So they took her to her Mother's house, right? We'll see how long they stay there when they find out they will have to pay for RT to run that vent and trust me the money WILL RUN OUT. I'm a therapist and I've seen this many times. Once they find out how much work there is in this, they will be begging someone to take her back. Not to mention the possibility of the vent circuit popping off. I feel sorry for the little girl, she'll be put through so much while her body breaks down. So many infections............
She wasn't taken to her mom's house. That was a false report from a hack journalist. Either way I don't think her heart will last much longer. You can only keep an organ beating artificially for so long. It's deteriorating like her other organs. In the end the Family will demonize the hospital. "She died because the hospital starved her for three weeks!"
That is EXACTLY what will happen. "She might have had a chance to heal if the evil hospital hadn't starved her!" Dolan said it at the press conference last night..."they denied her the nutrients her brain needs to heal" or words to that effect.Dude, by this time her brain has liquified. YOU DON'T HEAL FROM THAT.
It may have been negligence by the hospital when she had her bleeding event and cardiac arrest BUT if the Grandmother did get in there to suction her, they have lost a lot of leverage they had in a settlement. I agree that once the full responsibility of keeping her ventilated and maintained becomes evident, they will change their minds. Finally, no matter what happens,,,the family will always blame the hospital for her inability to recover, they will never accept the evidence of brain death.
Are we sure that's what the journalist did? Or are we assuming that's what they did?
& if we know this for a fact, then Phew!! that had me worried. Do journalists do this on purpose? It has to be intentional right? They can't be that stupid?? I mean custody = house?
This one has lots more detail (sorry if already posted). I need to read back a few pages.
ETA derp. The link might help
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-...spital-oakland
Jahi McMath could be any parent?s daughter.
The 13-year-old eighth-grader went into Children?s Hospital in Oakland for a tonsillectomy on Dec. 9. By Dec. 12, doctors determined she was brain dead, the result of severe blood loss after surgery. They sought to remove all life support, against the wishes of Jahi?s mother, Nailah Winkfield.
For three weeks, the case has played out in news accounts and in courts, as the parents sued to stop the hospital from pulling the plug. On Friday, the sides apparently compromised by agreeing that Jahi could be transported to a nursing home where she would be maintained on life support.
The case is hardly over.
Plaintiffs? lawyers, their proxies and victims of medical negligence are pushing an initiative for the November ballot that would alter California?s 38-year-old medical malpractice law, the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act. Under that law, which was signed by young Gov. Jerry Brown, damages for pain and suffering in a medical malpractice case are capped at $250,000. The initiative would quadruple that amount.
The case is rife with subtext. One is cost. The Affordable Care Act will provide health coverage for millions of previously uninsured people but does nothing to curb rapidly rising health care costs, probably its greatest omission. The health care industry will argue that any change in California?s medical malpractice law will jack up health care costs. Doctors will threaten to flee the state. Plaintiffs? lawyers will scoff. Both sides will spin. There will be plenty of emotion, and talk of Jahi McMath.
The girl came to the public?s attention on Dec. 15 when the Contra Costa Times reported on her family?s fight to stop the hospital from pulling the plug.
By Dec. 18, Jamie Court, head of the Santa Monica-based advocacy group and initiative promoter Consumer Watchdog, called on Attorney General Kamala Harris, the California Medical Board and the Alameda County district attorney to investigate.
?As you probably know,? Court wrote to the authorities and to the rest of us, ?in a case where negligence is suspected, California law makes it highly advantageous for the medical providers and facilities involved if children die in hospitals rather than live a lifetime with catastrophic injuries and significant medical costs.?
?Under a 38-year-old law, the Medical Injury Compensation Reform Act (MICRA), that has never been indexed for inflation, the most a family can recover in court for the loss of a child is $250,000, no matter how egregious the malpractice. By contrast, the hospital would be responsible for a lifetime of care and caretaking, if the patient lives. In the hospital?s rush to terminate Jahi?s life, this conflict of interest was no doubt never explained to the family.?
