December 27, 2007
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Javona Peters
This is Javona Peters:
She is in an irreversible coma. She had a routine operation that went bad. The doctors say she is “blind, deaf and unable to move, think or eat on her own.” She is on oxygen and a feeding tube. She has been in the coma since October 17th.
The problem is that her father and mother are not married and disagree on what should be done. The mother wants to take her off life support. The father is undecided and is not ready for that move.
Both parents signed a release for her to have the surgery. Both parents agreed verbally to allow her on oxygen. The mother claims the decision to add the feeding tube was done without her consent.
Javona Peters lived with her mother and went to visit her father once a month. The mother is taking the case to court in order to get the right to take her off the life support. Here are a few links: Link1 Link2 Link3 Link4
Should the mother be able to pull the life support without the permission of the father?
Comments (67)
Put something up of Bhutto!
On the question: No.
If the father is an active part of her life then NO. I think the mother is selfish. Miracles can happen..
Yes. She has raised her more than the father.
And just for future reference, I would like to be taken off life support if I’m ever in this situation. Thanks.
What a hard case for both parents. I think the parents should both be in agreement before she is taken off life support. Two adults who love the same child (and once loved each other) should be able to talk this through and come to an agreement or timeframe.
This would be so hard and I genuinely hope they can agree on a decision that is best for their daughter.
NO, absolutely not.
Wow, what a sad story! And what a tough situation! He is her father and I think he should have a say. He obviously needs time to think about it and his opinion should be considered.
That is what can happen when you have two Powers of Attorney, or two Health Care Proxies, etc., that when they make a decision have to act together. They have both been taking part in her medical decisionmaking. Therefore she should not be taken off life support without their common consent.
Wow… no I don’t think she should. She needs to take his feelings into account. I’m with IssyMae. I hope they can come to an agreement on whta’s best for that poor girl.
Wow….Perhaps with more time the father will agree, but I think if it comes down to it, yes she should.
No. It is the father’s daughter, too. They need to reach an agreement.
I have spoken to all my kids concerning this type of incident. They all have agreed that I could indeed stop life support. These to be learned in this age. I think the father is being completely selfish. Is he going to take care of her if they don’t stop life support? Once a month just isn’t going to cut it!! He would have to be involved DAILY!! Just irks me that he would be so selfish!!
Someone needs to sit down with the father and weigh all the options.
I am for the mother in this case!!
Absolutely not, especially since both parents have been active in her life.
This is a sad situation for both parents to be in.
No, absolutely not.
they should both reach the agreement.
even if they’re divorced, they’re both her parents.
no weither the mother likes it or not she is half of the father and his opnion matter like none other
its so sad to see this happen espically for the parent
WOW… I don’t understand why anyone would want to see someone they love stuck like that… it isn’t even living… I don’t get it.
If there is a reason the father wants the lie support… Like there was a chance she would wake up… Maybe set a time frame… if it didn’t happen by then… pull the plug.
I don’t know… I am a heartless wench I guess… But I would NEVER… NEVER want to be left plugged inif it came to that… Let me go.
Yeah. Anyone who carries luggage around 24/7 for nine months should have a bigger say than someone who just did the poking.
Such a sad situation. A harder decision I doubt there to be, especially when it regards your child. I think that the focus on the fact that the parents were not together or who saw the child when and how often is a moot point. The two parents have a hard decision to make and should work together through it and not fight one against the other. Together they were when this child’s life was created, together they should be when this child’s life ends.
For the record, I am totally in favor of removal of life support if the situation is a question of quantity of life (such as it may be) as opposed to quality of life. I have twice in the past twenty years had to be part of such a decision. It is not a decision that can be answered easily or without questions that linger far past the conclusion of said decision.
Hugs’n'Smooches!
No, the father should have something to say about it.
