Friday, 18 March 2016

Jahi McMath update...not really

I'll be honest, this isn't much of an update.  Though the case of Jahi McMath has not exactly come to a halt, it is grinding along at what is apparently the normal pace for American legal proceedings.  There have been no real advancements made in the legal trial, though there has been the usual and expected back-and-forth crap that I admittedly do not fully understand.  Demurrers have been submitted and denied by the judge, whatever the hell that means (Scarab?  Help?)  The legal details (including the most recent judgment allowing the family to prove she is "alive") can be found at Professor Thaddeus Pope's Medical Futility Blog here.

The other "development" is the posting online of several supposedly recent pictures of Jahi.  We'll start with these two:

I believe both of these were taken by the woman who has been braiding Jahi's hair (please someone correct me if I'm wrong).  The first thing that struck me is the strategically (and rather obviously) placed "JAHI IS ALIVE" bracelet next to her head.  That bit of propaganda is about as subtle as Donald Trump. 

The next interesting feature is that neither picture is taken head-on.  In both she has her head turned to the side.  That may be telling or it may be completely irrelevant, but it seems to tie into the next thing I noticed.  The final interesting thing was the discoloration on her philtrum (the groove above the upper lip).  At first I thought it was a shadow, but on closer inspection it looks the same in both pictures.  There also appears to be some darkening of her lips, though as we all know her mother Nailah likes to play dress-up and puts makeup on her, so it may just be dark lipstick.  I'm not sure which option is more disturbing.  Regardless if that discoloration is real, it is not a good sign.  The skin of the face has a very rich blood supply, so necrosis of that area would be indicative of something very bad happening, and taking the pictures from that angle would minimise the visual impact.

The other picture making the rounds is this one:
Again, I don't know when this was taken, but to me it looks older.  At least it's a head-on shot.  First of all, notice how her eyes are still closed as they are in every picture taken of her since she died.  Despite the claims that she is getting better, she has clearly not opened her eyes.  If she ever did, I am 100% certain that the pictures would be online instantly.  But what most people are talking about in this picture is the supposed lower lip piercing:
As disturbing as this entire case has been from the very beginning, I highly doubt this is actually a lip piercing.  It looks to me more like a reflection off her lip gloss.  But considering how irrational this family has acted, nothing would surprise me at this point.

216 comments:

  1. my very first suspicion is that the setting looks an awful lot like a hospital room - and I had confirmation that the blanket IS a hospital issue blanket. from there, a study was done on the hair, and it was pointed out that Nailah has not been seen in that particular hairstyle since the first interviews. all of this leads to the conclusion that the "new" picture is actually a year and a half old - taken in either the New Jersey hospital she was first transferred to, or possibly still in the original hospital after the trach was put in.

    as for the picture taken by the hairdresser - we also noticed the hair looks a lot thinner than it does in earlier pictures.

    as for the legal proceedings, my interpretation is that the process is locked in a death spiral. the family demands to be allowed to prove she is alive. the court grants the demand, and the family disappears for a while only to come back with another demand to be allowed to prove she is alive. the demurrers are essentially a "put up or shut up" demand, and the current judge has denied them - allowing this to carry on at great expense and inconvenience to the hospital. the long term prediction is that the family will eventually get big winnings, the judge will pat himself on the back for being so modern and progressive, and a new industry will be born keeping dead people permanently undead, so their family can collect their winnings and come play dress up once a week.

    we could call it "Motel Styx" - we'll keep the ventilator on for you.

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    1. Motel Styx...ouch. Very good, but ouch.

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    2. It's obvious that the last pic is older.

      She also appears very deceased.

      But neither that -- nor others' similar observations here -- are immediately relevant. This family believes she's undead (or have convinced/inured themselves to such, or have publicly positioned themselves so that they can't NOT believe it). They'll insist she's alive as long as the vent functions, even if only a few square inches of her are photo-appropriate.

      People can convince themselves of, or get used to, the damnedest things.

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    3. Ken Brown wins the internet!

      Wednesday

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    4. People on the Keep Jahi Alive Facebook page are accusing folks of photoshopping that picture of Jahi with the decomp on her lips and under her nose. If you'll notice, her eyelashes are gone as well and her eyes seemed fused shut. the picture Nailah is trying to pass off as current shows Jahi still very overweight. THAT'S how you tell it's not new. Regardless if you're dead, alive or partially alive, anyone hooked up to life support will lose a ton of weight....especially after more than two years. The hairdresser who posted the instagram photo, never once thought she was giving away the truth when she uploaded it. Can you imagine the health risk to people in contact with Jahi's decaying body? The life support slows down the decay, but she will still start decomposing. I am shocked that so many people are fooled by this.

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    5. @ Ken...better get that "Motel Styx" trademark registered ASAP! :)

      The pic would be from St. Peter's Hospital in NJ. There *was* no trach (or feeding tube) done at CHO, which was the basis for the original legal action...the hospital refused to perform futile care procedures on what they'd determined to be a dead body. Soon after the transport of Jahi's body from CHO, but before we found out where it had actually landed, Dolan commented on how bad her condition was upon admission, and how it had "improved" after those procedures. As Renee already noted, this pic shows Jahi with the heavier body mass she had at the time of her demise. In pics taken later in 2014 and maybe 2015, we've been able to see, at least in glimpses of the arms and legs, the weight loss that would be more typical in a sustained medical maintenance situation. (I don't think of it as "life support," if there isn't any "life" left to "support.")

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    6. The last three pictures posted on the Keep page that were said to be the most recent are this one, one from 10/22/2015 and one from 2/17/2015. Three different seasons and in all three Nailah is wearing a white tank top. She claims that Jahi can maintain her own body temperature and February of 2015 was colder than February of this year so it seems unusual that she would wear tank tops all year round.

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    7. I haven't really followed this story, but I just wanted to say that there are people who wear shorts all year round.

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    8. and even if Jahi didn't need it, Nailah could still be keeping the thermostat at 75 degrees so she could wear tank tops.

      but I suspect the greater likelihood is she's lying.

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  2. that far off center, I suspect it is something other than a piercing. plus no other pictures have shown a piercing, there.

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    1. Good point but in their haste with photoshop, they made her mole(?) on her forehead disappear and left that instead. Whatever it is. I don't think that's a glob of lip gloss so what is it?

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    2. I'd guess a mark from the surgery or having the airway, before the trach went in.

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    3. To me it honestly looks like a boil or a zit, but I'll leave the guessing to people like you guys who have more educated guesses.

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    4. I'm thinking that the white spot is poor photoshop use. the nose is heavily retouched as well, and when they smoothed out the face, they needed to add highlights again. The second most obvious place is along the nose. They also retouched the lips (the lips are super pale, and it could just be lipliner, but PS would make much more sense with the rest of the edited image), so it is likely where they tried adding highlight there as well.

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  3. I agree, I don't think the mark above her lip is a shadow. It looks necrotic to me (I'm a legal secretary in the medical malpractice field, so I see it from time to time).

    As for the legal proceedings, it's moving slower than some civil cases might, but given the publicity and complexity of this case, it would move slower than standard cases.

    I'm not familiar with California law to state anything about the demurrers.

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    1. You can also see that her hairline has receded as well in the photo with the necrosis. If you look at the picture Nailah released as "new", Jahi has a full head of hair which comes down well onto her forehead. In the hairdressers photo, the hairline is way up on her head.

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  4. OMG, Ken Brown, that was so to-the-point! I'd laugh if it wasn't so dead tragic. Doc, thanks for posting and examining so closely!

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    1. Thank you, I had help from friends who know a thing or two about medicine - and death-deniers - and the legal arena.

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  5. 2nd photo has been obviously & heavily photoshopped/blurred from the nose up. Eye area has definitely been color corrected & blurred. A big spot of her forehead is very blurred out. And there seems to be a disappearing forehead mole? It looks like what teenage girls do to their IG photos with those crappy makeupover apps. The top photo is so sad, it honestly looks like an autopsy photo. If you've ever in real life seen a deceased person, you can look at that photo and see she's dead. There's some indefinable difference that's just obvious.

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    1. Now that you mention it, autopsy pictures is an apt comparison. All of the pictures on the hairdresser's instagram page are either side views, looking down from the top of her head or just her hair. There are none taken head on and the ones on Facebook that are full frontal are intentionally blurry.

      In one of the instagram pictures you can see a small round black thing inside Jahi's ear:

      https://www.instagram.com/p/BAstfW0J7Eu/?taken-by=yess_idoitall

      What the heck is that?

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    2. Another view:

      https://www.instagram.com/p/-cWxeIJ7PB/?taken-by=yess_idoitall

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    3. More pictures:

      https://www.instagram.com/p/BBc1m_YJ7AZ/?taken-by=yess_idoitall

      https://www.instagram.com/p/9JtxqBp7KM/?taken-by=yess_idoitall

      https://www.instagram.com/p/-bifVWJ7P2/?taken-by=yess_idoitall

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    4. Her eyes in the hairdressers photo look like they are glued shut and painted black. Look closely at them. There are no lashes. Also, yes, it looks like there is something going on with the skin below the nose and on the upper lip...and it doesn't look good.

      Kate Johnson

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    5. Nailah commented on this picture that Jahi had an EEG done.

      https://www.instagram.com/p/BB3BaYCps/?taken-by=yess_idoitall

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  6. For anyone with a strong stomach and a bit of morbid curiosity this is the instagram page of Jahi's hairdresser. If you take the time to scroll through her photos you will see she includes several of Jahi, apparently to advertise her braiding skills. I don't know much about instagram but if the time stamps mean anything it appears the first one dates to Jahi's birthday which was in October and the last picture was stamped 1 week ago.

    Thank you for the update Doc! I was hoping you'd comment on her appearance in these un-retouched pictures. It's striking how different they are to the ones posted on the Facebook Keep page. The latest one posted there looks as if it were taken using some kind of hazy filter. Even the mole on her forehead is practically blurred out. Mrs. Winkfield commented on one picture that she had to undo the braids after Jahi had an EEG done because the gel messed them up. I wonder what the result of that was.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/BCqQY5hp7KS/

    The first case management conference regarding the federal case is next Thursday.

