Family wants to keep life support for girl brain dead after tonsil surgery #7

[Donjeta]

This is a hodgepodge of misunderstood terms from genetics, attachment psychology, developmental neuroscience and Eastern medicine. Either he is a troll who thinks it’s hilarious to insert himself in a court case involving a dead teenager who has real people mourning for her or he’s serious, and I don’t know which alternative is more frightening. If it's just a general nutter, they’re thirteen in a dozen, but I think people who present themselves as mental health helpers should generally have some semblance of a grasp of reality or they can actually make things worse for their clients who don’t have the capacity to spot the nonsense amid the fancy words.

This novel trauma physiology framework proposes anatomy and physiology as a network, not a top-down or bottom-up communication system centered on neurology. In this model, especially for a child in earlier development stages, anatomy and physiology is reflective of a parallel processing system. Failure in one part of the system is compensated by control and organization in another part of the system. There are multiple modes of system back up.

Novel framework -check. Top-down communication system -check. Parallel processing system -check. Bingo.

He notes that blind children tend to be able to use their hearing better than children who are not blind which is true to some extent. But how does anybody’s practical life experience let them extrapolate that to brain dead people who are not breathing? Has anyone ever heard of anyone who improved in anything other than being dead after their brain died and breathing ceased?

He proposes that a meridian from the ear to the kidney explains how Jahi is able to respond to her mother’s voice. The kidney stores her life force, and he would like her to have acupuncture. Jahi still lives in a symbiosis with her mother, and they are able to communicate via maternally inherited mitochondria. Then he brings up early neurodevelopmental stages (neural fold, neural tube) that occur prior to the central nervous system taking its final shape and says that Jahi may have retreated to this stage and communicates with her mother from there. Um, what? She became an embryo again?

As long as Ms. McMath has a functional mechanism of communication with her caregivers, then she can achieve ‘work’ and ‘commerce’, albeit in a significantly reduced capacity, being in the state of ‘Total Brain Failure’.

This guy needs some serious help.

 

[Marg from Oz]

This is a hodgepodge of misunderstood terms from genetics, attachment psychology, developmental neuroscience and Eastern medicine. Either he is a troll who thinks it’s hilarious to insert himself in a court case involving a dead teenager who has real people mourning for her or he’s serious, and I don’t know which alternative is more frightening. If it's just a general nutter, they’re thirteen in a dozen, but I think people who present themselves as mental health helpers should generally have some semblance of a grasp of reality or they can actually make things worse for their clients who don’t have the capacity to spot the nonsense amid the fancy words.



Novel framework -check. Top-down communication system -check. Parallel processing system -check. Bingo.

He notes that blind children tend to be able to use their hearing better than children who are not blind which is true to some extent. But how does anybody’s practical life experience let them extrapolate that to brain dead people who are not breathing? Has anyone ever heard of anyone who improved in anything other than being dead after their brain died and breathing ceased?

He proposes that a meridian from the ear to the kidney explains how Jahi is able to respond to her mother’s voice. The kidney stores her life force, and he would like her to have acupuncture. Jahi still lives in a symbiosis with her mother, and they are able to communicate via maternally inherited mitochondria. Then he brings up early neurodevelopmental stages (neural fold, neural tube) that occur prior to the central nervous system taking its final shape and says that Jahi may have retreated to this stage and communicates with her mother from there. Um, what? She became an embryo again?




This guy needs some serious help.

My God this gets weirder every day. Don't tell me these people charge for these off the planet ideas. No wonder the mum is so confused if she listens to all this. She is being given hope from all the most landish people.
Are these people credited to practise in America?

 

[Donjeta]

He wrote as an amicus curiae so I think he's not getting paid for writing his treatise and the mother may never have heard of him before.

Amicus curiae - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

An amicus curiae (also amicus curiæ; plural amici curiae, literally "friend of the court") is someone who is not a party to a case who offers information that bears on the case but that has not been solicited by any of the parties to assist a court. This may take the form of legal opinion, testimony or learned treatise (the amicus brief) and is a way to introduce concerns ensuring that the possibly broad legal effects of a court decision will not depend solely on the parties directly involved in the case. The decision on whether to admit the information lies at the discretion of the court. The phrase amicus curiae is legal Latin.