Last week, Court took went over the top. In one of the tackiest fundraising appeals I?ve ever seen, Court?s email blast opened by saying: ?Consumer Watchdog?s patient safety project fights for families like Jahi?s. We?re working to expose medical negligence and save lives. Please help our fight with a tax-deductible contribution.?
The connection between the fundraising appeal and the coming initiative fight was obvious.
With Court and others throwing elbows, the hospital retained the crisis communications firm Singer Associates. Headed by Sam Singer, the company?s website says: ?Singer?s nickname ? The Fixer ? says it all.? The site makes quite the boast: ?If your reputation, fortune or political future is at stake, this is the agency you call to convince the public, the politicians or the judge that you?re in the right.?
?Doctors treat people and make them better. They don?t argue. They asked us to assist,? Singer said, and proceeded to attack the family?s lawyer, Christopher B. Dolan: ?Dolan wants to make this about MICRA ? He wants more than $250,000.?
I know Dolan. He was president-in-waiting of the Consumer Attorneys of California in 2009 when I worked for the trade group. He is a hard-driving, motorcycle-riding workaholic who is very smart. You wouldn?t want to be on the receiving end of a Dolan lawsuit. In the campaign to alter MICRA, Dolan will be a combatant, as will the organization he headed.
Dolan told me he made clear the situation to Jahi?s mother: ?There is little if any hope here. There is a bleak road ahead.? Still, she wanted her daughter kept alive.
?If this family wanted to terminate, and hospital opposed it, I would fight just as hard,? Dolan said. ?It is about who gets to make the decision, the hospital or the parents.?
Like many plaintiffs? lawyers, Dolan is a true believer that the malpractice law hurts victims of medical mistakes, especially children and their parents. Medical malpractice damages are based on the cost of caring for an individual and the loss of their future earnings. Since children have no earnings, their economic damages are minimal. That leaves pain and suffering, which is capped at $250,000.
In 1975, attorney Fred Hiestand helped inform Brown?s decision about whether to sign the law. Hiestand had been a liberal public-interest lawyer. In this instance, however, he sided with doctors and insurance companies. In subsequent years, he has been an attorney for the Civil Justice Association of California, a corporate-funded advocacy group that has led political and legal efforts to protect MICRA.
Hiestand recalled a conversation decades ago in which the young governor offered a reason to sign the law, musing that individuals suffering the pain of a lost loved one should turn to religion or maybe drugs to numb the pain.
?Money is a false god,? Hiestand recalled Brown telling him.
A false god, sure, but it?s the currency of the political realm. Plaintiffs? lawyers and Consumer Watchdog have raised $1.2 million to gather signatures to qualify their initiative.
Medical malpractice insurance companies, physicians, hospitals and dentist are ready for the fight. They raised $31.5 million in loans in a one-month period last summer for the campaign to protect the 1975 law.
There is room for a legislative compromise, which is what should happen.
My guess is that attorneys would accept a doubling of the cap on pain and suffering damages to $500,000 with some sort of escalation clause. Perhaps the factions could look to Texas. There, malpractice victims can collect $250,000 from as many as three defendants, or $750,000.
None of it will help Jahi McMath?s family. Family members will sue Children?s Hospital. The case will settle. When it?s over, the family will be left with an emptiness that money cannot fill. The political campaign will go on; it always does.
Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/2014/01/05/604...#storylink=cpy
It's starting already. "She might not make it because the hospital starved her!" It won't be the brain death that eventually kills her, it will be not being fed!
Pathetic, just pathetic.
1/6/14 9:43 AM PST
OAKLAND -- Jahi McMath arrived at an undisclosed care facility on Monday morning, but there remains much doubt about the girl's long-term prognosis after her removal from Children's Hospital Oakland on Sunday night, the family's attorney said Monday morning.
"Jahi is at the facility," Christopher Dolan said in a telephone interview. He also said the girl's body had "deteriorated so badly" during her treatment at the hospital that the long-term prognosis for survival is not an optimistic one.
