13 Year old gir declared brain dead has now officially died

[JanaDee]

The new beginnings facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/www.nbli.org
If you scroll down to the 22nd Dec there is a picture of the "nearly ready" facility!

From their FB page

This child has been defined as a deceased person yet she has all the functional attributes of a living person despite her brain injury.

 

[Lynne M]

The new beginnings facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/www.nbli.org
If you scroll down to the 22nd Dec there is a picture of the "nearly ready" facility!

Yeah, and the case seems to be providing them with a nice publicity and fundraising boost.....

 

[JanaDee]

The new beginnings facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/www.nbli.org
If you scroll down to the 22nd Dec there is a picture of the "nearly ready" facility!

Hey, it has windows. It is "nearly ready".

 

[Dr_Finkelstein]

Yeah. My mouth was agape as I was reading through the New Beginnings website, waiting to see if there was going to be someone associated with the facility who had medical expertise.

We haven't discussed this Dr. Paul Byrnes yet. Anyone have thoughts on his opinions? (For those who may not know who he is, he is mentioned in the above referenced article, and is the doctor/pediatrician the family mentions who says he believes Jahi is not dead. He apparently does not believe in the brain death criteria.)

Um yeah, that says it all really. I may be making a snap judgement about him, but I'll go with thinking he's a loon.

And he is not helping this family at all.

 

[sunshinehighway]

The body won't decompose in the same way - because the tissues are being kept oxygenated by the ventilator. There will be degeneration though, you just can't keep a dead body oxygenated in the same way. You can artifically oxygenate the tissues, and provide medication, but you can't replicate the complex hormone/metabolite etc levels required in order to 'live' without some brain function.

Tissue perfusion and viability will become more and more problematic - bedsores will develop and just can't 'heal' in any effective way, the risk of infection will be huge (there is a huge amount of dead tissue). It will become progressively more difficult to maintain patent IV access, which will be vital to keep this 'process' ongoing, in a living patient it is incredibly difficult to maintain IV access and provide nutrition via TPN for any prolonged length of time - in this case, and in the case in Texas you could - possiby could - get weeks but doubtful any longer.

The Texas woman has already been on a ventilator for several weeks. A little googling shows there are cases of women being brain dead and kept on ventilators for months so their unborn children can have a shot at life.

 

[sunshinehighway]

Double post

 

[Lorelei Lee]

Interesting:

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/byrne

Is this the guy?

 

[Pea-n-Me]

The body won't decompose in the same way - because the tissues are being kept oxygenated by the ventilator. There will be degeneration though, you just can't keep a dead body oxygenated in the same way. You can artifically oxygenate the tissues, and provide medication, but you can't replicate the complex hormone/metabolite etc levels required in order to 'live' without some brain function.

Tissue perfusion and viability will become more and more problematic - bedsores will develop and just can't 'heal' in any effective way, the risk of infection will be huge (there is a huge amount of dead tissue). It will become progressively more difficult to maintain patent IV access, which will be vital to keep this 'process' ongoing, in a living patient it is incredibly difficult to maintain IV access and provide nutrition via TPN for any prolonged length of time - in this case, and in the case in Texas you could - possiby could - get weeks but doubtful any longer.

Yes. I also mentioned a few pages back that her stability is tenuous because since she's already cardiac arrested once, she could do it again. One would also be very concerned with kidney function (from the shock related to the cardiac arrest), pressure ulcers, infections and ventilator-associated pneumonias, among other things. Add in the feeding tube and trach and i, yi, yi, this poor girl's got a lot of potential insults to her body - and one has to again ask, to what end? Chilren's has said they won't do procedures to her because she is already dead as far as they're concerned. I would have to really wonder who would be willing to come in at this point to do the procedures? Maybe Dr. Byrne himself? (j/k it would be a surgeon, not a pediatrician.)

 

[15isto2]

Interesting:

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/byrne

Is this the guy?

And here

http://www.lifeguardianfoundation.org/

 

[JanaDee]

Interesting:

http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/byrne

Is this the guy?

 

[Dr_Finkelstein]

The Texas woman has already been on a ventilator for several weeks. A little googling shows there are cases of women being brain dead and kept on ventilators for months so their unborn children can have a shot at life.

At most they have been able to get them to 24-26 weeks gestation (when it's happened so early in a pregnancy), I think a woman in Hungary was kept ventilated for the longest at 3 months, so I still stand by saying they could get weeks only. If it happened in a woman who was already over 24 weeks pregnant they would just deliver straightaway, the risks to the baby of the mother's condition deteriorating suddenly would be too great IMO. 30 cases over 30 years - so sad.

 

[gottaluvPluto]

The new beginnings facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/www.nbli.org
If you scroll down to the 22nd Dec there is a picture of the "nearly ready" facility!

I don't know how things are done in the UK, but here in the US it doesn't look "nearly ready." They have to do permits, inspections and that alone can take long time.

 

[Lorelei Lee]

Started to read some of Dr. byrnes' columns.

This quote is interesting:

"Brain death" is not true death. Rather it is observing cessation of functioning of the brain, which is then translated into "brain death." The primary reason for the origination and propagation of "brain death" was and is the desire to obtain vital organs for transplantation. It can now be ascertained that a validly applied scientific method, sound reasoning, and available medical technology were not utilized in developing the new way of determination of death called "brain death" for the simple reason that death is the absence of life. Life and true death cannot and do not exist at the same time in the same person.

I'm not a neurologist, but it seems to me he disagrees with the generally accepted definition of "brain death" and feels it's a con by the medical community to justify removal of organs for transplant when the patient is still alive.

 

[kamik86]

I understand wanting to hope beyond hope that someone will be ok.

However given the cost to keep someone on life support, the time it is taking from doctors and nurses schedules to care for a patient that is honestly not going to wake up, the space in the hospital etc. I don't think this can really just be left up to the family. The money that the hospital will end up writing off because the family can't pay to keep someone on life support could go to save someone that still has a chance. Every minute the doctors spend on this patient could be going to someone that they still have a chance to save.

Now I don't think the above should be taken to the extreme and I understand giving a family a short time to say goodbye... but at some point there does have to be a way to say its over and force the issue if the family just can't come to terms with it. The fact that the family has raised thousands trying to keep her alive and move her alone is beyond me... imagine what that thousands could do for another child in that hospital that still has hope.

My husband and I had to do this with my MIL. After an illness she stroked and was brain dead in large portions of her brain. She still had some brain activity enough for her heart to beat and lungs to breathe on her own but that was about it. She was gone. She still remained breathing for days after life support was removed but still wasn't really alive.

I understand how painful this can all be, but sometimes someone else has to step in and make the decisions if the family can not because resources are not infinite.

 

[JanaDee]

I don't know how things are done in the UK, but here in the US it doesn't look "nearly ready." They have to do permits, inspections and that alone can take long time.

Pretty sure that was sarcasm.

 

[Lorelei Lee]

And this quote:

The "brain dead" patient looks no different from what the Pastoral Care Worker had seen earlier in the day or the day before. The patient has a beating heart as evidenced by the beeping of the heart monitor. The patient is warm, not cold like a corpse. The patient's color is normal, not pale or blue like a corpse. Many functions continue, including digestion, excretion, and maintenance of fluid balance with normal urine output. There will often be response to surgical incisions. A long enough period of observation after someone has been declared "brain dead" will show healing and growth; a child will go through puberty. There have been numerous instances of pregnant women with head injuries declared "brain dead" carrying the infant to birth. In the longest recorded instance, the infant was carried for 107 days. The patient has respiration although this vital activity of respiration is supported by a ventilator. The ventilator pushes the air into the lungs, but the living person pushes the air out. In contrast a corpse/cadaver cannot push the air out. A cadaver, a corpse, a dead body is pale, cold, stiff, and unresponsive. There is no heartbeat, no body functions, no breathing, and no movement.

 

[15isto2]

Pretty sure that was sarcasm.

 

[Pea-n-Me]

I'm not a neurologist, but it seems to me he disagrees with the generally accepted definition of "brain death" and feels it's a con by the medical community to justify removal of organs for transplant when the patient is still alive.

Yes

 

[Lorelei Lee]

Yes

that's what I thought. Apparently this doctor is in agreement with Jahi's mother, that the heart is beating so the child is still alive.

California is a Daubert jurisdiction. Ultimately the court is going to have to reject Dr. Byrnes' medical opinions.

 

[Lorelei Lee]

LOL, on the Facebook page there is a post form a local reporter seeking information from New Beginnings, since apparently they're not answering their phone. Gives you a clue about the size and staffing of this facility.