 

[CarolinaMoon]

http://www.thaddeuspope.com/images/Amicus_brief.pdf



This may be the strangest thing filed in court yet. As far as I can understand it says that Jahi chose to make herself brain dead and unable to breathe to save energy in order to be able to survive and stay conscious. Her consciousness waits for further recovery opportunities somewhere other than her brain which she doesn't really need because she has a magical connection with her mother, due to being a child. The author appears to be just a random character with lots and lots of issues of his own, not related to the family or any other parties in the case.



I can't even find a suitable emoticon to attach here. Every day there seems to be more and more evidence that having brain function is indeed not essential for many human activities, including writing court briefs and getting paid for professional services. (He claims to be a massage therapist and a life coach who works with people with early traumas and mental health issues.)
http://www.daniellappin.com/05.html

Perhaps the scariest thing on his site was a recommendation letter from a nursing professor saying he's taught nursing students and got excellent reviews. Maybe he forgot to tell them that brain stem functions are non-essential.

:scared: This person terrifies me! I couldn't bring myself to read anymore after page 10.

I'm afraid to look under the woodwork to see who is coming out next. Seriously. It's frightening.

I hope Mom is being shielded from all this non-sensical stuff.

 

[K_Z]

So that's what I've been doing wrong! Thanks, Donjeta, for posting the amicus brief from the massage therapist psuedoscientist. Boy, did I learn a lot!

I've been using my maternal mitochondria for about the last hour now, trying to get my young teen to get out of bed and clean her room, and get ready for her event today.

I then tried yelling into her ear- kidney meridien, hoping to arouse her consciousness in her kidneys. So far, nothing. (Maybe her kidneys shut down overnight??)

I also tried to communicate with her primitive nervous system, by poking her in the lower spine and sacrum, where her neural tube folded over a few years ago, when we were bonded more closely than we are now. So far, none of it is working.

But I'll keep on trying, because I'm a dedicated mom.

I wonder if Judge Grillo called him and scheduled a massage?

I wonder if this highly qualified pseudoscientist teaches at the charter school where the kids believe prayer will raise Jahi from the dead, so she can return to school? That publicly funded school that allows kids to choose spirituality over science, as a "valid choice"?

How about a magic 8 ball? Séance?

 

[BuzzieCat]

ITA that the precedent already set - letting the family fight taking her off the ventilator - is a little scary and a step in the wrong direction, but I DON'T think that they would be at all successful in fighting an autopsy if the coroner finds a need for it. While I would totally believe they would try, I just can't imagine any court agreeing to that. If people could block autopsies, murder would get a lot easier to get away with! Just claim religious grounds against an autopsy and we can never prove cause of death? I couldn't believe a court let this circus play out, but I REALLY can't believe they would strip the coroner of authority like that. JMO.

Jahi's case is not a murder, though. <modsnip> I guess I just wouldn't be surprised if somehow the family got what they wanted with regard to an autopsy, seeing as how they've already been given permission to basically do whatever they want with Jahi's body, even to the point of doing medical procedures on her that will not help since she's been dead for weeks. The long delay they've already received has probably done a lot to obscure any physical findings from the surgery sites (if I understand correctly), and the delay continues indefinitely as long as the family can keep her body going. Her body has had additional surgical procedures done to it after death - could that also obscure the cause of death?

IMO the coroner's office's job has already been interfered with severely, but I say this as someone who has no legal knowledge.

I'd feel a little better if I were sure that there was a requirement for the coroner's office to be informed of exactly what is going on and where. Especially if there is going to be later litigation.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/11/children-dental-tonsils/4405525/

Tonsillectomy-related fatalities are not common; they occur in the "1 in every 30,000 range," says physician Richard Rosenfeld, director of the Institute for Advanced Otolaryngology at New York Methodist Hospital in Brooklyn.

 

[NevadaMom]

Jahi's case is not a murder, though. <modsnip> I guess I just wouldn't be surprised if somehow the family got what they wanted with regard to an autopsy, seeing as how they've already been given permission to basically do whatever they want with Jahi's body, even to the point of doing medical procedures on her that will not help since she's been dead for weeks. The long delay they've already received has probably done a lot to obscure any physical findings from the surgery sites (if I understand correctly), and the delay continues indefinitely as long as the family can keep her body going. Her body has had additional surgical procedures done to it after death - could that also obscure the cause of death?

IMO the coroner's office's job has already been interfered with severely, but I say this as someone who has no legal knowledge.

