Family wants to keep life support for girl brain dead after tonsil surgery #8

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nrdsb4 said:
That doesn't make any sense from a medical perspective.
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Makes a lot of sense from the perspective of others that she's a rotting corpse. IMO

I don't believe she's a rotting corpse.


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nrdsb4 said:
Yeah, there is no criteria which states that eyeballs falling out of the head is the determinant for brain death diagnosis. :snooty:
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I didn't claim it was.


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Linda7NJ said:
Makes a lot of sense from the perspective of others that she's a rotting corpse. IMO

I don't believe she's a rotting corpse.


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I agree. I think people confuse statements about "physical deterioration" with the entire body rotting.

I did have a brain dead patient who had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke which was treated with blood thinners at a small rural hospital before the CT results came back (huge mistake). He bled so badly into his brain that the brain herniated through the base of the skull. He was transferred to our hospital after all this occurred. You can imagine what became of that brain tissue. His family would not accept the diagnosis and insisted he be kept on the vent. After awhile, he began to smell like decomposition. But the rest of his body remained intact. Of course, this didn't go on for 3 months, so I can't say what would have happened eventually. But I believe the smell was the brain as it deteriorated after herniation.

Jahi's brain did not herniate nor did she suffer a traumatic brain injury. Her brain was just denied oxygen long enough for the cells to die. Her brain tissue would of course deteriorate, but obviously there is no reason for it push her eyeballs out of her sockets.

It is a very sad situation and I agree that some posters are pretty hard on the Mom. I believe it's understandable she is in denial as a result of lack of education about the medical implications, her sincere desire to see her child come back to life, and the enabling behavior of people who love her and people who are contacting her with stories of miraculous recoveries by people who were never brain dead to begin with. The question isn't why she believes Jahi will recover, it's why wouldn't she?

JMHO
 
I do believe she will never recover, I do believe she's brain dead.
I do not believe she's a corpse, I do not believe a death certificate should have been issued.
I like corpses, door nail dead, grey, cold...she isn't that.

All IMO


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I think I most likely rendered professional nursing care to many brain- dead patients before the criteria were set, then enforced.

We were informed by the doctors that they were comatose, but heck no, many had the exact same parameters as Jahi. Dead with lower spinal reflexes.

I wouldn't wish that sort of maintained death on an animal. Poor girl. I never expected this to go on for so long.
 
seattlechiquita said:
I just hope they stay away from the media and disappear. The world does not need to know how they keep a dead body and insist it is alive. Why can't they just Go Away?!?!
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As much as I hate how grieving and giving condolences has become a public, attention-seeking event, they are part of a big news story with legal implications. The media will follow up. It's a public issue in terms of how to regulate such scenarios, and although this debate has been thoroughly exhausted, she isn't dead. I know for all practical purposes she is, but there's a clear difference between her parents and those who keep a dead body in the house because they can't let go, even if it's hard to articulate the distinction. I would recommend avoiding this thread if you want people to stop being so interested..
 
tiredblondy said:
I've seen this and yes it is horrid. That's exactly as I would describe it. Thanks Git. I'd forgotten about this. Also as with someone I loved there are twitches that can fool you too. It was explained to me as the muscles are starving for oxygen because the blood circulation is not like it is for a vital healthy living person.I know that I hope she can't feel it because in a person experiencing this before death it is extremely painful and was so hard for me to watch That's one of those things no one tells you about. Thank the Lord for morphine!
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Your welcome!! A person who has no brain activity does not feel pain at all.

nrdsb4 said:
You said it was "proof." Perhaps you were being facetious.
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She never said that it proved there was no brain death. She was saying it likely shows the brain is not a liquid mass without oxygen. Two different things to some people.
 
Linda7NJ said:
I do believe she will never recover, I do believe she's brain dead.
I do not believe she's a corpse, I do not believe a death certificate should have been issued.
I like corpses, door nail dead, grey, cold...she isn't that.