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    1. Thank you for that link and if you look closely, those braids look like stitches, they are so tight I would not expect them to be very comfortable on ANYBODY, but I agree with, not the usual, all the posters here, very astute posts with no trolls yet, but I guess I might be speaking too soon...

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    2. If you go here and look at the braids she has done on other people, all of them are very tight. Most of my African American family and friends who get their hair braided also have them braided very tightly for several reasons. One big one is that it is outrageously expensive to have it done because it takes a LONG time. Once you have the braids in, you want to KEEP them for some time. Ever seen a black woman with a weave or braids patting her head? It's because her skin itches and she's not going to scratch and mess up the pricey hairdo. Often called "the black girl pat", at least in my area.

      The other reason is that it's hard to do such intricate braids without doing them tightly.

      Very often this leads to receding hairlines and balding if done for a long time. The chemicals used to straighten (or "relax") the hair can also burn the skin on the scalp and affect the follicles.

      An older photo of Jahi's braidwork: https://www.instagram.com/p/BAvVp0KJ7Fq/?taken-by=yess_idoitall

      Wednesday

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    3. Doc has his own personal pet troll, Johnny. He will be around soon with his expert google knowledge of medicine.

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    4. Sounds like Sweet Justice is doing some damage control.

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  7. If it's taking this long it usually means that defense is working on a settlement for millions.

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  8. "Jim there's nothing I can do for her. I'm a doctor not a mortician."

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  9. hair is thinning - braids further apart with more scalp showing even since October. The eyes look sewn shut. Hair growing on her face around the forehead almost to the cheeks. not sure how long hair grows after death, but have heard that it does.

    The photo on facebook is really old, it posted over a year ago, I just cannot remember where.

    And noslack, they don't have to be comfortable cuz she is dead!

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    1. Doc can correct me if I'm wrong but her hair will continue to grow as long as she's connected to a vent and receiving nutrition.

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    2. right. hair only appears to grow in a short time after cardiac death - but it doesn't require a brain to grow hair - it can be grown in a petri dish.

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  10. I wanted to point out that in the instagram photos that are posted if you click on one it tells you how many weeks ago the photos were put up. The most recent one (1 week) is the one where her hair is thinning and the dark areas below her nose (philtrum - I must remember that) are visible.

    This photo was posted 8 weeks ago and you can see a difference between now and then:

    https://www.instagram.com/p/BAvVp0KJ7Fq/?tagged=prayforjahi


    21 weeks ago (bday): https://www.instagram.com/p/9JtxqBp7KM/

    For crying out loud, MACHINES are making her heart beat! Please click and read Nailah's quote:

    https://www.instagram.com/p/jeobO3C9XH/?tagged=prayforjahi

    An old photo of Jahi with her little brother and her uncle - the child is dead, let her go.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/jvuTsqopm-/?tagged=prayforjahi

    Wednesday

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    1. The difference between the October photo and the one posted in January is indeed obvious. The more recent one reminds me of what we often see when some *older* women get their hair braided. We see more bare scalp *between* the braids, and much less hair *in* the braids, because of the thinning of hair that is fairly common as women age.

      Point being...hair loss can happen, even to women (and men) who are otherwise reasonably healthy, as our bodies go through hormonal changes as we move through middle age into the golden years. So, I'm wondering if whatever "treatment" has been administered since the move to NJ (the hormone replacement therapy, all those vitamin and mineral supplements that Nailah talks about) just isn't doing the job any more.

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  11. A "demurrer" is a formal assertion what means, "even if everything you say is true you still do not have a cause of action." A demurrer, as we have seen here, is filed if at all right off the bat, as soon as the initial complaint is filed.

    In American law, a "cause of action" is a set of facts which combined with the relevant law is a situation which a court is required to look into. If I go to court and allege, "I was driving lawfully down the road, and when I proceeded on a green light this other guy ran the red light and hit my car, which resulted in $x medical costs and $y damage to my car" I have stated a cause of action, because the law imposes the requirement that everyone behave with ordinary care, running a red light is not ordinary care (and anyway it's a violation of statute) and the law further requires that people who do not behave with ordinary care shall be required to pay money to clean up the mess they have created. (Later I will have to prove all this, but at the beginning at least I have to say it correctly.)

    If on the other hand I go in and say, "My neighbor Mr. Jones threw garbage over my back fence, which caused damage, so I am suing (the other neighbor) Mr. Brown" that is not a cause of action, because even if everything I say is true Brown is not (on this showing) responsible. If Brown is responsible I need to come up with allegations that tie this thing up. Brown will file a demurrer if he is well advised.

    Something like this did happen early in this case. The McMaths included a physician in the lawsuit without saying anywhere that he was in charge or had anything directly to do with Jahi's death. (The initial pleadings were notably sloppy.) He demurred. (And I lost interest so I don't know how it came out.)

    A lot of things can be wrong with a pleading so that it does not add up to a legal "cause of action." Sometimes the parties named are not the right ones, and there are many situations which the courts will not look into. Merely because someone dies in the course of a medical procedure does not mean that anyone, either the doctor or the hospital or anyone else, has to pay damages on account of that death. Someone has to be shown to have been careless or otherwise at fault. In the pleadings all you have to do is claim that, but you do have to say so specifically, or the suit will be thrown out on demurrer. At trial of course you have to actually prove it, which is something else again.

    This stuff is pretty simple but I hope it clarifies things.

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    1. All great examples, Joaquin! Thanks for "helping" Doc while I was offline for a few days :)

      To summarize, there are two ways of defining "demurrer."

      The *actual* definition is " a challenge to the legal sufficiency of a pleading or complaint."

      The one I like better is one that's actually included in the Wiki article...the lawyers saying, "So what" to the pleading :)

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  12. Nailah will be moving to Beverly Hills soon. After she gets the 4.5 million dollar settlement. The neighborhood is planning to put up a welcome banner for them.

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  13. I don't think the discoloration of her bottom lip is lipstick. It appears to extend below her lip line and beyond the corner of her mouth. I can't say for sure, though, since pictures become blurred the further you zoom in.

    I hate to think of what real pictures of Jahi would look like. Ones with no filters, photoshop, or minimizing angles. I'm sure they would show something much different than the image of Jahi that her family is presenting to the public. At this point, I am really concerned about Jahi's younger siblings and the psychological impact of all of this.

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    1. "At this point, I am really concerned about Jahi's younger siblings and the psychological impact of all of this."

      So am I. Her older sister had a lovely little baby boy last year but she is only 20 years old. Perhaps if her mother were around she would have waited a few more years before enlarging the family.

      I can't imagine that it's healthy for Jahi's little sister to be sharing a bedroom with Jahi, yet apparently that is the case. Poor little kid.

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    2. Totally agree. Part of the job of parenting is helping our kids deal with life's big challenges, like the transition of a loved one. We need to let them see *us* experience the stages of grieving, and we need to lead them through *their* own process too. But this can't happen for kids, if their *parents* insist on pretending that the departed sibling is still alive, and the entire family's lifestyle is disrupted to accommodate that delusion.

      I also feel bad for the *other* kids who were part of Jahi's life on earth...her school classmates and friends. Because the death of a child is always especially horrific, most schools have grief counseling services to help the kids, and their teachers, work through this loss together. But because Jahi's younger siblings attended the same school that she did, the school community was deprived of this opportunity, and instead got recruited to wear their "pray for Jahi" t-shirts and "Jahi is alive" bracelets. So they've never gotten the chance to either grieve Jahi's passing, or to move on to celebrate her life and cherish their memories. Wrong on SO many levels. :(

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    3. Even if Nailah wins the lawsuit lottery, she is not going to spend any money of therapy for Jahi's siblings. It is really sad.

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  14. The white area on her bottom lip looks more like a zit than anything else.
    it is worth noting that we have gone from photos and video of Jahi allegedly moving to voice commands her hands and feet,even the ridiculous one where she appeared posed in a sitting up position, as well as full face photos, to photoshopping her skin color to hide discoloration (i loved the tide line on her face and neck) to a photo where is now viewed only from one side and at an unnatural angle.
    As Doc says, it is likely to be discoloration caused by something nasty and necrosis fits the bill.

    Dead people tend to start decomposing from the inside at the moment of death before it becomes noticeable externally.
    The extremities are often the first to show simply because they are at the end of the tube for blood delivery.

    Given that Jahi is dead and decomposing despite their claims and manipulated images, i would presume that they would have to be scrupulous in regard to her hygiene as well as themselves due to all the horrible bacteria floating around.
    I would think that any kind of external injury be it a knock, a scrape or even the entry site to whatever tubes they are using would allow all the little bacteria to go for a nice day out and start to work on said site.

    if it is a sign of some kind of infection on her lip, i dread to think what lies under all the blankets that we can't see.

    Death will do its thing no matter how long or hard you try to deny it. There will come a point where the infections and tissue breakdown is simply too much for any medication or medical intervention to circumvent.
    Death is forever, medicines and medical expertise can't outlast death

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  15. She looks a lot younger in this picture than in previous pictures. A lot. It doesn't even really look like the same person, which may reflect how much the other pictures have been doctored. The other "recent" picture here obviously is not recent at all, but some months or perhaps over a year old. I've never seen a picture in this transaction which was reliably dated, so we are supposed to take the family's word for the timing. Here, as to this last picture, I'm skeptical.

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    1. I totally agree. IMHO, we've never been able to truly rely on *any* photos or videos posted by the family as reliable "evidence" of *anything,* either in relation to the timing, or selective editing.

      We all know that the time of *posting* a photo may have no relationship at all to when that photo was actually *taken.* That's why "Way Back Wednesday" and "Throwback Thursday" are now fun nostalgia traditions on Facebook.

      But besides that, we also have a bizarre situation here, in which Jahi's mother likes to play "dress up" with her daughter's remains. So, we can't be sure what's *really* going on underneath the fancy manicures, makeup, and hairdressing.

