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This is one family who won’t go down without a fight…

Family Finds Nursing Home For Brain-Dead Teen On Life Support

Family members of the teenage girl who was recently declared brain dead following routine tonsil surgery are still continuing to fight for her life. The hospital refuses to continue caring for the girl because they say she is “deceased,” and one nursing home has also refused to admit her on those grounds, but the family is not yet giving up hope.

via Fox News

The family of a 13-year-old girl declared brain dead said late Friday that it has found a second nursing home willing to provide for her long-term care, after another facility backed out.

The new facility is in Southern California, said the family’s lawyer, Christopher Dolan, but he wouldn’t provide its name.

“We’re afraid they’ll be inundated with press” and decide to back out as well, he said.

Time is short for the family, as Alameda County Superior Court Judge Evelio Grillo on Tuesday ruled that the Children’s Hospital Oakland may remove Jahi McMath from life support at 5 p.m. Monday unless an appeal is filed.

Jahi underwent tonsil surgery at Children’s Hospital on Dec. 9 to treat sleep apnea. After she awoke from the operation, her family said, she started bleeding heavily from her mouth and went into cardiac arrest. Doctors at Children’s Hospital concluded the girl was brain dead on Dec. 12 and wanted to remove her from life support. The family said they believe she is still alive.

Before Jahi can be transferred, she must undergo two more medical procedures — the insertion of a breathing tube and a feeding tube, both of which would be necessary for her long-term care but which the nursing home is not equipped to perform.

The hospital has refused to perform the procedures.

“Children’s Hospital Oakland does not believe that performing surgical procedures on the body of a deceased person is an appropriate medical practice,” David Durand, its chief of pediatrics, said in a statement Thursday.

The girl’s relatives had announced on Thursday that they had found a nursing home in the San Francisco Bay Area that was willing to care for the girl if she had the tubes. Within hours, the hospital’s chief of pediatrics issued a statement saying Children’s would not cooperate because it “does not believe that performing surgical procedures on the body of a deceased person is an appropriate medical practice.”

Upon learning of the hospital’s position, that facility backed out.

Dolan said he is hoping the hospital officials will change their mind about the surgery after speaking with the [latest] nursing home officials.

This is such a sad situation. Do you think it’s fair of the hospital to refuse to help facilitate the transfer of this young girl to a nursing home at her family’s request?

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