Posted: 12/26/2013 10:05:58 AM PST
Updated: 12/26/2013 10:36:06 AM PST
OAKLAND -- Their Christmas celebration over, the family of Jahi McMath next must struggle with perhaps the most excruciating decision they've faced since the 13-year-old developed complications from tonsil surgery.
What happens next?
About 15 family members gathered to observe the holiday Wednesday with Jahi inside the room at Children's Hospital Oakland where she has been hooked to a breathing marching since Dec. 12, when she was declared brain-dead three days after undergoing surgery to correct sleep apnea and other health issues.
Presents were under a tree for Jahi and her relatives carried on with some of its holiday traditions including board games, dominoes and playing cards.
But after a day that provided the family what attorney Christopher Dolan called 'a little breathing room,' they awoke Thursday to the grim reality that they must make some difficult decisions.
An Alameda County Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday that the hospital can disconnect Jahi on Monday at 5 p.m. from the ventilators keeping her alive. The family could decide to appeal the case, Dolan said, and if a court decides to hear such an appeal, the order that has prevented the hospital from disconnecting the ventilators could be extended.
The family also could decide to accept offers for assistance that have come in from as far as New York, Dolan said.
'They are going to start having those discussions as a family today,' Dolan said Thursday morning. 'They are very difficult, heart-wrenching decisions, obviously, and they need time among themselves to figure out what they're going to do. They'll come to those decisions in their own time.'
Dolan said a religious, faith-based group that has facilities from as far away as New York has reached out to the family and offered to move the teen and keep her on a ventilator. But he said the family must weigh the cost of such a move and whether it would be able to travel with her.
They also will discuss whether it's time to accept the diagnosis of doctors who have said Jahi has no chance to recover.
'At least Christmas gave these folks a little breathing room,' Dolan said. 'The hospital was pushing, pushing, pushing from the word go, and these folks just never really had time to process it in a way that would be a normal way.'
Hospital officials have declined to discuss specifics of the case from the beginning, citing medical privacy laws. But the hospital's attorney, Doug Straus said after Judge Evelio Grillo's ruling on Monday that the hospital would be interested in negotiating a time to remove Jahi from her ventilator and have intravenous fluids stopped before the Monday deadline.
The family has continued to ask for prayers for Jahi, and local pastors and churchgoers from around the world have rallied around Jahi, both in person and through social media, and her uncle Omari Sealey has said that 'prayers are more important than ever, because the clock is ticking.'
Contact Rick Hurd at 925-945-4789 and follow him at Twitter.com/3rdERH.
Posted by Unknown on Thursday, December 26, 2013 - Rating: 4.5
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