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    2. My theory is that Nailah is mentally ill. Normal people do not behave in this way.

      The only photo whose dating I would accept would be one with a very recent newspaper in the pic, like in the spy movies.

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  16. Question for the doc: I know that they have stored Jahi in an apartment in New Jersey to take advantage of the religion law, allowing them to keep a brain dead person on life support. Do you know how long the state would allow this because of the obvious decomp and necrosis after more than two years of this farce? Doesn't this become a health hazard to anyone that comes in contact with Jahi's body as far as bacteria and disease go? There must be some official to step in at this point when a decaying body is still above ground, right? I'm having a hard time believing N.J. hasn't stepped in yet.

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    1. Despite the skin changes seen in the pictures, there likely is very little decomposition. As long as her heart is pumping oxygenated blood, her body will not "die". This has been shown in several case reports of brain dead patients being kept on somatic support for years, including one boy sustained for 20 years. https://hods.org/pdf/Long%20Survival%20Following%20Baterial%20Meningits-Associated%20Brain%20Destruction1.pdf

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    2. They have a doctor that will sign off on papers that say the child is alive. I doubt the state will step in anytime soon.

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    3. @ReneeRose - We also need to keep in mind the fact that, though we know NJ allows that "religious objection" to a DDNC, Jahi hasn't yet, as far as we know, actually *been* declared "brain dead" in that state. St. Peter's Hospital admitted Jahi as a living patient, under the care of Dr. Jonathan Fellus, who was on staff at that time. I'm guessing that her "official" diagnosis, for medical coding purposes, was "severely disabled due to anoxic brain damage," since that's what we saw used on the Medicaid paperwork after Dr. Eck took over. And, we know from statements submitted by Dolan with the more recent federal court filing that Dr. Eck still believes that Jahi shows signs of being alive. So, as long as there is medical care still being administered, and the Medicaid documents are being approved by a doctor licensed to practiced in the state, I don't see how any public health authorities in NJ would have legal grounds to determine that Jahi is indeed a decomposing corpse instead of a live patient.

      Besides all that, there's also the fact that the general public is aware, via the media, of the fact that Jahi's "dead or alive" status is still a matter of legal debate. I can't see how the public health authorities would see fit to step in, unplug the machines, and order Jahi's remains to be buried or cremated while these court cases are still in process.

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    4. if the general public had the information we had been able to dig up, presented in an unbiased manner, most of them would come to the same conclusion we have. the difference, of course, is that we have had to dig to get our information, while Mama Nails freely broadcasts her misinformation.

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    5. Meh, it's really not that bad having dead tissue around. A little common sense sanitary practices (which may be missing over in Motel Styx - lol - priceless). The mortuary industry did a number on people for generations, insisting that embalming was absolutely necessary for proper sanitation. It's not. Many states allow home burial without embalming. Each state has its own statutes for disposing the dead, and most people do something with the body to both say good bye to the person, and to get rid of the body so that their house doesn't smell like John Wayne Gayce's crawl space.

      I'm currently faced with the decision of whether to amputate my lower leg or not as a result of a motorcycle accident (don't worry, folks, my helmet and the contents inside were untouched. Honest.). In looking at the process, I was shocked to discover I could ask for my the return of my leg. Cool, I thought, I'll have it cremated! Then, I can have the cremains turned into a diamond, get my lip pierced, and permanently have my foot in my mouth. How awesome is that! Turns out - it's easy to have your bits returned to you from the hospital. It's much harder to find a place that will cremate just the bits, while you're still alive. The idea of putting my leg in the freezer a la Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion, isn't that appetizing. As a result, my attention has switched to how to paint my toe nails should I decide on the amputation.

      To get back to the point - there may be city ordinances that require disposal of the remains, there may be state statutes that would come into play if the deceased died of a communicable disease. But, we're talking a body that died as a result of trauma. They can pretty much do with it as they want. They could get all Mary Shelley and stick her heart in Mom's writing desk (assuming they have one) only to be discovered after Mom dies.

      Public health officials and the like are not going to step in and stop a death ritual. They can't. Not unless there's a safety issue. Religion, and the freedom to mourn your dead in accordance with your beliefs, trumps government intrusion.

      Icky, yes. Walking Dead, yes (without the walking part. Or the brain eating part). Illegal? Health hazard? Nope. Nobody's forcing people to work on the body. The neighbors aren't complaining about the stench (property laws dealing with the right of quiet enjoyment could step in to force a John Wayne Gacy to use a bit of Febreeze or something, or at least bury to a depth that would eliminate neighbor annoying stench, but none of Gacy's neighbors ever got any traction with their complaints, and Gacy maintained it was a sewage problem, not a body disposal problem. Sorry for the Gacy trivia - it's all that Illinois living).

      Anyway, just to address the body disposal/public safety issue. As for the medical treatment of a dead body - Doc Bastard and others are better situated for that one. I've only ever practiced criminal and quasi criminal.

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    6. If you want to have your leg cremated find a pet cremation company. They will most likely be willing to help you with the cremation. Look in the yellow pages under pet cemeteries and crematoriums.

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    7. Well this thread took a very weird and unexpected turn...

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    8. I have a motorcyclist family member who lost his leg from a few inches below the knee down after being hit by a drunk driver. He coached his daughter's soccer team (American for football :) ) for a while, but none of the girls on the team realized he had a prosthesis. The bottom looked enough like a leg, and the top looked like a bandage around his calf. He kicked the ball with his fake leg, which then went flying off, causing all the kids to scream. High entertainment value, would recommend!

      You could have the leg stuffed and made into one of those tacky lamps! http://www.redriderleglamps.com/products/leg-lamps

      Seriously, though, good luck with your decision.
      - L

      Delete
  17. Apparently someone posted the hairdresser's pictures on the Keep page and before they were removed one of the long time faithful, Sweet Justice, had this to say:

    "Thank you page administrator for taking care of this page and keeping the people who won't let this family be, out. Each time I come to this page, those heartless and shameless fools on the other lie filled page, keep putting up pictures of jahi that has been distorted by them and they keep saying that is Jahi, last time I checked Jahi's skin is flawless. They used computer technology to put holes on her fingers and darkened the top of her nose. What will they not do, it means they are really MAD you are WINNING Jahi. MAY WHAT THEY WISH ON JAHI GO BACK TO THEM!!! May them and all their children experience this and may they not have extra time on their hand to tell lies about you. Keep Winning and keep sending those against you and your family into the flame filled pit where they belong. Let God keep fighting your battle with them. It is well. Have a beautiful weekend Jahi and family."

    She sees the blurry pictures released by the family as unaltered but the clearer pictures as the manipulated images. I guess this person hasn't asked themselves what agenda Jahi's hairdresser might have to distort the pictures she posts, and judging by her comments, with Nailah's blessing.



    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What saddens me most is how all of them, especially Nailah, concentrate so much on the superficial aspects. I can't even count the number of times I've seen her described as "skin so flawless" while completely ignoring the fact that her eyes are closed and her brain isn't functioning. All it means is that they still don't get it and probably never will.

      Delete
    2. Thank Sweet Justice for those kind wishes. indeed, my wife and I have an agreement that if we are diagnosed brain dead we will get the same fate that we wish on Jahi. to be treated with dignity and respect instead of being turned into a bizarre pseudoreligious fetish.

      Delete
    3. addendum: currently the only reason I would accept for somatic support, in the event of brain death, is to preserve my organs for transplant.

      Delete
    4. doc; how many LIVING 15 year olds do you see with flawless skin? 15 is when random eruptions are MOST common.

      Delete
    5. Ken - Few, but some. Regardless, it is irrelevant, but her family and supporters (fans?) seem to think it means she is alive.

      Delete
    6. Her eyes are glued or perhaps sewn shut which is not an uncommon procedure. My question is whether they are periodically opened and examined or will they simply keep them closed permanently? I mean, would there be any reason to check them for the courts or for ongoing documentation?

      Wednesday

      Delete
    7. they seem to think it will convince others she is alive.

      Delete
    8. @ Wednesday - I can't imagine that there would be any reason to specifically "check" the eyes until and unless there is some evidence of *other* brain-related responsive actions that could be tested more easily.

      Question for Doc B. and/or other medical professionals reading here...I understand that tarsorrhaphy makes sense when the eye needs to be protected for some *finite* period of time, to allow healing to happen. But if the eyelids remain in this position for an *extended* period of time, wouldn't the eyelid edges actually grow/fuse together, as other tissue does when stitched? Just wondering.

      Delete
    9. I believe the eyelids will heal together, so I doubt that's been done for her. One of the major signs of someone waking from a coma is opening eyes, so they should have no reason to do that.

      Delete
    10. That's what I was thinking too...many of the "updates" we see posted by the family, and those on the Keepers FB page, reference "waiting for the day when Jahi wakes up again." Not that it's ever gonna happen...but "waking up" wouldn't be observable if eyes are sewn shut.

      Delete
  18. The folks on the Keep page are so fixated on the notion that "flawless skin" is what separates Jahi from the land of the dead they have convinced themselves that any photo depicting otherwise must be the hoax.

    I wonder if Jahi's mom has inured herself to how Jahi appears now, in the flesh, and simply chooses to believe that the filmy idolized image she promotes is reality.

    I agree with Doc. When someone is this deep into denial nothing can persuade them.

    ReplyDelete
  19. There are mental conditions which alter a person's perception of reality. Anorexics look in the mirror and are convinced that they are fat, while a normal person can see that they are starving to death. Hoarders look at the junk in their living spaces and they see piles of treasures where a normal person sees garbage.

    Perhaps Nailah looks at Jahi's deteriorating corpse and genuinely SEES her little girl with flawless skin, asleep but just about to wake up any minute. Stranger things have happened.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Then it is too bad that someone doesn't step in there and get her help. I find it hard to believe that the entire family sees a healthy/improving every day child when they look at Jahi.

