How the hell could this happen??

[Aunty Em]

The lungs didn't respond properly and she deoxygenated enough for severe vegetable level brain damage.

One of the many hazards of going on a heart/lung bypass machine is the possibility of brain damage ~ this girl has been on heart/lung bypass twice in a very short time so the odds were stacked against her.

Many people think that heart/lung transplants are everyday occurances but they are not, there are so many things that can go wrong during and after the operation all for the possibility of being one of the 40% who survive for 2 years afterwards. You have to be VERY sick to want to go ahead with this operation.

Heart transplants alone are much less complicated but still carry the risk of brain damage.

 

[PT]

I may sound like a heartless bastard here, but now we have wasted two hearts and two sets of lungs on a person. This is just sad. I'm sure I would feel differently if it was a child of mine, but I think I would also know when to say enough and allow the child to die. Someone where I work said it pretty good. God said her time was done, did they think he was joking?

 

[Professur]

Funny. I said something like that here once and I got my head handed to me.

 

[PT]

I expect that to a certain degree, but if you really think about it, there are now two other people that are going to die. Without a chance to live.

 

[Professur]

One. She did have the right to a first transplant.

 

[PT]

Ok, good point. But what makes her life more important than the person that doesn't get the transplant now? The media?

 

[Aunty Em]

Fear of litigation on the part of the hospital. They were trying to cover their own backs... if the second transplant had been successful any payout would have been smaller... call me cynical...

 

[Q]

The hospital is still going to get sued.
But I think the choice of the second organ donation was made by the family of the donor, not the hospital or the organ procurment people. I just wonder if they were made aware of the extremely slim chance for survival she had. I heard she had a 50% chance...sure seems alot smaller than that after what I've just read here.

 

[greenfreak]

Actually, they're making it sound like the second set came from someone who was on life support and after the family heard about Jesica, they pulled the plug so they could give her their loved one's organs.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. When it comes to keeping someone on life support, it is typically the family's need to keep their loved ones alive that is the decision maker. So many times I responded to emergency calls for people who had DNR's (Do Not Rescusitate orders) but the family didn't respect their wishes for their own reasons. I've been through that too, and it's very very hard to let a loved one die. Even if you are very clear in your Will and have orders to let you die, it's the people in your life that make that decision. Being the executor of my parent's Living Will, it might be my decision one day to respect my parent's wishes and let them die. They have been very straightforward about it, and I intend to respect that.

 

[Aunty Em]

According to this report:CNN

It was not a named donation. The sad thing is her new heart and lungs are working perfectly ~ why couldn't that have happened the first time around?

 

[greenfreak]

I saw an interview on CNN with the Jesica's family and they asked her cousin what she would like to say to the family of the person the organs came from and she said something to the effect of that they knew what a hard decision it was and thank them for the chance at new life. They said the family didn't want to be publicized.

I wonder, if they do take Jesica off life support, if they can give the heart and lungs to someone else now? How often can you re-implant organs?

 

[Aunty Em]

How often can you re-implant organs?

That I really don't know. I don't think it's ever been done.

 

[Q]

I don't know for sure either...but I'd guess it's not really possible. Removing the organs from one person, putting them in another has to be quite a shock to the organs. Doing it twice in a short period of time sounds like it would be too big of a shock. Plus, I would think the anti-rejection medicines prolly take their toll on them as well.

 

[Leslie]

she died

Her young body had just gone though too much. First Jesica Santillan endured a botched heart-lung transplant at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina. Then she went through a second operation less than two weeks later, after initially being given organs of the wrong blood type. On Friday, it was reported the Mexican teen had suffered severe and likely irreversible brain damage. And now, the youngster’s unlikely road back to health has ended sadly, as she was pulled off life support at about 5pm Saturday. Just hours earlier, she was declared brain dead.

Jesica was brought to the U.S. because her family struggled to get her treatment back home for a heart deformity that kept her lungs from getting oxygen into her blood. She had been unconscious ever since the failed first surgery, and doctors believe the swelling in her brain – that caused the brain damage – might have resulted from the amount of time Jesica was hooked up to life-support machines while she waited for her second operation.

Duke University Hospital reluctantly accepted blame for the botched operation, leaving the family and friends seething. “If she dies, they murdered her,” family spokesman Mack Mahoney charged on Friday. He started the charity that made the operation possible.

source

 

[Aunty Em]

This doesn't give me hope for Katie.

I really feel for her family, to be given a ray of hope after so many years of trying to get the best help and expecting your child to die and then to have it end like this... The guilt they must feel for allowing this operation to go ahead in the first place must be tremendous... their one comfort is probably that they tried to do their best and it was others who failed, not them. But it doesn't compensate for the fact that they have lost a much loved child.

Emotionally, this hits me SO close to home.

 

[Luis G]

So sad...

 

[Squiggy]

 

[freako104]

anuntie there should have been no reluctance on the part of the hospital to accept the blame as it is entirely the fault of the doctors and hospital. this is so sad.

 

[Aunty Em]

anuntie there should have been no reluctance on the part of the hospital to accept the blame as it is entirely the fault of the doctors and hospital.

That's true, but I know from personal experience that they practice damage limitation when threatened with legal action. And that's from both sides of the coin as nurse and patient. Doctors and nurses usually stick together.

 

[Luis G]

Wait a couple of weeks, the parents will sue them..