Jahi McMath is Taken off Life Support Discussion

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Tricia said:
"It’s nearly four years later, and Jahi’s body still has not broken down. Her skin remains smooth. There are no foul odors in her room as would be expected when a brain-dead person’s body deteriorates. She has experienced no visible bodily decline… Disabled is not dead.”

Now the question is can you keep a body from decaying by using machines? Did Jahi have any brain activity?
The fact that the parents did not release any sort of substantial evidence is what is bothering me.

I am assuming they will do an autopsy. If so perhaps that could help shed light on whether Jahi was dead or disabled.
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'Disabled'? I am disabled. The 'abled' part is because I am still 'abled' - although differently abled than most people. I cannot see any sense that Jahi was 'abled' at all. I'm not trying to argue with anyone - but to use that word in this context is......troubling? Disturbing?
 
Harikari said:
'Disabled'? I am disabled. The 'abled' part is because I am still 'abled' - although differently abled than most people. I cannot see any sense that Jahi was 'abled' at all. I'm not trying to argue with anyone - but to use that word in this context is......troubling? Disturbing?
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They used disabled a lot with Terri Shiavo. (But let’s not open that can of worms.)
 
Tssiemer said:
I need an autopsy report too please. Thank you.
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Yes! Post mortem is the only way to know exactly what happened to Jahi. That said, Jahi had been "dead" for so long that her organs had probably deteriorated so much that it might be impossible to know for certain what went wrong during the tonsillectomy.
 
nrdsb4 said:
It was not a routine tonsillectomy. It was a rather complicated surgery.
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Exactly. I did a bit of research since I'd forgotten the specifics. It was three procedures.

Doug Straus said this case is not about a “routine” tonsillectomy. He said the surgery was complicated from the beginning, as three procedures were being done simultaneously. The three surgeries, according to court documents, were: an adenotonsillectomy; a uvulopalatopharyngloplasty, or UPPP, which is tissue removal in the throat; and submucous resection of bilateral inferior turbinates, which is nasal obstruction.
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Judge Orders Hospital to Keep Jahi McMath on Life Support
 
The thing is you just can't keep changing the parameters of what defines death to suit you. I remember this case well and I further remember everyone insisting she was dead. And everyone insisting she was dead was expounding on just how quickly her body would rot and how her brain would leak our her nasal cavities etc if she was dead regardless of the equipment she was on. I remember thinking, "Well, I guess we'll see if they were right."

Well they were wrong. You can not keep a corpse going for years. If you want to rely on science then do. But you can't rely on baloney instead. Whether she was dead or not has absolutely no bearing on how her parents behaved and whether or not it was appropriate to keep her on machines for years etc. She was either dead or she wasn't. And medically the dead have never been kept alive for years on machines. It defies all medical description of dead. Her body did not do what the medical authorities said it would do if she was dead or brain dead. Period. So I wish people would just own up to that already. They said the machines absolutely could not keep her going for long at all. They were wrong. So maybe, just maybe the doctors were wrong in their diagnosis. I think the fact that it took a full four years to for this happen shows someone was wrong.

And again that has no bearing on whether or not something things how her parents handled things. She was either dead or not. She wasn't. A piece of paper doesn't define death literally. That's like saying someone isn't dead either till they get a death certificate.
 
I'll admit I'm sensitive. My cousin drowned and was resuscitated. He has no measurable quality of life by most people's standards. He can laugh and cry and watch television. He IS like Terri Schiavo. He requires no machines to keep him alive. He does get a feeding tube. I know people who walk around who also require feeding tubes to survive for various reasons. In fact doctors threatened to report his father when he asked for him to be taken off life support. But he's lived over 20 years now. I think it would be a crime to deprive him of food and water and let him spend over a week slowly dehydrating to death.

I would never choose to keep any of my kids on life support immeasurably. BUT I don't believe someone is dead just because they are on life support. And I don't believe someone who is truly dead by any definition can be kept alive for years on life support. It just doesn't work that way. If it does work that way please feel free to pull out studies and case studies that show the dead can live indefinitely on life support and by what definition they are indeed medically dead. But I don't believe in the redefining of death as convenient. The dead rot.
 
katydid23 said:
Jahi’s mother, Nailah Winkfield, was at her daughter’s bedside when she died in Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, according to Dolan. The family kept the news secret last week out of a desire to mourn and reflect, he added.

