Jahi McMath "What does it mean to die?"

[Christy1019]

Interesting read....

What Does It Mean to Die? | The New Yorker

Before having her tonsils removed, Jahi McMath, a thirteen-year-old African-American girl from Oakland, California, asked her doctor, Frederick Rosen, about his credentials. "How many times have you done this surgery?" Hundreds of times, Rosen said. "Did you get enough sleep last night?" He'd slept fine, he responded. Jahi's mother, Nailah Winkfield, encouraged Jahi to keep asking questions. "It's your body," she said. "Feel free to ask that man whatever you want."

[Nurse SMS, MSN, RN]

I don't find the reporting of this story to be "twisting" things, simply because the author makes it very clear that the perspective of the family is the story being told here and that there IS reason to question, reason to doubt. Yes, they lay a lot at the feet of the hospital staff. There is a lot of blame, anger and bitterness being tossed around. However, nobody can argue that minorities have been shown consistently to receive lower levels of care than the average population. To ignore that this suspiciousness, which is normal in the lives of minorities, would impact decisions made by a family at a time of crisis is to be willfully blind. As healthcare providers, we should be assessing what is impacting these families and the decisions they are making. Whether or not we agree with their viewpoint is not the point. What matters is that they have a viewpoint and the lens through which the information filters is impacting the life of a teenaged girl. To lay the sole responsibility for that at the feet of the family when they are in a situation where they are LEAST LIKELY to be able to think logically or react without excessive emotion is, frankly, wrong on a moral and medical level. Nobody makes good decisions when in a state of traumatic fear. The approach can make all the difference and the family is acknowledging that...and in doing so, admitting something very vulnerable...that they may have made a mistake. Why would someone greet that with anything other than compassion?

Whether or not Jahi is actually dead isn't even the point to me in this article, as much as seeing where we can study this case, do better in similar cases, get closer to defining what death means and become more compassionate people. I don't give a rats booty what kind of purse Jahi's mother carries. I have been the mother having to make the choice to turn off my child's ventilator to allow natural death. Trust me. She is NOT getting rich off of Jahi's condition and she has a lifetime of hell in memories to carry around with her, many of which will include questioning her own decisions over and over and over again.

[KatieMI, BSN, MSN, RN]

Every single long-term acute hospital in the country has a slew of just such patients. Many of them have death certificates written in other states and receive extensive, high-quality care out of taxpayers' money. Families do most ridiculous things such as transporting the bodies all over the country for football games.

I always wonder - why some people are so desperate about getting the highest quality medical care if they so deeply distrust it and intend to ignore all recommendations except ones which they might like in the first place? You did not believe in surgery to begin with - why, then, you still went there? Why did they conducted an investigation-like talk with physician instead of making that obviously obese 13 years old to lose weight?

Please do not give me all the talks about Tuskegee and etc. We are living now and here.

[Not_A_Hat_Person, RN]

Tuskegee wasn't that long ago. It happened in my parents' lifetimes, so it would have been within Jahi's mother and grandmother's lifetimes.

Untreated obstructive sleep apnea can kill; it killed an NFL player who was not obese. How do you know they *didn't* try weight loss?