brain dead

New York facility is ‘last hope’ for girl declared brain dead, family say

The family of Jahi McMath, the 13-year-old girl declared brain dead after complications from routine tonsil surgery, said Saturday a hospital in New York may be able to accept her and keep her on life support.

The girl’s uncle and lawyer wouldn’t provide the hospital’s name, saying they don’t want media attention to hurt her chance of being accepted and transferred there.

“It’s an organization that believes in life,” attorney Chris Dolan told the Associated Press.
“It’s our last, last hope,” he said after two facilities in California that agreed to accept Jahi decided to back out.

A nursing home in the San Francisco Bay Area that had been willing to care for the girl if she had two tubes inserted changed its mind. Dolan said a facility in the Los Angeles area also withdrew its offer because it didn’t want media attention or to jeopardize its relationship with its doctors, who refused to treat someone who’s been declared brain dead.

Time is short for the family, as Alameda County Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo on Tuesday ruled that the Children’s Hospital Oakland may remove Jahi from a ventilator at 5 p.m. Monday unless an appeal is filed.

Jahi underwent a tonsillectomy at the hospital on Dec. 9 to treat sleep apnea. After she awoke from the operation, her family said, she started bleeding heavily from her mouth and went into cardiac arrest. Doctors at Children’s Hospital concluded the girl was brain dead on Dec. 12 and wanted to remove her from life support. The family said they believe she is still alive.

Before Jahi can be transferred, she must undergo two more medical procedures — the insertion of a breathing tube and a feeding tube.

“Children’s Hospital Oakland does not believe that performing surgical procedures on the body of a deceased person is an appropriate medical practice,” David Durand, its chief of pediatrics, said in a statement Thursday.

Douglas Straus, a lawyer for the hospital, said in a letter made public Friday that before the hospital would comply with the family’s request to move Jahi, it would need to speak directly with officials at any nursing home to make sure they understand her condition, “including the fact that Jahi is brain dead” — and to discuss needed preparations, including transportation.

“Children’s Hospital will of course continue to do everything legally and ethically permissible to support the family of Jahi McMath. In that regard, Children’s will allow a lawful transfer of Jahi’s body in its current state to another location if the family can arrange such a transfer and Children’s can legally do so,” Straus wrote in the letter.

He also said the Alameda County coroner needed to sign off on the move “since we are dealing with the body of a person who has been declared legally dead.”

Dolan said he had already obtained signed consent from the coroner for Jahi’s transfer. The Alameda County Coroner’s Bureau said it had no comment.

He said Saturday he was waiting to hear from the New York hospital after its facility director and medical director speak.

Hospital spokeswoman Cynthia Chiarappa said the hospital has not heard from any facility to discuss how it can accommodate “a deceased body on a ventilator.”

source: Nbc news

Oakland girl declared brain dead three days after having tonsils removed

The family of Jahi McMath wants answers after the 13-year-old girl suffered complications soon after having her tonsils out. ‘She wasn’t able to talk, and she started to write notes to her mother saying I’m swallowing too much mucus, mom — am I OK? Mom — I feel like I’m choking,’ her uncle says. The family is hoping for a Christmas miracle by keeping Jahi on life support.

She was just supposed to have her tonsils out, and now her heartbroken family wants answers.
Jahi McMath, 13, was declared brain dead on Thursday, three days after undergoing surgery at Children’s Hospital Oakland. Despite the tragic development, the family is holding out hope and refusing to take Jahi off life support.
“It’s shock, it’s disbelief,” uncle Omari Sealey told the San Jose Mercury News. “You never think something like this will happen to you.”

Jahi, an eighth grader at E.C. Reems Academy of Technology and Arts in Oakland, underwent the tonsils procedure on Dec. 9 in order to improve her sleep apnea. After the surgery she asked for a popsicle and seemed OK, but just 30 minutes later she started choking on her own blood, NBC reported.
“She wasn’t able to talk, and she started to write notes to her mother saying I’m swallowing too much mucus, mom — am I OK? Mom — I feel like I’m choking,” Sealey told the Mercury News. “And she began to write these notes because she couldn’t talk because there was so much blood — it wasn’t mucus — it was blood. But my sister, the mother, was too afraid to let her know that it was blood and not mucus.”
Jahi went into cardiac arrest and was revived, but was declared brain dead two days later, family members told the Mercury News. They are urging the hospital to investigate what they believe to be shoddy emergency care.

‘here catch them with the cup so we can measure them,'” mom Nailah Winkfield told ABC.
Grandmother Sandra Chatman, a surgical nurse at a different hospital, was stunned by the lack of attention that Jahi received.
“I went in and I said ‘is this normal, do you guys find this to be normal?,'” Chatman told ABC. “And they said ‘I don’t really know,’ and I said ‘well then get a doctor.'”

Sealey told NBC that family members believe “an error was committed by the hospital, either before, during, or after surgery. I absolutely believe that somewhere along the way, there was a protocol that wasn’t followed, or there was a surgical error.”
Hospital spokeswoman Melinda Krigel said in a statement: “We’re very sad about this outcome, about what’s happened to her, but at this point I have no information on the details of the surgery. We will certainly investigate what happened. In any surgery there are risks and there can be unexpected, unanticipated complications.”

The family is hoping for a Christmas miracle by keeping Jahi on life support, even though doctors say she is brain dead.
“My little girl in there, my little niece, is in there with her own heartbeat, which lets me know that she is alive,” Sealey told NBC.

source: Daily news