I'd feel a little better if I were sure that there was a requirement for the coroner's office to be informed of exactly what is going on and where. Especially if there is going to be later litigation.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/11/children-dental-tonsils/4405525/

I think at this point in time more people are horrified with what has happened than supportive of what NW, CD and OS are doing. It may very well make it easier to pass firmer statutes in regards to procedures after brain death has been proven. After watching this circus play out I'd be more than happy to support a firmer legal stance on brain death and the post-mortem procedures the hospitals use, because I never want to see something like this happen again. The emotional damage all the way around is out of hand, not to mention all the trashing of a stellar hospital.

:moo:

 

[Softail]

Today is the 32nd day since Jahi McMath died on December 12, 2013.

:sigh:

 

[SwampMama]

So that's what I've been doing wrong! Thanks, Donjeta, for posting the amicus brief from the massage therapist psuedoscientist. Boy, did I learn a lot!

I've been using my maternal mitochondria for about the last hour now, trying to get my young teen to get out of bed and clean her room, and get ready for her event today.

I then tried yelling into her ear- kidney meridien, hoping to arouse her consciousness in her kidneys. So far, nothing. (Maybe her kidneys shut down overnight??)

I also tried to communicate with her primitive nervous system, by poking her in the lower spine and sacrum, where her neural tube folded over a few years ago, when we were bonded more closely than we are now. So far, none of it is working.

But I'll keep on trying, because I'm a dedicated mom.

I wonder if Judge Grillo called him and scheduled a massage?

I wonder if this highly qualified pseudoscientist teaches at the charter school where the kids believe prayer will raise Jahi from the dead, so she can return to school? That publicly funded school that allows kids to choose spirituality over science, as a "valid choice"?

How about a magic 8 ball? Séance?

:floorlaugh: :laughcry:

OhMyGosh Thank you!! From you incredible educational posts, to the ones that bear the testimony of your experience and your dedication to your profession, and finally to the above post which just gave us all a badly needed laugh, a million thank yous to you. You are indeed awesome and an incredible asset to WS. :loveyou:

 

[txsvicki]

I agree with the part about not making a big deal about it. I cannot however understand why you doctor would want to find the physical problem.

Once we had Nikel's adenoids/tonsils removed, he had only a handful of accidents. I haven't heard him snore since and he hasn't fallen asleep in class since. It was, not maybe, sleep apnea.

This was quite a few years back and a really good pediatrician. I guess it was because I hadn't reported any problems like snoring,he checked out ok after physicals, and my son never had infected tonsils, just severe allergy. He did get weekly allergy shots. the dr felt it would be outgrown.

 

[Karmady]

So that's what I've been doing wrong! Thanks, Donjeta, for posting the amicus brief from the massage therapist psuedoscientist. Boy, did I learn a lot!

I've been using my maternal mitochondria for about the last hour now, trying to get my young teen to get out of bed and clean her room, and get ready for her event today.

I then tried yelling into her ear- kidney meridien, hoping to arouse her consciousness in her kidneys. So far, nothing. (Maybe her kidneys shut down overnight??)

I also tried to communicate with her primitive nervous system, by poking her in the lower spine and sacrum, where her neural tube folded over a few years ago, when we were bonded more closely than we are now. So far, none of it is working.

But I'll keep on trying, because I'm a dedicated mom.

I wonder if Judge Grillo called him and scheduled a massage?

I wonder if this highly qualified pseudoscientist teaches at the charter school where the kids believe prayer will raise Jahi from the dead, so she can return to school? That publicly funded school that allows kids to choose spirituality over science, as a "valid choice"?

How about a magic 8 ball? Séance?

Respectfully, KZ, I know you're a medical professional just like Mr. Lappin, but is it it possible you've misassessed the earlyness of your dd's developmental stages? If she is slightly older than 13 and has shut down all of her non-essential systems, I suggest you just text her that you're on your way to Starbucks.

 

[SwampMama]

I was under the impression that as part of the coroner's agreement with the family to release Jahi, that her body would be returned to them for an autopsy. I will look for a link or would appreciate if anyone can provide a link or confirmation of this.

 

[Karmady]

Today is the 32nd day since Jahi McMath died on December 12, 2013.

:sigh:

did I say GAH! yet?

 

[Karmady]

I was under the impression that as part of the coroner's agreement with the family to release Jahi, that her body would be returned to them for an autopsy. I will look for a link or would appreciate if anyone can provide a link or confirmation of this.

I thought so, too. I think it was in one of the msm articles on the day she was transferred, but I haven't gone looking for it again.