What I wonder about in such cases is this: even though she cannot move, speak, or even think, does that mean that all her brain function is gone? Does she feel the inevitable pain of starvation and dying of thirst after the feeding tube is removed? Can the doctors say with certainty that she feels no pain? I think it is absolutely inhumane to remove feeding tubes unless and until there is overwhelming evidence that the patient feels no pain in such situations. I don’t think there is such evidence. Withhold food and water from your dog or cat and see how long you last before being removed in handcuffs. Why are humans deemed less valuable than our pets?
no, they should both come to the decision together, although the decision should be obvious. the fact that they are keeping her alive is making everyone suffer longer than necessary.
I would not know what to do myself if I was in this sitiuation
However both parents should have a say.
Yes, she raised the girl almost completely on her own, she knows the child best.
Such a sad story, and such a beautiful kid.
As far as legally- yes, maybe, probably.. since her mother appears to have the majority of the custody (I didn’t read the links so I’m just guessing)
As far as taking her father’s feelings into consideration- no. I’m sure he loves his daughter & it will be just as hard on him as on the mother so maybe the mother should be considerate & wait until he is ready to deal (even though that probably isn’t very considerate of the daughter).
Complicated subject?
i agree with derisio…put sumthing up of bhutto…and i think say no…it should be a mutual desicion b/w the two
I think that the debate over whether or not she should be taken off of life support is irrelevant to this question. That is subjective and you can argue until you’re blue in the face and not sway another person’s decision.
But yes, I think the father should have a say. People keep saying he shouldn’t because he was only able to see her once a month, etc. I am sure if he were able to choose this would not be so. He is still just as much her father as her mother is her mother.
“No, the father should have something to say about it.
What I wonder about in such cases is this: even though she cannot move, speak, or even think, does that mean that all her brain function is gone? Does she feel the inevitable pain of starvation and dying of thirst after the feeding tube is removed? Can the doctors say with certainty that she feels no pain? I think it is absolutely inhumane to remove feeding tubes unless and until there is overwhelming evidence that the patient feels no pain in such situations. I don’t think there is such evidence. Withhold food and water from your dog or cat and see how long you last before being removed in handcuffs. Why are humans deemed less valuable than our pets?“
That is an interesting point I hadn’t considered, and I am inclined to agree.
I fully agree that the father should agree. But it’s also true that if the person felt pain once they were taken off life support, it could be considered extremely inhumane to do such. You would be letting a person die of thirst in a hospital bed. Or suffocate. Neither one is pleasent and extremely painful.
I meant that, the father should have an equal say, in my first statement.
i hate to sound callous, but it sounds like the mother wants her off life support so she can collect wrongful death money.
because thats her young daughter and she has only been in a coma since October. My stepbrother was in a coma for six months and he still woke up.
Hmmmmm. I don’t think it’s about who wants to do it or not, I think it’s about who can pay for it. Bottom line, the mother should not be forced into paying to keep the girl on child support. That’s a tremendous expense.
-David
Eh, I don’t know, I’m not even sure I like the idea of life support to begin with.
I guess they really should probably come to an agreement first.
This is sad. But to put it bluntly, the daughter is as good as dead anyway. Still, the parents should both decide.
ryc: actually, my first car never had a working air conditioner. I don’t think my windows ever went up between about early may and mid october each year which did cause my car to get rained in on a number of occasions.
Is he paying for her hospital bills?
They certainly do. I value the water tight car with air conditioning a lot more now than I would have otherwise.
here we go again…..
Didn’t we learn anything from Terry Shiavo? These cases should not be played out on a national scale! It just brings division, anger, and hatred. One side calls the other uncompassionate and murderous, and the other side calls the first uncompassionate for the state of the person in the irrecoverable coma!
What good came out of the Shiavo ordeal? None! If terry was still on a feeding tube, would any good have come out of that outcome? No!
No good can come from this topic. none.
Legally, the decision should be made by the mother as she has custody of the kid.
However, they really shouldn’t do anything without reaching some sort of an agreement.
Both parents had to consent to the surgery both parents should have to consent to her care.
