The parents are fighting against the hospital because the hospital/doctors have recommended removing their baby from life support immediately due to his prognosis of having no chance to survive. The court has granted the parents three weeks to get another opinion on the future of their baby. The cost of any of this really isn’t a factor; the parents are arguing that they want a second opinion from someone outside the hospital, and the courts have granted this request. I think they’re grasping at straws, but the court has acquiesced, probably so that the parents can rest knowing they did all they could do.
And yes, doctors are in pretty short supply here.
From the Texas story link:
Wow. An official would not say something like that here. No way, no how. ETA: Not relevant to the thread - it just struck me again the differences between here and there.
You’re talking about the Advance Directives Law where doctors intervene on behalf of the patient. The process involves a review board which includes members of the family. Upon conclusion of the board there is a 10 day waiting period for legal injunctions. There have been a number of cases including children born only with a brain stem.
There’s always a finite number of doctors, especially specialists. Also, if they need to go to Edmonton from, say, Vancouver or Toronto, it’s going to be a hell of a lot longer than an afternoon.
I’m going to put Annie-Xmas’ comment aside. Because I don’t understand it; and I hope she was having an off-day.
Let me preface by stating I have always had a fear of suffocation and drowning. To me, they are the two worst forms of death available. I’m going to give out two examples of people-that-should-have-had-the-plug-pulled-and-didn’t.
I realize this second case has its’ detractors, but consider that a person in a chronic vegatative state could possibly be aware of their surroundings for 23 years.
I side with the parents on this one. The child could be profoundly retarded, could require life-long care, most likely be a burden on society. But, to me; pulling the respirator is akin to putting a pillow over their face and suffocating them. Personally, I couldn’t do that to another life form, let alone a human being. For the record, I have a profoundly retarded brother with Aspergers’ and Autism, who is now 44 and thriving. I also have a step-daughter who is 45, born with bizarre congenital deformities and little in the way of intellect. She thrives in her own way, and I enjoy her company when she stays with us.
I can attest that even low-functioning persons have a personality, and are aware of their surroundings.
A good friend’s baby was born prematurely in 1990. She could breathe on her own, but for the 16 years she lived, that’s all she could do. She was blind and deaf and had to be fed through a shunt. But she reacted positively to sunlight and snuggling (big smiles and burrowing). It’s hard not to believe that someone was “there”.
I’m a little curious about what sort of testing has been done and what criteria is being used in the decision to terminate life-support.
When my son was born in '84, he was so severly damaged during delivery that he was on a vent from about eight hours of age. He was a breech delivery, buttocks first, and there was a hemmorage into the brain. We were advised to have him taken off LS severl times but each time testing showed minimal brainwaves that were above the level that would legally permit termination of support. He eventually passed on his own at six months.
Now, in Johnny’s case, he really didn’t move much and couldn’t breathe on his own, track, suck, cry or grasp very well. It sounds like this baby has a higher level of movement, at least. If Johnny was “over the limit”, I’m really surprised the child in the story isn’t.
I was hoping a baby doctor would chime in. How common is it to deliver a baby with the cord wrapped around it’s neck and not be aware of it? And 4 hours of pushing? There should be medals for that.
This person was not in a persistent vegetive state. It is known that such people recover occasionally. sometimes to full functionality, sometimes to just brief awareness. But most important, this person was a fully functioning adult injured in an accident; they had had the ability to collect experiences and knowledge before the coma, and hence had something to “return” to – a very different case from a baby incapable of learning or experiencing in the first place.
And count me as a detractor on this one. There’s only ONE PERSON who can “interpret” movements no one else can feel as the conscious speech of a man who’s brain doesn’t register higher consciousness on standard scans? I take it back—I’m not a mere detractor: I’m going to outright state this is fraud. If they can provide real evidence, I’ll be the first to eat my words, but I won’t have a choice because it will be on the front page of every paper everywhere. Why? Because to the best of my knowledge, the total number of people who have ever come back from a persistant vegative state is, and I’m not rounding here: zero.
I think it must depend on the jurisdiction – when my youngest child was delivered by emergency c, nobody asked me anything and it was mere minutes between the time everything went to shit and the time he was breathing air. It was quite amazing how fast it went. But they had consent for eveything I could imagine and quite a few things I could not beforehand. I am fairly sure my husband signed further consent forms as the c section was occurring (he was rather freaked out and doesn’t remember very well what he signed but I assume that is what it was).
However, that was a large metropolitan hospital locally known as the baby factory. Not the sam esituation.
Exactly. Some profoundly disabled kids are relatively easy to care for. But the odds indicate that most profoundly disabled kids are very difficult to take care of. It’s NOT about “accepting their disabilty” or wanting a healthy normal kid (and in cases like these Welcome to Holland is very much reality)
We are talking about kids who are profoundly deaf and blind, eat through tubes in their stomach, breathe through tracheostomies, and may not even be able to smile or hold their head up.
There are even kids who are so profoundly affected they don’t even know who their parents are!
Heck, there are even kids who are so profoundly affected they are pretty much vegetables.
I feel for the parents. I really do. But I’m just wondering if they have a realistic idea (or any idea) of how difficult the child’s life will be. One downside of the disabilty rights/ inclusion movement is that while MANY of us with disabilites can and do acheive, it negates the fact that there are still children and people who are extremely profoundly handicapped by any stretch of the imagination.
A similar thing happened 10 months ago to a girl I know. The umbilical cord wrapped around the baby’s neck during birth and it is now brain damaged. Not as badly as in this story but he’s approaching a year old and is still unable to lift up his own head. Very sad.
Yeah, fair enough. But it was their lawyer who said that - I know lawyers can be scummy, but I’m kind of surprised that one would word the request that way: “drop everything and come see this baby!”.
WRT medical consent, I can’t speak specifically to the OB end of the hospital, but when I was dealing with oncology, I couldn’t get in the building without a check-in process that included reviewing my insurance and signing consent forms. The consent forms were pretty general, pretty much just saying “Yes, I agree that you are allowed to give me medical treatment.” The forms did not just delineate a specific treatment, e.g. that they were only allowed to do blood labs and a PET scan that day.
This is also in the US, not Canada, but I have a hard time imagining that she was able to get into the hospital without signing those forms, short of it being an actual emergency by the time she got there. Or that she or her husband would need to sign an additional consent form to cover the c-section, in addition to the one she signed to have the medically-attended labor/delivery.
I think she’s saying they’re trying to get a second opinion, but the doctors they’re asking are busy, and they understand they’re asking the docs to drop everything, which is why they’re having the difficulty.
Having a cord around the baby’s neck is pretty common. There is only so much room in there and it is going to be squished up someplace. It is not usually dangerous. My son’s cord was wrapped around his neck and we did not know until he was being born - his head was out and the Dr. told me to stop pushing while she unwrapped it. (an exercise in self-control if I do say so myself.) Without other signs of fetal distress I would think most of the time you would not know where the cord is. If the heart rate was dropping a monitor would be able to warn of that.
There are other complications involved with the cord: