Jahi McMath Dead or Alive

December 24, 2013 — 1 Comment

Jahi McMathYou would have to be hiding under a rock not to somehow have been exposed to the story of Jahi McMath, the 13-year-old child who is being pronounced “brain dead” after complications from a tonsillectomy.

Jahi had surgery on December 16th, shortly afterwards she began bleeding and went into cardiac arrest. The doctors at Oakland Children’s Hospital have pronounced her “brain dead” and want to turn off life support.

The family does not believe she is dead and in order to keep her on life support to give her time to heal had to hire an outside attorney to go to court for an injunction.

I have been following the case daily, and am supporting them via a Facebook page that Jahi’s uncle Omari Sealey has started on her behalf.

What a shame that the family had to get a court order to get a second opinion. If your child was being pronounced dead, wouldn’t you think it was your right to have a second opinion by an outside physician?

The story has been complicated by the fact that Children’s Hospital has a protocol that the family can not read the medical records until she has died or been released.

I thought that was funny as she has been pronounced dead by the brain death criteria, which is the legal, medical definition of death added in 1981. Yet, the hospital is not considering that dead enough to let them read the medical records, but dead enough to take her off life support.

The family would like my friend and doctor Paul Byrne to come in and give that opinion. However the family did not have a choice in which doctor to offer the second opinion.The judge ordered a second opinion from a local doctor at Stanford to give his opinion. He may be fine, no one knows but I can’t find any research papers on him writing or commenting on “brain death”.

Dr. Paul Byrne wrote an article here on the situation and I encourage you to read it.

Dr. Byrne has been speaking and writing on brain death for 50 years, in my opinion he would be a better choice to review the records and see Jahi.

Paul read ALL of my son’s Jamie’s records, and no I didn’t even ask him too. He found that Vanderbilt did the Apnea test for 24 minutes, not the typical 10 minutes. We knew the Apnea test was done wrong, they admitted that with the Pco2 was started too high. It should have been started at <40.

Dr. Cicero Coimbra

Dr. Cicero Coimbra argued: A large number of brain-injured patients, even in deep coma, can recover to lead a normal daily life; their nervous tissue may be only silent, not irreversibly damaged, as a consequence of a partial reduction of the blood supply to the brain. (This phenomenon, called “ischemic penumbra,” was not known when the first neurological criteria for brain death were established 37 years ago.

People HAVE awakened from being pronounced brain dead before even though doctors always blame the tests were done wrong and refused to believe any success stories.

Consider following the families journey on Facebook here.

Most of all join me in praying. To say my heart is breaking for this family is well…an understatement.

Thank you for reading my blog this year, thank you for so many of you reaching out to me, most of all thank you for all the people who have emailed me to learn how to get off the organ registry.

Merry Christmas from my family to you !

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  1. Jahi McMath…A Miracle Or Bad Science? | Melissa Caulk on Brain DeathJahi McMath...A Miracle Or Bad Science? - Melissa Caulk on Brain Death - October 4, 2014

    […] was pronounced “brain dead” late last year. As the organ donation people circled her mother to give her organs to someone in […]

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