      Delete
    2. So very sad. I read somewhere that they have home care nurses doing shifts. It would be very difficult caring for a trach/vent patient and harder when brain dead. They must have a large turnover in nurses. I am a home care nurse and the agency I work for has a hard time staffing the more difficult cases. I couldn't do it. Those pictures by the hairdresser is on her instagram site so why would she Photoshop the areas on jahis upper lip. Also the mom posted this was her baby jahi. I wonder if mom will have the hairdresser take the pictures down?
      Mary

      Delete
    3. @ Mary - Apparently at least *one* of the pics has already been taken down. Another reader here posted yesterday that there was one pic that contained a comment from Nailah about having had an EEG done on Jahi. When I saw the post last night and tried to follow that particular link, it didn't work any more.

      Delete
    4. Scarab-it wouldn't make sense for her to take that one down because other than Nailah's comment about the EEG it was just a picture of what looks like the interior of a car. There is a photo of Jahi pre-surgery tacked to the inside of one of the sun visors.

      Delete
    5. Not sure what happened, but when I try the link, it still doesn't work. I was wondering if maybe that one photo "disappeared" because the legal team advised against mentioning the EEG so they could save that info for the court hearings? I know there was a time in the past when one of Nailah's Instagram accounts suddenly disappeared, and we thought maybe this was the result of a legal directive.

      Delete
    6. Scarab, it's still on her instagram page with the comments:

      https://www.instagram.com/yess_idoitall/

      Delete
    7. I finally found it when I searched through all the pics there. Thanks! :)

      Of course, now I'm thinking...not about Jahi's braids, but about that EEG that was done about 5 weeks ago...and how it turned out...and whether or not the results are anything worthy of being presented in court.

      Remember that the last time the plaintiffs tried to produce EEG results as evidence of an "un-dead brain," it didn't pass muster,since

      1. It was done by someone who wasn't actually certified to properly perform that test, and

      2. It was done in the apartment, not a hospital or clinic, so those reported "traces of electrical activity" could have been from normal environmental interference, not from the brain itself.

      Wonder if this one will be different.

      Delete
    8. Scarab, if they did it in the apartment won't they have the same issues with artifact? At any rate, Freedman gave both sides until April 4th to submit documents regarding trial starting date and estimated length plus discovery. Wouldn't they have to start gathering their evidence by now?

      The federal case management conference is this afternoon. If the federal court throws it back to the state to resolve they are back to square one and stuck in New Jersey until Freedman issues a ruling and so far the actual trial date hasn't been determined yet.

      Did you read the demurrers from March 14th in which the CA officials outlined the reasons the federal court can't intervene in an ongoing state issue?

      Delete
  20. All of this talk about nails being in denial or mentally ill gives her too much credit. I don't think she is either. The woman is going for a multi-million dollar payday, and if lying and learning to use photo shop is all she has to do to get it, then she is really quite savvy. What I question is the sanity of judge freedman. Either he is swayed by all the lies and b.s., or he is terribly afraid of the media attention. I can't see any other reason he let it go on this long.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I sure hope not. No amount of money could replace the loss of a loved one imo and even if she is, she has to live with the repercussions of that choice. This woman has sold her home in Cali and left her other children in the care of other relatives to stay in Jersey. I would not like to think that someone is so desperate for money that they would keep a dead body around until she can hit a fat pay day. I shudder to even think of something that horrible.

      Delete
  21. Uh, "Doc?"...I may not be a physician-(although I am pretty bright)-but do take a closer look at the first two photo's of "Jahi." They are of a MUCH younger girl-NOT the Jahi McMath of today. Possibly photo's of Jahi at 9 or 10-but they sure as hell aren't recent. Look at the head shape, the immature features, skull size, et. al. Another "Winkfield scam."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Interesting perspective, "Angelique". But maybe you can help me with one tiny problem with your hypothesis: if those pictures were take several years ago, why would the family have a "Jahi is Alive" bracelet 3 years *before* she died?

      Delete
    2. Do you think she looks younger because she has lost a lot of weight? She was a heavy girl before surgery.
      Mary

      Delete
    3. Yes, I think that's exactly why she looks younger. I meant to say that in my previous comment, but I was so irritated by Angelique's silliness that I forgot.

      Delete
    4. I think in the lower picture she looks younger, because the picture is two years old.

      she may look younger in the upper picture because there is less definition to the face and the apparent scale of the head is different than we are used to seeing.

      Delete
    5. Now, now Doc...don't kill the (irritatingly silly) messenger! :) Obviously, I completely missed "the bracelet" in the "young Jahi" shots. But then again, did I?
      "Photo-shopped?" Perhaps.
      But, (irritatingly!) the size of her skull, general features and indeed, "everything" looks "younger!"
      The angle of the photo's are unusual-so unusual that dare I say?...suggest?...hint? (aw, what the hell!) that a younger sibling is posing as Jahi?
      Far fetched? Yep. Impossible? Not with this family.
      P.S. The reason, Doc-I keep focusing on the immature appearance of "Jahi's" skull and skeleton is deeply personal-but can certainly be shared.
      Several years ago, a younger sister became critically ill.
      "J" went into heart and kidney failure at 14, spiraling from a 5'7", 128 lb. 14-year-old to a 5'7", 67 lb. 15 year old in 16 months.
      But during that horrific year and a half, "J" never appeared "younger." Very weak, hellishly thin and pale-but never "younger."

      Delete
    6. I understand your paranoia with this family, but they clearly aren't altered. Look at her neck in both - you can see the gauze that is covering her tracheostomy. Obviously they are more recent.

      Your sister was normal-sized with a normal BMI before she got sick. Jahi, on the other hand, was obese before her brain death. Obese kids look older than their age, and when they lose weight they tend to look younger. With adults it can be the opposite, as the extra weight which was filling in wrinkles is now gone, making the thinner person look older.

      Delete
  22. Ok so as a lay person with limited medical experience, why can't someone, anyone examine her eyes to see if they are fixed and dilated and do not react to light? If so, why can't she become a ward of the state and the state just pull the damn plug? This "religious" ceremony of their dead has gone too far. Look at her eyes. Dead people all have the same really dead appearance with their eyes. Like "no one is home"
    And what about skin slippage? Bed sores? How long can antibiotics actually work to heal these things? What about the severe atrophy by now? This saddens me but almost infuriates me because this little girl needs to rest in peace, not be a dollar bill for the family and a smelly 15 year old infant to play dress up with.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Because "fixed and dilated" indicates brain death only, and New Jersey allows a family to reject a diagnosis of brain death based on religious grounds.

      Delete
  23. Caring for a tubed, non trached-but-otherwise-paralyzed person was rough, on me and on her. The only thing that kept me going to work was that she actually wanted to keep living, and so I would go in.

    I can't imagine doing that to someone who was actually braindead. Hour after hour, day after day, abusing what was essentially a warm corpse.

    ReplyDelete
  24. Her eyes are fixed and dilated and have been since December of 2013. The family has never claimed that Jahi can open her eyes. In some of the pictures they have released Jahi has patches covering her eyes and in others you can see what appears to be Vaseline or something similar around her eyes which is necessary to prevent them from drying out since she can't blink.

    How can the family look into her eyes and still think she's alive? Extreme denial; it's the only explanation I can think of.

    ReplyDelete
  25. Why is this not abuse of a corpse then? Why can't the state make her a ward of the state?

    There needs to be more media attention brought to this cause for the sake of making her mother reach reality and bury her child. I know, I know.... I personally, have had to bury my own child. It's not easy but it's closure. There needs to be public outrage against this! No matter how well she is preserved, it's still abuse.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Because in New Jersey where Nailah is now keeping her, she isn't considered "dead". It's the one state in the US (from my understanding) that allows this, as baffling as it is.

      Delete
    2. New Jersey is a very, very strange place.
      Connor

      Delete
    3. And, there's no one to "declare" Jahi dead in NJ, as long as she's still officially under the care of a licensed medical doctor, who's treating her as a live disabled patient. It's not as if the family were just keeping Jahi's body in the apartment and administering some kind of homemade concoctions on their own to preserve the body from decay. This is all happening under the authority of a licensed doctor, supported by home care nurses, and paid for by Medicaid.

      Delete
    4. The law will not intervene unless someone is being damaged. We don't want government officials prowling about through private homes looking for some behavior they do not approve of anyway.

      Jahi is not being hurt from a legal standpoint. In New Jersey she is alive though seriously damaged, and she is being cared for.

      Nailah is not being damaged, she's the perpetrator.

      No neighbor so far as we know has objected to any health or other risks.

      The taxpayers of NJ are being taken to the cleaners, but such is the law in that State.

      Delete
  26. That's such bullshit. Argh.

    I think she looks younger, but it may just be the weight loss from the feeding tube and general atrophy.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Perhaps Nailah should be committed to a psychiatric institution for this serious mental illness of not allowing herself to grieve the death of her beloved child. Or denial. Or the fact she's bat shit crazy for even keeping her dead daughter functioning for her own selfish reasons. THEN maybe NJ can make poor Jahi a ward of the state and unplug her and let the poor girl seriously rest in peace.

    ReplyDelete
  28. I was actually interested in knowing whether or not being on life support would stop or effect her body's decaying. I only just heard about this case, although I remember when it initially came to the light of the media.
    It's awful to see the lengths her mother has convinced herself that her daughter may still recover. It's tragic when a young person's life is cut short but Jahi will never be the girl she was before even if she was able to make a miraculous spontaneous recovery.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Your organs (skin included) don't care if you have a brain or not. As long as they are supplied oxygenated blood, they will generally be fine (to a point). Being on a ventilator for prolonged periods risks pneumonia, being bed-bound risks decubitus ulcers (bedsores), and having indwelling urinary catheters risks urinary infections. Even with the best and most vigilant care, one of these three things invariably will cause a fatal infection.

      Delete
    2. Doc, do they generally use catheters on
      unconscious patients? She would have to be diapered anyway so I was curious.

      My dad, (who had Alzheimer's, was catheterized due to an enlarged prostate gland that totally blocked his urine and he had chronic bladder infections during that time. His kidneys eventually failed but I'm not sure if that was caused by the constant infections or the Alzheimer's.