"She's in very bad shape," he said. "Right now, we don't know if she's going to make it."
The 13-year-old Oakland girl declared brain-dead nearly a month ago left the hospital just before 8 p.m. on Sunday night under secretive conditions that Dolan compared with "a covert operation." The secrecy was prompted by threats against the family, he told CNN on Sunday.
Dolan said procedures deemed necessary for a facility to take Jahi were not yet performed, including feeding and tracheotomy tubes, because other physical issues have arisen in the aftermath of her care at the hospital. He would not disclose what those issues were but said Jahi has been examined by independent doctors since her release.
"What I can tell you is that those examinations show that her medical condition, separate from the brain issue, is not good," Dolan said.
At the New Beginnings Community Center in Medford, N.Y. on Monday morning, there was little information to indicate Jahi had been moved there for treatment overnight. Office workers rushed a reporter out of the building quickly after arriving and refused to answer questions about whether the brain-dead teenage patient was being treated at the facility.
An employee, who did not identify herself, acknowledged that the treatment center was one of several locations that could have accepted Jahi. The woman said any statements issued by the care facility would be given by founder Allyson Scerri, who was not at the building this morning.
http://www.contracostatimes.com/news...disclosed-care
Last edited by *crickets*; 01-06-2014 at 09:35 AM.
Dolan is having a press conference at 11:15 their time. I'll see if I can find a link to a livestream.
livestream link:
http://m.ktvu.com/videos/news/ktvu-l...vtSfR/?updated
so, this is the uncle talking about people bringing in kids who have been brain dead and are now alive? i wonder what kind of state these 'brain dead' kids are in today? i missed a lot of it...
this lawyer makes my skin crawl.
They certainly worked hard to vilify the hospital; using words like "extraction" and "evacuation."
I don't think they are going to be able to find any dr. That's going to put a feeding tube and trac in that child. Even the most iffy-est of dr's are not going to want to get mixed up in this huge mess.
That poor girl. She is so pretty and sweet looking in her pictures. SMH
she was also definitely overweight.call me callous, but I think parents have a real responsibility to keep their kids weight in check. obviously, I'm not talking about putting your kid down or encouraging eating disorders. I'm talking about giving your kid healthy food, and encouraging moderation when it comes to snacking/junk food. a kid will eat until they're sick if you let them. I've seen it happen. someone needs to be there to monitor that shit.
how hard did this mother try with diet/healthier eating before signing her kid up for major surgery? its obvious that Jahi was not in the normal weight range for her age/height.![]()
* wow you truly are the sterial cunt here are yo not.I fuckin hate you cunt* - LoonywopOriginally Posted by Ron_NYC
★ take the sig down ★ - Loonywop
It's a shame the hospital doesn't have surveillance cameras in the rooms because I wouldn't doubt the Family snuck in solid food to her and it would show what the Grandmother did do (if anything). Between Mom feeling guilty, her obvious eating habits and the Family seeming to resist anything the hospital says I would bet my bottom dollar that SOMETHING happened to cause the bleed out. I could be completely wrong. But it definitely wouldn't surprise me.
Cameras hospital rooms? Hell no. Her family may have done that, but everyone deserves privacy.
The hospitals around here have cameras...
I thought that was normal. Of course I've mostly seen them in the ER
I never try anything, I just do it. Wanna try me?
A person who is brain dead may appear alive -- there may be a heartbeat, they may look like they're breathing, their skin may still be warm to the touch.
But doctors say there is no life when brain activity ceases.
Doctors in Oakland, California, declared 13-year-old Jahi McMath to be brain dead on December 12, three days after she underwent a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy. The McMath family fought in court to keep the teen on a ventilator, and announced Monday that they had moved the girl to another care facility.
While family attorney Christopher Dolan told reporters that for her safety, Jahi's destination won't be announced, a New York facility said Sunday it was ready to accept her.