 

[Karmady]

He wrote as an amicus curiae so I think he's not getting paid for writing his treatise and the mother may never have heard of him before.

Amicus curiae - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Unpaid crackpot whose "amicus brief" is already well on it's way to becoming a war story legend for the judge's law clerk. jmo

 

[Sonya610]

<modsnip>

Maybe you should write a paper on that (mention the laws of physics when describing the movement of the frozen marbles, also mention how they are perceived by the human nervous system).

I bet Dolan would file it with the court. We have had acupuncture, and kidneys as the essence of the soul, and meridians....why not frozen marbles?

Others have mentioned that Jahi did the ironing for the family children. Ironing? As in ironing cotton shirts for male professionals working in the corporate world? Starching and ironing linen table clothes?

 

[Donjeta]

I was under the impression that as part of the coroner's agreement with the family to release Jahi, that her body would be returned to them for an autopsy. I will look for a link or would appreciate if anyone can provide a link or confirmation of this.

Alameda County Sheriff's spokesman Sgt. J.D. Nelson said that while he does not know where Jahi was relocated, it was his understanding that she was taken out of the state. He said that as part of the standing court order and an agreement with the Coroner's Office, Jahi's body would have to be returned to the Alameda County coroner's office in the event her heart stops beating.

Nelson noted that the autopsy will be required to complete the existing death certificate, and added that Jahi's cause of death will be more difficult to determine the longer her body is kept on a ventilator.

http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-w...mcmath-brain-dead-girl-moved-undisclosed-care

 

[Herat]

Jahi's case is not a murder, though. <modsnip> I guess I just wouldn't be surprised if somehow the family got what they wanted with regard to an autopsy, seeing as how they've already been given permission to basically do whatever they want with Jahi's body, even to the point of doing medical procedures on her that will not help since she's been dead for weeks. The long delay they've already received has probably done a lot to obscure any physical findings from the surgery sites (if I understand correctly), and the delay continues indefinitely as long as the family can keep her body going. Her body has had additional surgical procedures done to it after death - could that also obscure the cause of death?

IMO the coroner's office's job has already been interfered with severely, but I say this as someone who has no legal knowledge.

I'd feel a little better if I were sure that there was a requirement for the coroner's office to be informed of exactly what is going on and where. Especially if there is going to be later litigation.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/01/11/children-dental-tonsils/4405525/

The coroner has jurisdiction of basically every death in their county. There is usually a list of death types that they "investigate." Sometimes investigation just means checking with the physician with a person who had a terminal disease but died outside the hospital. Sometimes it means doing an autopsy. It is up to the coroner's office to decide. It does not have to be a homicide. The coroner has the authority to investigate any death they feel may have interest in the public good- such as deaths from infectious diseases, deaths from toxic drugs or poisonings, etc etc. The case of Liberace's death in 1987 is a case in point, as his HIV status was not initially disclosed by the hospital and his physician sought to obscure the actual cause of death so as not to reveal the then-shocking information that Liberace was gay and had AIDS.

As this is a death that occurred coincident with a surgical procedure or complication thereof, the coroner certainly has the jurisdiction to order an autopsy and I am sure it will happen.

 

[Karmady]

Well, as a last resort, I might have to try the Gold Bond Medicated Powder mentioned upthread. That seems a little extreme, though. Maybe I can just sprinkle it on her Wheaties, instead of putting it in her IV? :floorlaugh:

I cannot believe the court system has to put up with garbage like that.
Who knew that massage therapists have more expertise than pediatric neurologists and intensivists?

He should call up Alice LaViolette from the Jodi Arias trial, and Dr. "Silly Sally" Karioth (the probably-intoxicated grief lady) from the Casey Anthony trial. They should open a group practice together. :floorlaugh: :scared:

No worries. They happily accept the filing fee and pass it around on the to "all" e-mail distribution list asap. lol

jmo

 

[K_Z]

Others have mentioned that Jahi did the ironing for the family children. Ironing? As in ironing cotton shirts for male professionals working in the corporate world? Starching and ironing linen table clothes?

Respectfully snipped.

I don't have a link, but I remember the comment that Jahi ironed her younger siblings school uniforms, so they would look nice.

She really seems like she was such a great kid, loving and helpful. Such a sad, sad situation. She deserves to be remembered for the kid she actually was, not the awful situation her family has put her in today. IMO.