment where no decent person is around to save her.
It isn't just the staff involved here. How traumatic would it be for a child to look on while a schoolmate dies? I would say it would be very traumatic, even if they were moved out of the room once the teacher realized what was going on and got some help to get them moved.
And I am a taxpayer, so I do have a say in how the schools are run in my area.
Sad, but most likely true.
I see nothing in the article to indicate this is anything but a regular public school with some special needs classes thrown in. If this is truly a 'special needs' school, i.e. one that is run off donations and not operated with money set aside for the public schools, then that's a different issue.
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