JCC [jahi mcmath] she's dead, jim

She told her husband when she was not pregnant. In the off chance it happened. But do you honestly believe that she would have wanted her child not to live if she were on life support. She probably never told her husband or it never came up while pregnant. I am sure she didn't tell her husband while she was pregnant because she didn't think it was going to happen to her.

 

The article makes it plain (as well as the CNN report I saw on it a week or so ago), if you had actually read it, that she had discussed it with both her husband and her family long before this happened. She didn't wish to be kept on life support and quite frankly if the doctors are saying she was without oxygen for over an hour and the fact that she was at 14 weeks, it's very likely that to be blunt, the fetus is either dead itself (in which case it's doing as much if not more damage to the mother's body as being on life support is at this point decomposing in the womb), or it's so damaged that it would likely not survive outside the womb even if they did keep her on life support if the baby came to term. They need to take her off the machines and let the family start the grieving process. This is a stupid, and dangerous law and I, for one am very very glad I don't live in Texas.

 

31 states have that law.

 

31 State Legislative bodies are stupid.

 

jahi update: still dead

 

I've been following this story pretty closely because I work in critical care and I worry about is the precedence this sets. I think it's terrible that she died, but she had a very complicated surgery (it wasn't just a tonsillectomy) and sadly these things happen sometimes. It's heart breaking but it's a fact of life.
I worry because this child was taking up valuable resources in a hospital for 24 days after being declared brain dead -by multiple doctors- before she was finally transferred to another facility. (I really can't imagine what kind of place would accept such transfer.)

The hospital I work in has 10 ICUs and we still are frequently having to shuffle patients around just to fit everyone in. Every bed is needed and as soon as you are no longer critical, you go to a step down unit or to a floor depending on the level of care needed. If people are allowed to say no their family member isn't dead despite the proof and are allowed to insist their family member be kept 'life support', how will we take care of the people we can save? Medicine has already frustratingly become a matter of quantity over quality, does it now come to even keeping dead people alive? (For more than organ donation... that doesn't last too long and is a good reason.)

 

we should probably stop calling it "life support" for one thing...

apparently we arent mature enough as a society to handle that terminology

 

Zombie Support?

 

probs

 

cardiopulmonary pump or mechanical ventilation or something

anything to demystify it so the god crowd cant be tricked by their leaders into thinking it necessarily provides anything resembling "life" as human beings understand it

 

Machine for Pumping Blood through Dead Humans.

 

Fair enough. I've never actually heard that term used in medical conversations (it's a layman's term) because it's so imprecise and can mean so many different things, I certainly would never use it at work, but for sake of not writing 'kept on mechanical ventilation, cardiac pressors, hormones, etc.' I went with life support.

 

*patent pending

 

oh yeah totally. i mean we as a society, laymen, etc should stop using it. i wasnt getting on your case in particular or anything

 

Sorry... that already exists, it's called ECMO. ExtraCorporeal Membrane Oxygenation, though still doesn't fix brain death.
In recent years it's become somewhat effective, it's just that people who go on it are usually are pretty close to death. We have a few people on it in my hospital at any given moment.

Rogue_Ten - I know you weren't meaning me, specifically I was just pointing out that it's a complicated matter that is summed up in a small phrase that's easier to use... which is perhaps part of the problem. I agree though, if people are going to think it can stop death, maybe it's time for a new phrase.

 

I'm sure it exists, I was just attempting to assist mike in his rebranding efforts.

 

Oh I know, I was trying to be amusing (and failing!) by pointing out that there is something that is pretty much that, oftentimes times quite literally.

Don't mind me, my sense of humor is a bit strange after working in health care for years. *slides back from whence she came*

 

your input in this thread has been substantive and valuable! thanks for your contribution

 

Attorneys: Pregnant woman's fetus in Texas suffers from severe abnormalities.

 

Unless you've actually been in this situation, perhaps you shouldn't judge people for the choices they make or assume you would make a more rational one.

 

Oh? Well lock the thread up folk. Calvin has spoken.

 

According to the lawyers, the fetus has severe deformities in its lower extremities, so its gender is impossible to determine. It also suffers from hydrocephalus, a condition that involves excess fluid in the brain cavities and can lead to either mental disability or death. It may have a heart problem, although the attorneys say that the extent of the issues cannot yet be determined. The statement did not indicate whether the fetus is considered to be viable.
its jesus' little miracle, you guys! thanks, texas hospital officials!

 

Do you think it's rare to have a brain dead relative on life support? Tons of people have been in this position, and 99.999% of them sensibly choose to say goodbye to their loved ones instead of taking the hospital to court. If it matters to you, my mother was brain dead and on life support back in 2002.

What I'm sure the medical community has explained to Jahi McMaths' family, and which they are apparently not getting, is that "brain dead on life support" is not the same as lying in a coma, with life processes still controlled by the body. A comatose person whose heart is beating on its own may have a chance of waking up eventually, depending on how long they've been in a coma, what kind of damage their brain may have sustained, and so on.

Someone who is brain dead will never, ever wake up. Ever. Furthermore, life support machines are very damaging to human organs. It's not the same as your own heart and lungs doing their job. What will happen to Jahi's body is that one organ system after another will start to shut down, until she basically liquefies in her hospital bed. In explaining this point to us, the ICU staff at my mother's hospital cited a recent case in which a family insisted on keeping a dead man's organs functioning until he mildewed from the inside out. I don't think it's a very respectful way to treat the dead, keeping their organs artificially functioning while they decompose a little at a time. If you believe that your loved one is somehow alive so long as one cell of their body is still living, better to donate their organs.

I suppose you could argue that even if keeping Jahi's body around for an extended period of time doesn't help Jahi herself, it doesn't really hurt anybody, and it will make the family happy. Except it does hurt people. Keeping the organs of a brain-dead person functioning requires an enormous commitment of skilled man hours and complex machinery. These are resources that could be put toward saving another person's life, or at least providing palliative care to someone who is unsavable, but still undeniably alive.
Jahi's family needs to let go. I feel terrible for them, but their daughter isn't coming back.

And yes, we pulled the plug on my mother the morning the EEG went flat.