      I'm assuming that a brain dead person would pass urine normally so why risk the infections from using a catheter?

      Delete
    3. On unconscious patients? Yes. Long-term? I honestly don't know. If she were to pass urine normally, it would be very difficult to keep her clean and dry. This would inevitably cause significant skin breakdown.

      Delete
    4. If she's already dead (as seems pretty apparent), how would an infection change anything? She can't be deader than dead. I would assume any kind of obvious infection would be completely ignored by the family, just as they are ignoring all the other signs of her death.

      Delete
    5. Because an infection would stop her heart. That's the only thing that will end this fiasco.

      Delete
    6. I recall reading in one of the medical reports submitted with the court papers (I think it was Dr. Shewmon's more recent one, written after he'd actually had a chance to personally visit Jahi and do a bedside observation) that diabetes insipidus was present. I can't imagine that this excessive urination could be managed in an *unconscious* person without catheterization.

      Delete
  29. I guess it's six of one and half a dozen of the other: skin breakdown leading to infection or catheter use leading to infection.

    I'm just amazed that she hasn't had some kind of issues after all this time. The meningitis boy was also cared for at home and he reportedly had multitudes of issues over the years.

    It just seems like you'd have a better chance of picking up a turd by the clean end than not having some kind of infection/skin breakdown/pneumonia etc. by now.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. In all likelihood, id say she probably has had a myriad of problems, but to keep their stupid illusion going on and on bad news is never put up on their facebook page because "SEE SHES GETTING BETTER WE PUT MAKEUP ON HER SHE LOOKS SO PERDY!" You can dress up a clown, but cant hide the fact that its dead inside, just like Jahi, a fact they seem to be either blissfully unaware of or refusing to admit to.
      Connor

      Delete
    2. "It just seems like you'd have a better chance of picking up a turd by the clean end "

      Someone watched TWD yesterday

      Delete
    3. ;o) Gotta love those Abe-isms!

      Abe: "You'd have better luck pickin' up a turd by the clean end."

      Delete
  30. I don't believe the mother is delusional. She knows exactly what is going on. Her sole purpose is greed. If they are able to overturn the death ruling and win on their medical malpractice case the judgement will be in the millions. All of the family's actions have been carefully scripted...tidbits of "news" strategically released around court dates. I'm hoping that the federal court will throw out the fed filing as it is nonsense. The family's numerous legal filings have also put a drain on court resources but I will admit to wanting to hear it out. I want to hear the medical team's version of events. I want to be a fly in the room listening to mama's deposition especially when confronted about her lie regarding Jahi's breast development post surgery.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I would tend to agree. If Ma were delusional she would have no problem posting recent pictures and claiming Jahi is alive. But she chooses older pictures to post for a reason . . . she knows the child is dead and just wants the rest of the world to buy into her hope of what she thinks is a deserved payout.

      Delete
    2. There isn't enough money on earth to induce me to live for two years+ with the rotting corpse of my daughter in my apartment.

      Delete
  31. Do you know how hard it is to win (at least in the US) a medical malpractice case? It's very difficult. And I'm none too pleased about tax dollars being wasted on keeping a dead girl, dead yet above ground. The only thing that makes me happy about that is IF she wins these millions of dollars, she wil have to pay Medicaid back every last dime they've spent on her. And given the level of care she has needed, that will dwindle down her "take home money." Then what's she going to do? Cash the check and pull the plug suddenly? She will be the most hated woman in America. She really hasn't thought this through.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I agree it will be a hurdle. The attorneys have been working on this from day one. I live about an hour outside of Oakland and all of this media blitz and tidbits have been placed to taint a potential jury pool. I don't know about the clawback provisions in NJ Medicaid laws but seems to me any money awarded to mama and granny for emotional stress etc are safe from this. Then afterwards, Nailah will be writing a book about her ordeal. A few years after this is over "Jahi will have succombed to her injuries". This is how I think it will play out. Maybe maybe not?

      Delete
    2. California limits the jackpot payout to $250,000. Dolan led the charge to try to get that law removed last year, and it didn't work. apparently nobody believed doctors sit in bars waiting for their beeper to go off.

      Delete
  32. Jahi's mother Nailah has been known to not only spend the "gofundme" donations on expensive dinners and Michael Kors designer items, but she uploads crocks of crap when it comes to "new" pictures and videos. A hairdressers photo was uploaded to instagram not long ago. THAT is what Jahi really looks like people. She is not 15. She is not thriving. She is not having her period every month. It's anal leakage from liquifying insides. Look at the kesselrunin blog showing the picture of Jahi with decayed lips and under her nose. It's all black. She has lost most of her muscle mass and a lot of weight. Her skin is waxy. This garbage has gone on long enough and it has to stop.

    ReplyDelete
  33. I guess what bothers me the MOST about this is how someone that has been on life support for the past 2+ years can still have this much weight on her.

    Let me be clear; I'm not trying to fat-shame here. I'm just saying that if someone gets sick with the flu, where they can't keep food sown, they will lose a LARGE amount of weight. How is someone OBVIOUSLY on IV nutrition maintaining that size?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. She's not on IV nutrition, she has a gastronomy.

      And a note to everyone: we WILL stay respectful here.

      Delete
    2. The Keepers have removed the latest picture from their Facebook page along with the last message, apparently because of news stories like this:

      http://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/national/article67403207.html

      It has been replaced with a message reiterating that the site is for prayers and well wishes only. They warn that all other posts will be deleted and the poster banned but they've been doing that from the beginning.

      Delete
    3. I was banned a long time ago. I was very respectful and simply asked a question about someone asking Jahi to smile as I had read that would take real effort and not be construed as a reflex. I was labeled as one of the "evil haters" because of that.

      Delete
    4. Doc, could a lot of what we see be water retention and bloating?

      Delete
    5. Lasacgal - I would hesitate to speculate on things like that, because that's all it would be.

      Delete
  34. From the Kansas City Star article:

    "She looks so peaceful — her eyes closed, every hair in place, her head resting on a fluffy white pillow, her mother at her side.

    But California teenager Jahi McMath has been brain dead for more than two years. And a photo of her shared over the weekend on Facebook has reignited public discussion about life support."

    Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/national/article67403207.html#storylink=cpy

    This is from Kansas, a very religious and conservative state.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Kansas City Star is published in Missouri - Kansas City Missouri.

      Delete
    2. Oops, wrong Kansas City.

      Delete
    3. Look at a map. The Kansas City Star is published in Kansas City Missouri. Why? Because even though KCMO and KCKS border one another, the larger one made famous by jazz, bbq, KC Royals, KC Chiefs and the newspaper are all in Missouri.

      Delete
    4. I admitted my mistake, but thanks for the geography lesson anyway.

      Delete
  35. What do you make of the video of her asking to move her fingers and her responding? I thought it was mere delusion and coincidence, myself but I am not a doctor

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Nailah probably noticed her involuntarily moving her fingers and *then* started taking the video until they got the timing right. Movements like that are reflexive and well described in brain dead patients.

      Delete
    2. Take a (YouTube) look at what the Schiavo's did to Terri who was in a persistent vegetative state, rather than dead. (These people later became advisers and supporters of Jahi's family.) They painted Terri with makeup and waited until she opened her eyes, then filmed, maybe for hours on end, to get the minute they needed. Looks a lot more like Terri is responding than Jahi, which she wasn't. After she finally was allowed to die naturally, an autopsy revealed her brain had liquefied.

      Delete
    3. Um, Terri didn't die naturally, she was starved and dehydrated to death. And of course loss of fluid would affect brain volume. There are also statements from various nurses to the effect that therapy could have improved her condition--something that was forbidden by her cheating husband.

      That being said, I think her family hurt their credibility by taking on this nonsense.

      Delete
    4. Alexandra - Terri Schiavo's autopsy results are readily available. Her brain had massive irreversible damage, including her visual center. No amount of therapy could have helped her.

      If Mrs. Bastard or I ever find ourselves in a situation like Terri's, we both have strict instructions to do exactly what Michael Schiavo did. You make it sound like torture, but it's humane.

      Delete
  36. Doc, at the risk of sounding like an idiot - why would her face be so shiny? In the hair-dresser's photos, it looks like there's petroleum jelly smeared all over
    -brooke

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Because her mother (and perhaps others) puts makeup on her like she's a doll. It's all very macabre.

      Delete
  37. I received my April 2016 copy of National Geographic today. There's a story on "The Science of Death" skimming through it I found a picture of Yah I, showing the vent hoses to her trach and those heart things on her eyes. Her mom is holding her hand.
    Mary

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I meant picture of jahi . Auto correct.

      Delete
  38. Here are a couple of pictures, the first one was taken by a family member and the second is on the Facebook page of Eno Inyang who posts on the Keep page. The Keep page put the deleted picture back up. It was shared via from Eno's page. Don't know what connection this person could have to the family since according to FB they are based in the UK.

    https://www.facebook.com/603763623048124/photos/a.604300286327791.1073741827.603763623048124/952414451516371/?type=3&theater

    https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=568968153265421&set=a.322208047941434.1073741828.100004567230712&type=3&theater

    Her face looks much fuller than the hairdresser's photos. They must be older.

    ReplyDelete
  39. Here is a news article on Jahi from March 21. http://www.newser.com/story/222341/family-jahi-mcmath-healthy-and-beautiful-as-ever.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The Washington Post also posted a story on March 22. It won't allow me to link to it but it's on their website under national news and the "Morning Mix". It's a pretty thoughtful piece although it repeats the notion that it was just a "routine tonsillectomy". Pretty shoddy for the Washington Post but at least the rest is straightforward regarding brain death.

      Delete
  40. I just don't think is normal folks can get into the mind of a mother who can do this with her daughters remains for a payday - no matter the price.
    It's just a really sick little game she's playing and the only good that can possibly come out of this is the autopsy IF her mother lets her have one, and the scientific community can learn more about death, brain death, and prolonged profusion on a brain dead patient.

