such a sad story
 

http://news.msn.com/us/court-appoint...een-brain-dead


just a horrible tragedy. i had never heard of such a thing after a tonsillectomy. feel awful for her family, especially knowing the girl was so worried about having the operation done.

http://news.msn.com/us/time-running-...mcmaths-family


there were two nursing homes in california that said they'd take the girl, and then they backed down. it's too bad that they ever raised hope to begin with. they should have known better. i appreciate that the family is heartbroken, but they need to accept the reality that the girl is deceased. brain dead isn't a coma. i know some think that, but they are two completely different things.

I agree one hundred percent but I'll tell you... it's a very hard thing to do sitting in one of those ****ing rooms. White on white on white, makes your eyes want to bleed. There are layers of sound... beeps and sighing sounds and machines that breathe... there are tubes and tape and black and blue marks. One of the machines has numbers on it the go down slowly. You hold your breath every time the person laying there inhales and then again, waiting for them to exhale. You can't take your eyes off the lines on the moniters and when the doctors come in to talk to you they do so softly and make you feel like the world is suddenly that little room and the conversation they are having with you is one they've never had to do before.

Honestly I made the decision before the room, before the doctor with the soft voice, before the nurse came in to close the blinds (I made her open them. Why would my sister want to die in darkness? **** that, there were seagulls outside. She would have told them to open the damned things up so I did it since she couldn't).

I can still see every second of it in my head.

I had six months to know it was coming and I have grown to appreciate that rather then to resent it. It is not enough time BUT it is so much more than so many get.

So I read something like what this poor family is going through and my reason agrees with you completely BUT if I were that poor girls mother?

Yeah... it's one thing to say if someone is brain dead they are (rightly) dead and another to be in that room.

As much as I don't want to admit it I might be doing the same thing.

I hope the family gains whatever it is they need for the courage to let her go. I hope they can find acceptance with grace and give each other comfort and get through what I'd imagine is the hardest thing they will ever have to do in their lives.

Poor baby girl.

i know it, it's awful. i cannot imagine a worse pain than losing a child. my heart goes out to that poor family. just a tragedy. who the hell dies from a freaking tonsillectomy?!

I know. It makes no sense.

Gawker has a piece up about this right now and in the comments section, a surgical resident said that there are so many blood vessels in that part of the body that post surgical bleeding is not surprising- from what I read, the girl awoke after surgery, started bleeding and went into cardiac arrest.

I'm not defending the hospital; I hope there's a full investigation (a real one) and that if there's cause the family sues (I imagine they will anyway), but it's a reminder that surgery is never something to be regarded lightly. Sometimes the doctors do everything right and the patient still dies.

exactly! it's why i would never get operated on by choice. women have died having plastic surgery done. vanity isn't worth that type risk.

yeah, they said she started bleeding from nose and mouth, just a shame. my mother had complications when she was a kid from her t'ectomy, but i don't know that i'd ever heard of someone dying after that type surgery.
the girl had apnea-i just wonder if that caused other issues in that area of the throat...not a doctor, so just wondering if there's a tie somehow.

Since the surgery was to help the apnea, I wouldn't be surprised, either. My best friend's dad died as a result of his apnea. He dozed off one afternoon without his CPAP machine and never woke up.

apnea is what killed reggie white. was only 43, i'd have to think he was still in good shape after years of playing football.

To give some perspective.

The chance of a student being shot and killed at school in a given year.

http://www.psychlawjournal.com/2013/...-part-iii.html

I'm sure we all worry about disturbed teenagers carrying concealed tonsillectomies into schools.

Is the worry of something that is a 1 in 15 million chance of occurring logical?

More important is the crazy expense and efforts trying to lesson those odds worth it?

Bottom line, the chance of dying during a tonsillectomy is 1,000 times greater than the chance of dying in a school shooting, yet because of the constant barrage by the media, you'd think it would be the other way around.

What does this have to do with the risk of tonsillectomies? Because once again:

Very first post of this thread was

Simply trying to give some perspective. ;)

Perspective on what?

The risk of your child dying from a tonsillectomy being 1,000 times greater than the risk of being shot and killed at school over a year's time.

The parents who are worried sending their children to school for fear of being shot and killed should be 'frantic' if their child ever needs a tonsillectomy.

And the same parents should be much more concerned about their child being in the house with a gun in it. What's your point? It has nothing to do with tonsillectomies.

It goes back to danzig's initial statement 'she never heard of such a thing'.

I make the point that EVERYONE has heard of a child being shot in school despite it being 1,000 times more unlikely than hearing of someone dying from a tonsillectomy. Wonder why that is?

You bring up a gun in the home. Wonder what the odds of a child finding a gun and killing themselves or someone else is?

Or doesn't it matter because guns aren't PC?

http://news.msn.com/us/brain-dead-ca...ergoes-surgery


they said she had 'wasted away and might not make it'.

might not? she's brain dead. and brain dead people do deteriorate. again, my deepest sympathies to the family, but i can't help but wonder at a hospital who will do these surgeries, and give false hope to the family.