“This has been crushing for Nailah and Marvin,” he told The Chronicle Thursday evening, referring to Jahi’s mother and stepfather. “They’ve been living in exile in New Jersey because the state of California refused to acknowledge that Jahi was not dead. And the court case was taking years to prove....
Family says Jahi McMath, on life support since being declared brain-dead in 2013, has died

It is interesting that she 'died' in a hospital. How did they get her admitted to a hospital? Is it true that a surgeon performed surgery on her? It will be fascinating to hear how all of that was worked out.

In the end, I am relieved for Sweet Jahi and her family. It was time...
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The details will be interesting and I hope her brain is studied.

I think it’s interesting that her mother thinks she was healing in the last four years. I look at pictures of Jahi from before and my heart aches at the thought of what things were like the last four years. The body in that hospital bed was not Jahi. IMO

I hope she is free and at peace, finally, and I hope the family can see their way to letting go and moving on for the sake of jahi’s sister.
 
beatrixpotter said:
I think it would be a crime to deprive him of food and water and let him spend over a week slowly dehydrating to death.
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It was 14 days. But that’s neither here nor there. Terri Shiavo wasn’t hurting anybody and her parents offered to take care of her. There was no reason to actively starve her to death for 2 weeks. It’s not like they pull a plug and she stops breathing and she died. She starved to death which I guess is ironic if you believe she was bulimic.

Anyway.


PVS is totally different than brain dead in this case I guess. I’m not 100% sure which would be better. I know I’d rather just be plain dead in any case. I used to want to live and told people that but I changed my mind. I told them that too. Just pull the plug on me. I won’t be selfish. I hope they won’t be either.
 
beatrixpotter said:
I'll admit I'm sensitive. My cousin drowned and was resuscitated. He has no measurable quality of life by most people's standards. He can laugh and cry and watch television. He IS like Terri Schiavo. He requires no machines to keep him alive. He does get a feeding tube. I know people who walk around who also require feeding tubes to survive for various reasons. In fact doctors threatened to report his father when he asked for him to be taken off life support. But he's lived over 20 years now. I think it would be a crime to deprive him of food and water and let him spend over a week slowly dehydrating to death.

I would never choose to keep any of my kids on life support immeasurably. BUT I don't believe someone is dead just because they are on life support. And I don't believe someone who is truly dead by any definition can be kept alive for years on life support. It just doesn't work that way. If it does work that way please feel free to pull out studies and case studies that show the dead can live indefinitely on life support and by what definition they are indeed medically dead. But I don't believe in the redefining of death as convenient. The dead rot.
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There was a poster in another thread about a small child whose parents didn't want to turn off the life support machines, she was medically trained and explained things very well.

No one is saying that someone is dead because they're on life support, that can often be used as a temporary measure while someone's body heals, it's not intended for dead people. But it doesn't keep the dead alive, it can keep the body functioning, but that doesn't mean the person is alive.

As far as I know brain dead people have been kept on these support machine for months at a time in cases where a woman is pregnant and the body has been supportive to give the fetus time to grow strong enough to survive. Their bodies can't have rotted in the same way that a body not attached to the machines would have done or they could never have provided a supportive environment for the fetus.

I don't know which 'expert' in this case is to be believed and which of them are not as expert as they might want us to believe. One of them said that as Jahi was menstruating that suggested that some hypothalamic tissue was intact in her brain? What does that mean for those of us who aren't neurologists? What about the rest of her brain tissue?

I think a case like this plays on public lack of expertise and fears of trusting experts opinions or declarations. So one of these people who's working for the family (biased) says that Jahi was really in the situation of your cousin, a locked-in syndrome? But how many actual unbiased neurologists would agree with that? And how many of those unbiased neurologists would look at your cousin and say he's clearly alive? There is a difference between brain dead and brain damaged, and some people in the public are using these terms interchangeably, which causes even more confusion.

Was Jahi misdiagnosed? I don't know. I do hope there will be a thorough autopsy by proper medical experts and not the biased ones who seem to be surrounding Jahi's family with their supporting opinions that in some cases (maybe all) are based in believe and ideology rather than biological science and medicine.
 