    ReplyDelete
  41. I was curious as to why a majority of her pics are always taken on her right side so I googled her images. In a photo with a pink blanket, her left ear is visible and may have darkened skin on the outer ear and a dark spot in the inner ear. On a few other pics with a left view, she has red valentine glasses, pic with her mom lips almost touching hers, and pic with her face lighter than her neck with long hair covering left ear. Could it be possible her left ear has deteriorated?

    ReplyDelete
  42. I believe that most of her hair has fallen out and her hair is braided with weave hair. The texture of the braids reminds me of a little girl's hair who had a similar style at a bday party I was invited to. I asked who braided the lil girl's hair and the parent said her aunt. After inquiring about the price the aunt told me kids' natural hair was $25 and if hair is bought, the cost was $40. Upon further inspection I noticed the lil girl's hair was very short but the bought hair made the appearance look as if the girl had longer hair. After two years on a vent, Jahi's hair may be very thin. It seems as if the stylist didn't have much to work with and bought hair was the only option. The bun is smaller than in other pics.

    ReplyDelete
  43. Doc, I posted a comment about a photo I found on images but don't know if it went thru. Mama Nails always posts pics of Jahi's right side so I checked to see if I could find any photos of her left side. I found a pic of Jahi with a pink blanket and her left ear exposed. The pic is blurry or I need my eyes checked but it appears to show blackened skin on the outer ear and a dark spot inside the ear. Three other pics: red valentines glasses is a left view; mother lips to hers hair is pulled back in bun; and pic where her face is much lighter and neck is dark and long hair is visible covering left ear. My guess is that's what the family doesn't want us to see. I watched a video of her moving on command in bed it may have been she moved her right hand then the bottom of bed raised up. The camera zooms up to her face but it cuts out the left ear portion. Every time she's supposed to move on command the video cuts off. And this is the girl whose family says she is popping her fingers to beyonce on iPod and sitting up with her legs crossed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. the crossed legs picture is the most betraying of the lot. I can pose our training dummy with its legs crossed and have it look more lifelike.

      Delete
    2. That picture is betraying in more ways than one. Anyone who doubts the mother's motives has only to look at it. She posed Jahi as if she were a doll, and then left a comment thanking Jahi for sitting like this for her. Mom staged this picture. She knows exactly what's going on. She is not a confused, deluded woman.

      Delete
  44. This site posted 3 pictures I haven't seen yet. The first one just features a new manicure. I could get my fingers to bend like that but I had to really press them against a desk top. Her hand is just resting on something. Is that caused by contractures? It's weird because in the very brief video posted a couple of months ago, of her forefinger and thumb coming together, you don't see this extreme bend at the first finger joint.

    http://kesselrunin12parsecs.tumblr.com/

    It really makes me wonder what the true timeline is for each picture and video.

    ReplyDelete
  45. I have a question that you may have answered in the past but I can't find the answer.

    Is it safe for others to be around her body? I am going on the assumption she has passed on... I just wonder what her body would smell like and if any "toxins" would be coming off of a decaying body. I just worry about the other children and even adults being exposed to anything and what they may be breathing in.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It should be perfectly safe. As has been explained before, as long as the ventilator is oxygenating her blood and her heart is pumping it, her body's tissues will survive.

      Delete
    2. You might want to watch this video. It's made by a lovely young female mortician, Caitlin Doughty, and she answers the question, "Are dead bodies dangerous?":

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw7bsNKsABQ

      Mind you, these are dead dead bodies, not those maintained on a ventilator which are still biologically alive. Basically, unless you are planning on performing an autopsy or embalming one, as Doc said, it's perfectly safe.

      She has an entire Youtube series called Ask a Mortician. It's quite informative and really very funny.

      Delete
  46. Those first 2 photos are the exact same photo, just cropped and rotated. Given that mark above the lip, I think they may not have had another decent angle to take the shot from. Also agree that the "newer" photo seems to be older.

    ReplyDelete
  47. Ok, let's play devils advocate. This has been on my mind all day. There isn't enough epi in the world to still keep her heart beating well enough to sustain itself without some type of electrical activity coming from her brain to keep it beating. If she were just switched off real "body" death would occur after her lungs stopped working and deprived her heart of enough O2 that she went into cardiac arrest. Then she would be, dead dead. Be it in the bowels of her brain stem, or somewhere those electrical thingys work, something is beating her heart. Not just blowing up her lungs is actually making her heart beat.
    So with that said, I can maybe .0000000000001% see that in Moms thinking that she is somewhat alive and doesn't want to starve the heart of O2 before it quits. Brain or no brain. That's a difficult position to be in.

    Please don't roast me, I'm just trying to think outside the box. I'm no doctor. I'm not even that smart. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The heart requires no outside stimulation to function - it has its own nervous system (look up the sinoatrial node). There is some autonomic input, but that only works to speed it up as needed, it isn't necessary.

      Think about it this way: heart transplants couldn't work if central input were required.

      Delete
    2. On you tube there are several videos of a heart beating without a video simply by being attached to a tube pumping blood. "Real Heart beating after removing from body" is the one I looked at. Warning: It's pretty graphic, obviously. -Tamara

      Delete
  48. Gotcha, Doc Bastard. Thank you for the knowledge and the answer.

    ReplyDelete
  49. When this happened my daughter read about it and begged me to never do this to her should anything ever happen to her. She is turning 14 next month. She understands what happened and would not want to be kept "alive" like that.

    ReplyDelete
  50. I am curious if after 2 years why Jahi's body is not contracted. Of course we have only seen headshots but her head looks to be flat on pillow.
    Mary

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Her hands and feet are contracting. The mom forces Jahi's hands open for the pictures.

      Delete
  51. Omg! I am just so fed up with this crap. I pray that this judge doesn't pull a Grillo and give Mama Nails what she wants or feel entitled to. Its obvious that these pics and videos are not current to us or some, but to Mama Nails, manipulation and lying is her way of doing things.

    I have hope that CHO and their insurance carrier will petition this judge to make an order to have MaMa Nails put up or shut up and allow Jahi to undergo testing with a neutral certified dr. Then and only then we will know and put this to rest.

    Mama Nails and her family is looking for a big payday. Her desire is for the state of CA to pay, the state where it all started. I can see Mama Nails playing all of her D-list roles as a emotially invested mother trying to get all the support she needs Because she didn't win an Oscar. If she did win and was able to ship Jahi back across country, she will still have CA pay thru Medicaid and still get her caregiver check. Mama is not parting ways with her millions. That is her character.

    Dr. Shewmon has stated in his report records show she had a period or two and she has developed breasts. She had breasts before entering hospital or was she just chubby? Does her records show that her body has/ had infections or did the NJ hospital nurses or dr not chart those events for an alive patient?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. She had a rather well-developed bustline in the pictures of her before the surgery.

      Delete
    2. It will be most interesting to see what *is* eventually presented, if any, related to whatever medical records were generated at St. Peters's Hospital during the 6 or 7 months there.

      IMHO, one of the major reasons for Dolan's big fail with the October 2014 filing was the fact that Dr. Fellus lost his license in June of 2014, under disgraceful circumstances that would have likely caused the CA court to discredit him as a "licensed and qualified medical doctor" who had actually examined and treated Jahi.

      We know that this information *must* exist, since Jahi was admitted to St. Peter's as a live patient, under the care of Dr. Fellus. We know that St. Peter's is a licensed and accredited hospital, so surely they would have kept records of any treatment and testing performed under his direction. Dolan himself made statements early in 2014, about how Jahi was "doing much better" as a result of getting the necessary medical "treatment" that had been denied in California.

      But...none of that information was presented in October 2014. And none of the "evidence" that Dolan was left with passed muster, from a medical standpoint.

      Delete
    3. If Mom is doing this for some sort of payday what good is money going to do her if she and her remaining children end up on a psych ward. I truly believe the mother has lost it and is in need of some good therapy and her family too.

      Delete
  52. "New" video of a foot twitch on the Keep page. This time you can hear a TV, miscellaneous background noise and some sort of medical device beeping. It reminds me of a hospital room setting. I wonder how old this one is, although the partial leg that is visible looks extremely atrophied.


    https://www.facebook.com/keepJahiMcmathonlifesupport/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. IMHO, the fact that we've never seen a "long shot" (Nailah or anyone else at Jahi's bedside actually speaking the command, and the movement immediately following, several times in succession) suggests that there's more "selective editing" than real "responsiveness" here.

      Delete
    2. I just read Shewmon's amended declaration again and it makes me wonder if the complete set of videos he saw were all like the ones they released to the public. So far, none of the videos show Nailah's face during the coaxing. If that is the case with all of them then Shewmon must be very gullible.

      He made the statement that in his mind there are only two possibilities regarding the videos: either Jahi is truly responding or the family is guilty of fraud. He states that he just can't accept that they would lie about anything so he gives the latter option zero probability.

      They told Shewmon that Jahi was flat chested prior to surgery regardless of all of the available evidence to the contrary. I wish I could ask him what he thought of their credibility after showing him all of the pictures of Jahi with prominent breast development.

      There's another interesting aspect regarding Shewmon's research. I found a study he had participated in that dealt with several children who were born without cerebral hemispheres. He mentioned that several went through puberty even though they basically just had functioning brain stems. He claims that these children also show discriminative awareness which leads him to believe that consciousness isn't entirely a function of the higher brain.
      http://hydranencephaly.com/drshewmonsarticle.htm

      I guess it all ties in with his opinion that you don't really need a functioning brain.

      Delete
    3. Agreed. IMHO, it's possible that Dr. Shewmon's declaration might not be just the result of gullability or lack of fact-checking Could be that he considers Jahi as yet another "interesting case" that he can study and document for his research.

      Delete
    4. Yes, I've thought that all along. Why else would he travel all over the country at his own expense just to examine these people.

      In all of the research I've read thus far he never once suggests that brain dead patients will ever regain consciousness. To the contrary, he says outright that they will not. His interest is moving the goalposts as to what constitutes life. The quality of that life and meaningful function never enter into his equation.

      Delete
    5. Doctor Shewmon categorically rejects the concept of brain death, even while saying that for all practical purposes, a person with no brain function is dead.

