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<p>30 years ago, they may well have been declared brain dead. More likely, they were PVS.</p>
<p>They’re not moving toward acceptance, at all. Why would they? It’s truly tragic.</p>
<p>Jym, yes. In the context of the time. I am not speaking of current knowledge and technology. I am speaking to my personal experience at that time. Would those standards apply now? No. But I do have personal experience. However, I still agree completely with Nrdsb4. She is right about the care issue and always was. I have not addressed that point because she is correct. The only point I was making is that that wasn’t part of the court’s order and it wasn’t.</p>
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<p>Well, the owner of the facility has acknowledged that their inpatient facility isn’t completed yet, but she’s committed to provided 24-hour in-home nursing care until the facility is ready. But that means the family has to relocate to Long Island, which isn’t an inexpensive proposition either, even if they don’t have to pay a cent for the nursing care.</p>
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<p>So true. This really is bringing every charlatan in the country out of the woodwork.</p>
<p>And I don’t expect the mother to be making much sense of this - this is all just too emotional for her. But her family should know better. The grandmother is a nurse, for goodness sakes - you’d think she’d understand what the child’s condition is!</p>
<p>“The grandmother is a nurse, for goodness sakes - you’d think she’d understand what the child’s condition is!” </p>
<p>That raises alot more questions. And, please don’t all castigate me for not caring enough. But, there’s something very bizarre about this entire awful situation.</p>
<p>There is a lot bizarre about the situation. The whole thing is something out of a nightmare where nothing makes sense.</p>
<p>Zoosermom. We agree.</p>
<p>It was stated [url=<a href=“Oakland 8th Grader “Brain Dead” After Tonsillectomy – NBC Bay Area”>Oakland 8th Grader “Brain Dead” After Tonsillectomy – NBC Bay Area]here[/url</a>] that the grandmother is a nurse at another hospital.</p>
<p>So now we have a non physician “doctor” (the guy from NY) and a hairdresser advising the family. Someone needs to take control of this situation. I don’t agree that lawyers and a judge should have been involved, but now that they are, they need to stop this farce. All the cuckoos are coming out of the woodwork.</p>
<p>Did you see what the guy from New York has been saying? That he has helped to revive several hundred such patients. I would think if that were the case he would be a household name. This story was the talk of my church last week. I can see why there is concern about civil unrest. There is a lot of anger and mistrust. I don’t think the doctor from New York is helping that aspect.</p>
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<p>I simply cannot fathom any kind of outpatient “home care” scenario which could be sufficient to maintain the current status quo of this child. This isn’t a Terri Schiavo-type patient, or even a typical ventilator-dependent patient whose brain is severely damaged yet still functional to a degree.</p>
<p>Keeping a brain dead patient’s status to a level where one can keep organs vital for transplant is a stressful, intense, and incredibly high tech environment. Let’s assume that a beating heart is the only criteria for “life.” With a dead brain, the ability to keep blood pressure stable enough to keep organs viable is an amazing balancing act even in the ICU, where every state of the art resource is utilized to ensure that lives are saved by intact organs. What possible home environment can be created in an outpatient scenario which will allow the child’s organs to be sufficiently nourished by an adequate circulation system?! Without viable organs, what remains of this kid’s body will definitely shut down as kidneys fail, liver goes south, etc. </p>
<p>It boggles the mind that any rational person in a position of authority in this situation could possibly release this child to a facility as described. It’s simply not to be believed.</p>
<p>Unless there is doubt about the credentials of the doctors who declared the child brain dead or the validity of their findings relative to standards of medical practice, this situation is becoming just completely outrageous. Is the child brain dead or not? If the child is truly brain dead and not misdiagnosed, this situation is completely and totally unacceptable in numerous respects.</p>
<p>Additionally, from the point of view of an accepting facility, if they are disputing that the child is brain dead, they are putting themselves at tremendous risk with regard to liability. If they accept a “live” patient without the ability to provide the proper environment, this is an incredible breech of ethics and medical standards. </p>
<p>I cannot understand how any of this could be legal.</p>
<p>The family attorney asked for more time and it was granted.</p>
<p>It was interesting to read the petition from the hospital lawyers that jym posted. As they say, there is not one “scintilla” of evidence that the family or their lawyer has presented of any misdiagnosis , improper tests to determine brain death,etc. I truly do not get where their lawyer is coming from with his statements about keeping her “alive.” He seems to be a major part of the problem if he really believes this young girl should continue to be kept on a ventilator and is not , in fact, dead.</p>
<p>From the doctor in Ohio who the family petitioned to determine whether the child was dead or not in addition to the doctor from Stanford who did an independent analysis:</p>
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<p>Based on this statement, this doctor must be opposed to all organ donations (as opposed to skin, bone, corneal donation) as in every case, the patient is “breathing” and hearts are beating while on mechanical support.</p>
<p>Oh dear. This article was linked previously in the thread:</p>
<p>[MEDETHICS</a> : Journal of Medical Ethics](<a href=“http://m.jme.bmj.com/content/31/11/641.full]MEDETHICS”>http://m.jme.bmj.com/content/31/11/641.full)</p>
<p>In a similar situation a few years ago, parents of a teenage girl insisted her brain was not dead, it was just “resting.” Which brings me, because look at my user name, to, Jahi’s poor parents don’t need advice from another ambulance-chasing lawyer or charlatan doctor. What they need is a visit from John Cleese.</p>
<p>“She has passed on. This child is no more. She has ceased to be. She has expired and gone to meet her maker. This is a late girl. She’s a stiff. Bereft of life, she rests in peace. If they hadn’t put her on a ventilator, she would be pushing up daisies. She has rung down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. This is an ex-child.”</p>
<p>Ugh. Looked up Dr. Byrne and learned some “interesting” tidbits. I do not for a minute think his conclusions are based on scientific evidence.</p>
<p>He is giving false hope to this family. What a disgusting, despicable thing to do.</p>
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<p>I think it’s important to be careful about statements such as this. </p>
<p>There are plenty of people – for example, some quadriplegics – who are unquestionably alive but who would die if taken off a ventilator. Needing a ventilator does not make a person brain-dead.</p>
<p>Thats a takeoff on a Monty Python sketch</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/jokes/monty-python-parrot.html[/url]”>http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/jokes/monty-python-parrot.html</a></p>
<p>A jarring aspect of the situation is the hospital’s refusal to facilitate a tracheostomy as required for the girl to be moved to a different facility. (Ignoring, for now, questions about the availability and/or suitability of such a facility and whether the family should be seeking to do any of this.)
This just doesn’t ring true to me. Did the doctors at Childrens not go to medical school? Did they not perform medical procedures (in some cases including tracheostomies) on cadavers in the course of that training? What makes this situation so special that a procedure which doctors have performed on multiple occasions on the bodies of people both alive and dead cannot be performed on this person’s body?</p>
<p>Calling this an “ethical” issue just seems phony to me. So does the claim that they don’t “object” to a tracheostomy; they just won’t let it happen in the only place it can, for practical purposes, be performed.</p>
<p>The family has not yet found a physician willing to perform such a procedure.</p>