All IMO


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Legally I'm not sure they had any choice not to issue a death certificate as California law requires that every death is registered without undue delay and brain dead is just as dead as the cold and the grey according to the California law. It could have been a strange legal limbo if she was dead according to the doctors and the court but there was no death certificate. Technically moving her out of the hospital was disposal of human remains, and IIRC someone said something at the time that the death certificate allowed them to make a deal with the coroner so the family was in charge of her remains for the time being.


CALIFORNIA CODES HEALTH AND SAFETY CODE SECTION 7180

7180. (a) An individual who 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, is dead.
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Edit: here's the other relevant section.

California Health and Safety Code Section 102775

102775. Each death shall be registered with the local registrar of
births and deaths in the district in which the death was officially
pronounced or the body was found, within eight calendar days after
death and prior to any disposition of the human remains.
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gitana1 said:
She never said that it proved there was no brain death. She was saying it likely shows the brain is not a liquid mass without oxygen. Two different things to some people.
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I get that. But the fact that the eyeballs haven't fallen out of their sockets with liquid brains following doesn't prove either of those things. The CBF test, however, does prove that the brain is not receiving oxygen. Prior links to testimony from MEs who have done autopsies on patients who have suffered brain death with subsequent continued mechanical ventilation speak to the fact that the brain does break down, if not to a liquified state, a "soup" like consistency. This whole fork in the road of this thread happened when a poster asserted as fact that the ventilator is driving the heart, which is circulating blood and oxygen throughout Jahi's brain, and that is absolutely contradictory to the data provided by 6 physicians, among them the chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Stanford, who as far as I know is far more qualified to speak on the subject than the WS poster in question.
 
nrdsb4 said:
I get that. But the fact that the eyeballs haven't fallen out of their sockets with liquid brains following doesn't prove either of those things. The CBF test, however, does prove that the brain is not receiving oxygen. Prior links to testimony from MEs who have done autopsies on patients who have suffered brain death with subsequent continued mechanical ventilation speak to the fact that the brain does break down, if not to a liquified state, a "soup" like consistency. This whole fork in the road of this thread happened when a poster asserted as fact that the ventilator is driving the heart, which is circulating blood and oxygen throughout Jahi's brain, and that is absolutely contradictory to the data provided by 6 physicians, among them the chief of pediatric neurosurgery at Stanford, who as far as I know is far more qualified to speak on the subject than the WS poster in question.
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Another thing that I noticed is that whether "we agree" that the body is sustaining death-related damage depends on the context. In the recent case of the pregnant woman in Tx, the husband said that his wife's brain-dead body smelled like decomp and some people (everywhere, not just here) were outraged that the hospital would keep her on artificial support under such circumstances. I don't recall how long the Texas woman had been brain dead, but it was comparable to or shorter than Jahi irrc (anyone?). My guess is that the conditions of the bodies of the Texas woman and Jahi are comparable.

jmo
 
Good point, I expect that families might interpret odours and skin tones and twitches of the body very differently depending on whether they're waiting for the person to wake up and trying to see things in the light of hope or if they've resigned themselves that the person is dead and hoping the ordeal of waiting for the body to shut down to end soon.

But there probably are going to be individual differences in how fast the body begins to deteriorate. It seems that sometimes brain dead bodies on ventilators shut down pretty fast and it's hard to keep them going past a few weeks or months even if you wanted to but there was the one boy who stayed brain dead for two decades.

Pregnancy makes its own demands on the circulation physiologically even if you're not brain dead so that might make a difference, and sometimes the reason why you became brain dead to begin with.
 
Donjeta said:
Good point, I expect that families might interpret odours and skin tones and twitches of the body very differently depending on whether they're waiting for the person to wake up and trying to see things in the light of hope or if they've resigned themselves that the person is dead and hoping the ordeal of waiting for the body to shut down to end soon.

But there probably are going to be individual differences in how fast the body begins to deteriorate. It seems that sometimes brain dead bodies on ventilators shut down pretty fast and it's hard to keep them going past a few weeks or months even if you wanted to but there was the one boy who stayed brain dead for two decades.