      Delete
  53. The post mentions Jesus and the fact that this is Good Friday. Another Easter approaches and the faithful expect Jahi to rise but an undated video of a foot twitch will suffice.

    ReplyDelete
  54. New court documents up on Professor pope's blog:

    http://medicalfutility.blogspot.com/2016/03/jahi-mcmath-family-moves-to-bifurcate.html

    Plaintiff's are asking to try the liability part of their suit first. They argue that the issue of whether Jahi is alive or dead is too fraught with emotions and political ramifications and the jury would be too distracted and/or prejudiced to render a fair decision regarding liability.

    He also links to a long article involving the Aden Hailu case and how it might affect future brain death disputes.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm actually surprised that the *defendants* didn't move for this a long time ago. IMHO, the original complaint as filed never made sense in the first place, since the "dead or alive" issue is a whole separate issue from the med mal charges.

      Delete
    2. Did you notice the alternative dispute resolutions each party is willing to participate in? In their case management statements plaintiffs chose mediation; Rosen checked off mediation, settlement conference, and neutral evaluation; and CHO just checked settlement conference.

      Does that mean both defendants are willing to settle but plaintiffs aren't? I can see why they are anxious for a jury trial on the issue of liability. Just based on the notes of the attending nurses it's clear that someone at CHO dropped the ball when Jahi was bleeding.

      Rosen seems pretty confident that he isn't liable because he wasn't notified but the nurse's notes make clear that at least three other CHO attending physicians were aware of the continuing "frank" blood loss and did nothing.

      I think CHO pretty much has no choice but to settle and it would be best for them if Jahi isn't found to be "recovered" from brain death.

      I can see why plaintiffs wouldn't want to settle before finding out if they can get the bigger reward in the event that Jahi's death certificate is overturned.

      I read an article regarding what one should and shouldn't do if being sued for malpractice and one of them is never alter or supplement the medical record after the fact. At least two of Jahi's nurses did just that several days after the surgery. In the process they not only damaged their own credibility but incriminated the doctors.

      We will probably never know what really happened in the ICU or what exactly caused the massive bleeding in the first place. I think Jahi should have been laid to rest back in 2013 but I also wonder how such serious blood loss can be ignored in an ICU when that possibility is the very reason she was scheduled to recover there.

      The suctioning issue also bothers me. I don't know what a reasonable hospital policy is regarding that but it doesn't seem very smart to allow possibly panicked family members and even a minor child to do something that can potentially cause such damage to a post-op site.

      In the suit the wording stresses that Nailah was just suctioning the front of Jahi's mouth but I can imagine that a child who feels they are drowning in blood could be over zealous and disturb the clots.

      Delete
    3. That's one of the reasons I'm so interested in finding out what *really* happened in the hospital. As Doc B. and others have already mentioned in many of our previous discussions, information presented as "witness accounts" doesn't always tell the whole/real story.

      Do we know for sure how much blood Jahi actually lost? Was it really the "several liters" reported by Grandma, or just the extremely disturbing (but not always life-threatening) amount that happens with a bad nosebleed or any other injury above the neck, just because this area has so many blood vessels?

      Do we know for sure that the nursing staff actually directed the family to do the suctioning, or did Grandma take it upon herself to initiate this, since she'd been working in nursing and seen this done before?

      Do we know for sure that Jahi's cardiac arrest happened *because* of this blood loss, or did something else happen concurrently?

      Do we know for sure that Jahi's vital signs began to drop to a critical level, and that this was ignored by the staff, for hours before the code was called?

      If indeed this is all true, and actually happened in a properly-staffed and equipped hospital, yes, I'd have to say that somebody failed, bigtime. But I'm not convinced that we have all the facts...yet.

      Delete
    4. The family stated in earlier court papers that Jahi was given several blood transfusions, something that would be documented by the medical records and easily refuted if it were not. Surely she was losing a significant amount of blood if it required transfusions.

      I'm pretty sure the court papers say that Nailah began suctioning long before her mother even arrived at 10:00pm. Uncle Omari stated in interviews that Nailah and Marvin were both involved in the suctioning and the grandmother also said she and Jahi were suctioning in that interview on Velez's TV show. Then again, grandma told Jane that she was the one who told Nailah to barge into the ICU before she was settled. She made it sound as if she were there but it could have been by phone.

      Another thing that bothers me is grandma's fantastical claim that she had to call the code. An ICU patient would be hooked up to several monitors and the need to call a code would be instantly known to the nurses even if they weren't in the room at the time.

      I remember visiting my father in law when he was in an ICU. He coded while we were in the visitor's area but we knew what happened when everyone went running into his room.

      According to the family's side no one in the entire ICU was doing their job. It would be a tragedy if the hospital never gets to tell their side of the story.

      Delete
    5. we have seen NONE of the actual hospital reports, because the family has had all records sealed under HIPPA while they have been talking up a storm.

      according to Granny, SHE took it upon herself to begin suctioning instead of using the basin the hospital staff provided; which would have allowed them to have an accurate measure of the blood lost, and not disturb the surgical site. they also had tweeted that Jahi was talking and laughing - despite the fact that standard policy for such surgery - and witnesses have confirmed they were ordered that Jahi was not to speak, and was to communicate only by writing on a whiteboard provided.

      and as said above, the family came into the PICU when they had been told to wait.

      from all the information I and my associates have found, the only thing the hospital was remiss in was in NOT calling security to forcibly remove the family.

      Delete
    6. @ Ken - gotta agree with you there...IF *any* of the various stories that the family has told are true. As they say, "IF is a mighty big word to be spelled with just two letters."

      And, we've heard and read several different conflicting versions of the who-what-when-how "facts," between various media interviews the family has given, and what has been stated in the court documents.

      Delete
  55. I can't imagine the pain this family is going through. I just lost my beloved little dog a few days ago to sudden death and the pain is immense. I can only imagine the level of pain is going thru.

    I can't believe they are doing this for some type of profit because if this were my child no amount of money could compensate me for the loss of my child.

    All I can say is that all we can do is take a "wait and see attitude" because this is a horrible no win situation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. we've been waiting two years, now; and what we've seen is a lot of behavior inconsistent with grief. what the behavior has been more consistent with was grifting.

      Delete
    2. There were several new filings in the civil court case yesterday. One of the defendants filed a peremptory challenge against Judge Freedmon and there is another document that appears to contain CHO's version of the events leading up to Jahi's cardiac arrest.

      I hope Professor Pope adds them to his McMath page. It's getting interesting.

      Delete
  56. Professor Pope added the recent court filings to his Jahi McMath page. CHO said that 7 nurses cared for Jahi from the time she entered the ICU up to her code. The three new doctors named as defendants were all present when Jahi commenced bleeding. Dr. Howard was the attending, Dr. Herrera was the Physician Fellow and Dr. Wesman was the ENT specialist on call for his partner/colleague Dr. Rosen that evening. They stated that the medical records show there that the precise cause of Jahi's cardiac arrest is uncertain.

    ReplyDelete
  57. I forgot to add that the case was reassigned to a new judge.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Personally, I'm hoping that Judge Pulido will do a better job of moving things forward.

      In the interest of fairness, my first preference would be to see him totally disallow the "forum shopping" that apparently allows the defendants unlimited attempts to re-litigate the "dead or alive" issue. A final ruling needs to be final. Death is not reversible.

      If, for any reason, he *does* see fit to allow the defendants to present evidence of their alleged "new facts" and "changed circumstances," he needs to direct them to put up or shut up. From what we're seeing in the case management statement, there's nothing new they actually plan to present.

      Delete
  58. Professor Pope tweeted that his commentary on what the new filings mean is upcoming on The Medical Futility Blog.

    It's interesting that counsel for one of the defendants has said they submitted discovery documents to Brusavich last month and have yet to get anything back. Defendant's counsel are still waiting to see this "new evidence" that plaintiffs have had since 2014.

    Plaintiffs want to try liability first because they must realize that their evidence isn't compelling. Defendants are basically saying the family wants to put the cart before the horse: Try liability before deciding what harm was done. They've already accused the family of attempting to try their case in the court of public opinion and cited the many media stories regarding all of Dolan's news conferences in which he released Jahi's brain scans and videos of Jahi's finger/hand/foot twitches.

    That's exactly what has been happening. It's easy to fool the public but it should be much harder in court as long as the new judge isn't as gullible as Freedman was.

    ReplyDelete
  59. Professor Pope also uploaded new filings in the federal action.

    The following is a point defendants made regarding "changed circumstances" that plaintiffs have used to justify re-litigating the alive or dead issue:

    "Because Jahi’s family has been allowed to
    maintain Jahi on a ventilator indefinitely, it is inevitable that the state of her body will change
    with time. These parties must not be forced to re-open litigation every time that Jahi’s body
    exhibits some change when the core finding remains static and irreversible: she is dead under
    California law."

    Jahi's body is being maintained by more than simple ventilator support. She is under the care of a physician who no doubt signs off on any other medications or hormonal support required to sustain a body that lacks the integrating aspect of a functioning brain. Surely this additional support cannot be ruled out as a factor in any change to Jahi's physical maturation.

    As demonstrated by Shewmon's research, there are many other cases of people's bodies being maintained indefinitely regardless of their status as "chronic(ally) brain dead".

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. @ Anon 10April 18:27: That's a *very* important point that *we* noted a long time ago. IMHO, it's about time that some *real* medical experts involved with this case did the same.

      Plaintiffs continue to cite all kinds of bodily functions as "evidence" that Jahi's entire brain isn't irreversibly damaged. They've claimed that everything from body temperature regulation to the purported advancement of Jahi's puberty is "proof" of hypothalamic function, since the hormones that regulate these functions are, in a healthy body, produced in that way.

      But...there are plenty of non-brain-dead persons who use some version of hormone replacement therapy to manage their conditions. Persons with diabetes use insulin. Persons with thyroid imbalances, or perhaps living without a thyroid gland (if it was diseased and surgically removed) take medication to provide the body with the correct level of thyroxin. The fact that these persons can achieve a reasonably healthy and active lifestyle is great. But it doesn't mean that the pancreas or thyroid gland is "working OK." It's use of the correct medication each day that compensates for the deficiency.