Amonet said:
There was a poster in another thread about a small child whose parents didn't want to turn off the life support machines, she was medically trained and explained things very well.

No one is saying that someone is dead because they're on life support, that can often be used as a temporary measure while someone's body heals, it's not intended for dead people. But it doesn't keep the dead alive, it can keep the body functioning, but that doesn't mean the person is alive.

As far as I know brain dead people have been kept on these support machine for months at a time in cases where a woman is pregnant and the body has been supportive to give the fetus time to grow strong enough to survive. Their bodies can't have rotted in the same way that a body not attached to the machines would have done or they could never have provided a supportive environment for the fetus.

I don't know which 'expert' in this case is to be believed and which of them are not as expert as they might want us to believe. One of them said that as Jahi was menstruating that suggested that some hypothalamic tissue was intact in her brain? What does that mean for those of us who aren't neurologists? What about the rest of her brain tissue?

I think a case like this plays on public lack of expertise and fears of trusting experts opinions or declarations. So one of these people who's working for the family (biased) says that Jahi was really in the situation of your cousin, a locked-in syndrome? But how many actual unbiased neurologists would agree with that? And how many of those unbiased neurologists would look at your cousin and say he's clearly alive? There is a difference between brain dead and brain damaged, and some people in the public are using these terms interchangeably, which causes even more confusion.

Was Jahi misdiagnosed? I don't know. I do hope there will be a thorough autopsy by proper medical experts and not the biased ones who seem to be surrounding Jahi's family with their supporting opinions that in some cases (maybe all) are based in believe and ideology rather than biological science and medicine.
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She must have had some cerebellum tissue still somewhat functional. The cerebellum (lower brain) is responsible for involuntary processes, breathing is one, and all the bodily functions that we cannot decide to stop by a conscious thought and the cerebrum is who we are and it controls the functions that we choose to do.
When I was a young nurse, before life support machines (outside of the operating theatre), we nursed people who were in a coma, for months and months, but whose brains were not so damaged that they could not breathe.
 
Demystifying brain death

"...Last month, Robert Troug from the Center of Bioethics, Harvard Medical School, wrote a paper—Defining Death—breaking down the essential principles that guide the medical fraternity in the declaration of brain death, and the religious belief of patients who reject such claims. He believes that virtually every function that takes place in an otherwise healthy body, can be seen in a brain dead person who is on ventilator.

Rahul Pandit, Director, Intensive Care, Fortis Hospital, Mulund in Mumbai, clears the air on the criteria behind certifying a patient as 'brain dead,' and also explains India's stand in this regard and explains when and why brain dead patients are really dead.

What is brain death declaration?..."

Demystifying brain death
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Aescwynn said:
For a comprehensive background on the Jahi McMath story, written fairly recently, check out this wonderful article in the New Yorker from February:

What Does It Mean To Die?

Just a fair warning: it's pretty sympathetic to the mother's side of the issue.
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I am sympathetic to Jahi's mother. The article is very well written, I think, and brings up a lot of issues. I worry that it's a bit biased in how it presents some of the information. And I'm not sure that the boy who lived for 24 years with no identifiable brain structure could really be called a recovery from brain death?

I wish brain scans would be made public, if they were able to do them. If Jahi was wrongly diagnosed, then her family has been put through hell. But I still think there's a chance that the family were wrong. Despite being a nurse, Jahi's mother admits that she thought that a tracheostomy and other treatment and Jahi would wake up, which seems overly hopeful when she'd been told that her daughter was brain dead.

I do think it sounds like Jahi's family needed a lot more support, more explanations than they actually got, and maybe more rounds of tests, even if in the doctor's opinion it is a waste to repeat the tests on a dead body.

Aside from locked-in syndromes, which are not brain death, I personally feel that brain death, properly diagnosed, is equal to heart death, and that by that point the body is a shell. A lot of people are being saved by the 'life support' assistance, people whose lives could not be saved before the advent of this technology. But I think it's okay (though extremely painful) that not everyone can be saved, and that not every person can be kept on 'life support' indefinitely if they are brain dead. All the families in that position deserve clarity and compassion. I don't think people should be made to feel guilt-tripped into fighting for the 'life support' to continue based on faulty premises. Without better communication from experts to the general public we risk doing a great disservice to a lot of people, a far worse disservice than letting those who are truly brain dead, die.
 
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