"We are aware of Jahi McMath's dire situation, and we are willing to open our outpatient facility to provide 24-hour care," said Allyson Scerri, founder of New Beginnings Community Center in Medford, New York. "Her brain needs time to heal."
"This child has been defined as a deceased person yet she has all the functional attributes of a living person despite her brain injury," the center said on its website.
When routine surgeries go wrong
However, barring a misdiagnosis, medical experts say the teen will not recover if she is truly "brain dead."
While laymen tend to use the words "coma" and "brain dead" interchangeably, in medicine they mean very different things.
"Coma" is the broader term used to describe a prolonged state of unconsciousness, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Outwardly, it resembles sleep. Doctors may sometimes purposefully put a patient into a coma to give the brain time to heal. Comas rarely last longer than a couple of weeks, according to the clinic; patients can fully regain consciousness or may transition from a coma into a persistent vegetative state.
Someone in a persistent vegetative state has lost most higher cognitive function, but his or her brain shows some activity. The patient may open their eyes or exhibit small movements, but cannot speak or respond to commands, according to the National Institutes of Health. Some patients can recover from this state, according to the NIH.
Both these situations are different from brain death: According to the Uniform Determination of Death Act, an individual is dead when he or she "has sustained either (1) irreversible cessation of circulatory and respiratory functions, or (2) irreversible cessation of all functions of the entire brain, including the brain stem."
What that essentially means is that the brain, an extremely complex organ, no longer helps the patient function.
The human brain is divided into what doctors call the Lower Brain and the Upper Brain.
The Lower Brain -- where the top of the spinal cord goes up through our necks and into our brains -- regulates body functions such as spontaneous breath, reflexes, our heartbeat, body temperature and sleep/wake cycles.
The Upper Brain is behind all the "higher" functions in a person's nervous system. This gives us the ability to use our senses -- to see, taste, smell, hear and feel.
"Brain death" means both the upper and lower part of the brain are not functioning. That command center of the body that regulates the central nervous system is unable to perform. However, some function, such as a heartbeat, may linger.
"It's a little difficult for a layperson to understand how a person is dead if the heart is still beating," said Dr. Panayiotis Varelas, director of the neurosciences intensive care service at Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital.
But without brain function, the body eventually shuts down, unless there is medical intervention. Someone on a ventilator may appear to be breathing, but cannot breathe on their own.
While the heart usually stops within 72 hours, it could continue beating for "a week or so," Varelas said.
Jahi's mother, Nailah Winkfield, has said, "I would probably need for my child's heart to stop to show me that she was dead. Her heart is still beating, so there's still life there."
The term "brain dead" can be misleading, said Cynda Hylton Rushton, professor of clinical ethics at Johns Hopkins University, because it sounds like a person really isn't dead. If someone dies of a heart attack, doctors don't say they're "cardiovascular dead," for example.
Doctors should be more transparent about the finality of brain death, said Arthur Caplan, director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center.
Terms such as "mechanical support" or "artificial machine support" should be used to refer to sustaining the functioning of a brain dead person, he said. "No one wants to take away 'life support.'"
"Dead is dead," agreed neurologist Dr. Richard Senelick in The Atlantic. "Brain death isn't a different type of death, and patients who meet the criteria of brain death are legally dead."
The American Academy of Neurology updated its brain death guidelines for adults in 2010, asking doctors to follow a step-by-step checklist of some 25 tests.
All criteria in the guidelines must be met before a person can be considered brain dead; however, the legal definition of brain death can vary from state to state.
The American Academy of Pediatrics added to those guidelines for children. These childrens' guidelines advise there should be two attending physicians involved in the care of the child, and they should make separate examinations separated by an observation period.
Both must determine the child is brain dead. In making that ruling, the doctors use the currently established criteria; there must not be a conflict of interest.
"No one who has met the criteria for brain death has ever survived," Senelick said. "No one."
http://www.cnn.com/2014/01/06/health...html?hpt=hp_c2
There are currently 5 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 5 guests)