      Delete
  60. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don't see any utility in posting unflattering pictures.

      Delete
  61. See case happening now in Roseville, CA, USA. Here we go again. Google Israel Stinson.

    ReplyDelete
  62. Judge Grillo could have put a stop to this insanity 2+ years ago. He had the power to turn off Jahi's ventilator, but he didn't. As part of the on-going suit to keep Jahi on death support, this judge appointed an independent doctor to examine Jahi and got BOTH sides to agree to abide by his findings. The doctor examined Jahi, and became the SIXTH doctor to agree she was dead. BUT - Nailah reneged on the agreement, and more shockingly, the Judge himself did a backtrack. Instead of accepting his own expert's report and proceed with the order of termination of mechanical support - as any competent judge should have done - he released the body of Jahi to her mother. Yes, he actually gave mom custody of a corpse. Why? Was he afraid of protestors? Backlash? Worried about losing his job (reelection)? In any event, I believe he thought he'd come to a very clever decision. He wouldn't actually order the plug pulled on Jahi himself, he would let mom take the corpse, and probably expected she would end up at the undertaker's in a day or two. I don't think he EVER imagined this would backfire in such extraordinary fashion and that we'd be here two plus years and four lawsuits later, with Jahi still above ground. As an added bonus, because of the can of worms Grillo opened, California is now facing copycat suits from families unwilling to let doctor's practice medicine and make decisions..... and the worms are spreading across America. This idea of State's Rights has its drawbacks. Jahi is dead in 49 states, but alive in one. New Jersey created their law because of a small sect of Orthodox Jews, and it's turned out to be a very costly mistake. Medicine and science should trump religion in a secular society every single time.

    ReplyDelete
  63. Misty, I totally agree...no way could Judge Grillo have predicted that Jahi's body could actually "survive" more than just a few days on *just* vent support...because it probably *wouldn't* have happened.

    We have to remember that one of the reasons for the determination that additional medical support would have been futile was the testimony from one of the CHO doctors regarding the actual deterioration of the body's digestive system. I believe the report stated something to the effect that the intestinal tissue was already beginning to decompose and slough off, so there would be no point in performing a gastrostomy that would facilitate "feeding" of a body that no longer had the capacity to utilize nutrition anyway. (As a non-medical person, I still have never figured out how *that* condition was apparently addressed).

    But we also need to remember that religion was never *really* the issue in this case. There is no defined "religion" that advocates pretending that dead bodies are still living persons, and must be preserved, ad infinitum, through extraordinary means. The accommodation for Orthodox Jews, and a few other religions that believe the soul is still present as long as the heart still beats in the body, was intended to let families keep the loved one on vent support for the relatively *brief* period of time that might elapse as the rest of the body systems shut down, before cardiopulmonary death finally happens. Might be a few days. Might be a week. Wouldn't be nearly two and a half *years.* I'm sure Judge Grillo figured that Jahi's mother might just take the body home or to a skilled care facility, where nature would take its course in short order.

    Yes, hindsight is 20-20, and we can now conclude that Judge Grillo made a bad call. But in fairness, I don't know how he could have predicted the bizarre chain of events that followed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If memory serves - and it might not - we were shocked when the Judge didn't follow through, and let mom take a dead body. We knew the family had hooked up with Dr. Byrne and his crew who were prepared to perform surgery on Jahi, and move her out of state. Their initial GoFundMe page was all about getting money to move Jahi.

      Delete
    2. I remember that too...but if I recall correctly, the plan at that time was to move to that New Beginnings "rehab" place for brain-damaged patients that was run by the former hairdresser...which we subsequently learned wasn't even actually operational at the time. I don't think anyone anticipated that the new venue would end up to be the ICU at an actual fully-accredited hospital. It seemed unlikely that any hospital, even, in NJ, would *admit* (as a new patient) the body of someone already determined to be deceased *elsewhere.* And, based on Dr. Flori's statement about the observable deterioration of the intestines, it didn't seem that any "nutrition" administered via a gastrostomy would do any good, even if the family *did* find a facility somewhere.

      Delete
  64. Prof. Pope now reports a third California brain death dispute:

    http://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2016/04/23/southland-family-battles-to-keep-their-teenage-son-on-life-support/

    DDNC for 17-year-old Alan Sanchez resulted from irrecoverable injuries suffered in a car accident. Medical staff has refused to perform another procedure that the family has requested, which is referenced in the interview as an operation on his stomach. I'm speculating that *maybe* this is a gastrostomy that would facilitate nutritional support, since this was the major "futile care" dispute in both the Jahi McMath and Aden Hailu cases.

    As we've seen before, the Sanchez family is claiming that Alan is still responsive to voice commands, and showed a video of this to the CBS news station reporter.

    ReplyDelete
  65. Update - Alan Sanchez has now "died" (assumably, final complete cardiopulmonary failure). Apparently the accident that ultimately resulted in his fatal injuries was the result of a high-speed police pursuit, ending in his losing control of the vehicle as he tried to elude the police. Family is now considering legal action against the police, and against the hospital for "malpractice," due to the hospital's refusal to perform futile medical procedures after the DDNC.

    Details here:

    http://www.dailybulletin.com/20160425/pomona-teen-dies-days-after-pursuit-crash-a-school-mourns

    Sad that teens sometimes make poor choices that end in tragedy, but even sadder that some families choose to lay the blame elsewhere.

    ReplyDelete
  66. I'm very, very late to this post but have to (a) thank Doc for his time, interest and expertise in all that is involved in writing this and moderating and (b) ask one question I didn't see mention of in comments. Funds. It would be quite something to know what has been spent, by whom, its sourcing, on the sum of her care since Jahi left Children's Hospital in Oakland. At what point will potential streams of revenue dry up? How would she then continue?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. From my understanding, her care is being paid for by the state. Perhaps someone with more knowledge on the financial aspects can verify and/or clarify.

      Delete
    2. Correct. The court documents clearly state that the "care" (somatic support) is being paid in NJ through the Medicaid program.

      Delete
  67. A bit of news - Prof. Pope reports that an Amicus Curae (friend of the court) brief has been filed, by a consortium of professional medical associations:

    http://thaddeuspope.com/images/McMath_Cal_App_2016_amicus_CMA.pdf

    They're asking the court to *not* allow the plaintiffs to continue to attempt to re-litigate the "dead or alive" issue, for a variety of valid reason we've often discussed here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. An interesting bit of information according to Dolan in his Opposition to motion to dismiss (federal case):

      Referenced in the Opposition as Exhibit E are two videos. I have been informed that the
      video titled “Moving Finger On Demand” was taken by Nailah Winkfield, on May 30, 2016,
      and that Sandra Chatman, Jahi’s grandmother, and Nurse Sharleen Bangura were present at
      the time when the video was shot. I have been informed that the video titled “Sliding Hand of
      Bed on Demand” was taken by Nailah Winkfield, on February, 2016, and that two nurses,
      Alanna Broszeit and Armand Nguetsop, were present at the time when the video was shot.
      These files could not be served via the electronic filing system. They are being provided to the Court and to opposing counsel via U.S. Mail on this date.

      The only video released on the Keep page this year was back on March 25 and showed a foot supposedly kicking in response to Nailah's off camera voice. There were two prior videos of finger movement, also supposedly in response to Nailah's voice off camera, but they were posted in October and December of 2015.

      If they have videos from just last month it's curious why they didn't put them up on the Keep page yet. Several supporters have been asking for updates lately to no avail.

      Of course, none of the videos have time stamps so it's impossible to say when they were actually taken. They are all very brief, usually less than 10 seconds, so it's also impossible to say how long Nailah requested the movement before anything happened.

      Delete
    2. True. And, in this latest brief, Dolan makes this statement:

      "Fortunately, as documented by numerous physicians, nurses, respiratory technicians, and family members, Jahi has, during the intervening twenty-nine months, repeatedly and consistently exhibited brain function . . . . Any qualified physician who today examines Jahi and her medical record should be able to verify the present numerous signs of brain function."

      Ok...if that's true, why haven't the plaintiffs actually *engaged* that "qualified" physician to actually conduct that examination and verify their claims?

      Sure, he references documentation from "numerous physicians," among others. But so far, none has passed muster for that "qualified" standard, for a variety of reasons. Some who've submitted declarations have honestly stated that they haven't personally examined Jahi, so are basing their opinions on videos and other information relayed by the family. Some who actually *did* spend time with Jahi couldn't really contribute any medically-meaningful information. Dr. Paul Byrne reported "visiting" Jahi, but he's not a neurologist, so did no standard medical testing, and is known for his personal views about brain death being a fraud perpetrated by the organ harvesters, so is known not to be objective. Dr. Shewmon admitted that when he did spend an extended period of time with Jahi, he wasn't able to actually replicate the "response to verbal commands" that the family had reported, but he figured they were telling the truth and had lots of videos to support their claim.

      So...when *are* we going to see that "qualified" (expert in neurology, and able to be truly objective in reporting his/her findings) actually *do* the examination and testing?

      Delete
    3. Shewmon said in his "updated" declaration from December of 2014 that he conducted a complete bedside neurological exam earlier that month which Jahi failed. He also did a very brief apnea test which confirmed she does not attempt to breathe on her own.

      In light of that testimony I wonder what kind of exams Dolan has in mind. If Jahi still fails the clinical exam the only evidence that matters is whether or not the alleged purposeful movements can be confirmed.

      Shewmon mentioned one video that allegedly showed Jahi responding to a bilateral request to move each hand individually. He further stated that she moved the correct hand in response to each request.

      It's a wonder the family has never released this particular video as it would be more convincing than the brief twitches they have shown thus far.

      It appears they haven't released any of the videos that so impressed Dr. Shewmon as to their credibility. Either they haven't yet shown the best of the lot or Shewmon is easily impressed.

      Delete

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