Pregnancy makes its own demands on the circulation physiologically even if you're not brain dead so that might make a difference, and sometimes the reason why you became brain dead to begin with.
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ITA. Also, woman in TX was an adult. Jahi was a teenager. It is my understanding that younger persons can last much longer on life support. Some lasted years.
Also, people usually see what they want to see. Husband of TX woman wanted her life support turned off. Whereas Jahi's mother doesn't want it to turned off and believes her to be alive.
So she is looking for signs of life not the other way around.
 
forthelost said:
Did you read the autopsy report done on the boy who was kept on life support for twenty years after his brain death? That didn't happen to him.

http://www.hods.org/pdf/Long Survival Following Baterial Meningits-Associated Brain Destruction1.pdf
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I think you're misunderstanding me.

I take issue with calling her a dead body, a rotting corpse. I do not believe she is either.

In the link you provided above, her body is described a "living" ...as her brain is dead.

I'm not disputing brain death. I'm not even disputing her brain no longer looks like a brain.

I'm disputing calling her a corpse.
 
Karmady said:
Another thing that I noticed is that whether "we agree" that the body is sustaining death-related damage depends on the context. In the recent case of the pregnant woman in Tx, the husband said that his wife's brain-dead body smelled like decomp and some people (everywhere, not just here) were outraged that the hospital would keep her on artificial support under such circumstances. I don't recall how long the Texas woman had been brain dead, but it was comparable to or shorter than Jahi irrc (anyone?). My guess is that the conditions of the bodies of the Texas woman and Jahi are comparable.

jmo
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I agree. But for me, context is everything. It is horrific to FORCE a family to sustain the decaying body of a dead person in order to compel it to act as a host to a non-viable fetus. It is not horrific to ALLOW a family whose religion and grief compel them to believe that brain death doesn't equal death, to sustain the decaying body of their precious child. At least, it's not horrific to them. It's compassion. (To the rest of us watching this, though, it can be a ghoulish and nightmarish charade).
 
forthelost said:
Did you read the autopsy report done on the boy who was kept on life support for twenty years after his brain death? That didn't happen to him.

http://www.hods.org/pdf/Long Survival Following Baterial Meningits-Associated Brain Destruction1.pdf
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Wow. 20 years. I note the date of death was when he was in his twenties, not 4, when he experienced brain death. They referred to him as alive and a person in the autopsy until his heart stopped 20 years later.

To me, this shows that politics controls semantics.
 
forthelost said:
Did you read the autopsy report done on the boy who was kept on life support for twenty years after his brain death? That didn't happen to him.

http://www.hods.org/pdf/Long Survival Following Baterial Meningits-Associated Brain Destruction1.pdf
Click to expand...

While that didn't happen, THIS did:
(These are descriptions of the brain from the autopsy report above)

Subsequent autopsy revealed a calcified intracranial spherical structure weighing 750 g and consisting of a calcified shell containing grumous material and cystic spaces with no recognizable neural elements grossly or microscopically.

No definite posterior fossa structures (including the cerebellum, brain stem, vessels comprising the circle of Willis, or cranial nerves) were identifiable.

Individual anatomic brain structures could not be identified.

semisolid areas consisted of tan (and scattered intermixed orange, red, and brown), grumous, focally mineralized material, with no identifiable cerebral
structures,

The grumous material examined appeared to be necrotic and mummified, containing no recognizable cellular elements"

BBM, So basically the brain deteriorated into a gummy mass that had no features or sells resembling a brain and then solidified into a calcified, hardened mass.

Definition:
calcify
1. To make or become stony or chalky by deposition of calcium salts.
2. To make or become inflexible and unchanging.

Yikes. Dear God, if that was me or my child I would NEVER force them to exist in that state for years. To me, that would be akin to torture (though I know Jahi cannot feel a thing). Why hold a body hostage like that when there is NO chance that they will ever recover, think, feel, hear, or ANYTHING.

Her mother seems so far gone into denial. She puts headphones on Jahi so she can "listen" to Rhianna, Chris Brown and Beyonce music but Jahi incapable of listening and beyond hearing anything at this point.

Sadly, I do not think Jahi is the only member of this family who is beyond hearing (or listening) to stuff (aka the unchangeable truth and medical facts) at this point.
 
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