Of course not; she didn’t create this child on her own now did she?
no.
Yeah, a routine procedure, a ventriculostomy… I get them done all of the time… having a hole bored into my head to drain cerebral fluid into a cavity is completely routine… I wonder what went wrong…
ryc: I love being scared in a movie… I hate being bored in a movie (almost as much as I hate having a hole bored into my head to drain cerebral fluid, as routine as that sounds)…
no, i dont think so personally
but speaking legally – yes, she has the right, since she obviously has more custody than the father does
Daniel (doubledb)
Why does the mother want her off life support? Too much money? Let the dad pay for it.
I understand it’s a hard decision to be faced with, I don’t know if I could “give up” so easily on one of my kids. I mean, it’s only been 2 months. Some people have been in comas for years that were told they’d never wake up, and they did. The doctors made a mistake in the operation, they could be wrong now.
RYC 0n Call me Quell’s site.
How can you have the most expansive blog on Xanga…and no one you know read it? Heck…I have an inconsequential blog…and I still have the majority of the people I know read it.
If the mother has sole custody of the child then yes she should be able to make the decision on her own but if they have joint-custody then they should have to agree. But since they both agreed to the surgery then I think they should both have to agree to removing life support.
But at this point she’s been a coma for over two months and at some point you have to move on with your life but not just so you can sue the hospital.
ryc-that wasn’t exactly what I meant of course you should keep up but you have to be tasteful about it, for example if you’re married and have kids you should realize that your button down shirt should cover all your stomach not just barely meet the pants
They need to come to a decision together.
Both parents should come to a decision together.
First and foremost, the MEDICAL aspect of a MEDICAL CONDITION should be analyzed in detail before the legal implications can be discussed with any reasonable
amount of doubt.
The first thing that the reader is alerted to in the onset of each news story is that Javona has a “bleeding in the brain,” This is the first transgression
every reporter makes.
1) They are all unable to state the exact medical condition she has. A very tiny bit of research led me to discover that the condition is called cerebral
arteriovenous malformation (AVM), but that’s not the only part that irks me. What really irks me is that this condition is congenital… meaning she was born
with it… meaning the parents have dealt with this condition for her ENTIRE LIFE.
The second thing that the reader is alerted to is that a “routine operation” had gone awry. Relatively little is discussed about the nature of this
operation.
2) Here is what the operation looks like – http://hdh.doereport.com/imagesenlarged/3449W.jpg . Allow me to be explicit and graphic since all the reporters in
your news stories have not – they bore a hole through your skull and drain blood out of your brain. They have bored holes through her skull for 16 years.
The third thing the reader is alerted to is that this operation had regularly taken place in Rhode Island, where her mother lives. The first sign that
something was wrong is that a valve did not work at Rhode Island Hospital. The sources gloss over the fact that two more operations took place without
specifying them. Furthermore, they transferred her to Montefiore Medical Center in New York, where her father lives. Afterwards, everyone identified that the
error was an allergic reaction to an anasthetic.
3) Why was Rhode Island Hospital unable to compensate for a medical treatment that they have dealt with for 16 years? What exactly were those two other
procedures? What prompted the parents to transfer her to a different hospital? Did the parents specify, in detail, the exact procedure to Montefiore Hospital
which had been done in RI for 16 years. What is the name of the anasthetic that caused hypoxia (or total lack of oxygen), IN HER SKULL? According to a quick skim of the blood-letting procedure of AVM, only two anasthetics are used: Procaine (Novocaine) and the more hypoallergenic Lidocaine. Why can’t reporters specify a drug when there are only two choices?
The fourth thing the reader is alerted to is that both parents consented to this procedure. It is assumed that someone with more medical authority than them informed them about all the implications of this LIFE-LONG procedure.
4) Again, a quick skim shows that a study at the Neurological Institute at Columbia University in New York City has results signifying that this risky blood-letting procedure for AVM may not be necessary. The article has been feature in Stroke magazine… in 1998. http://www.docguide.com/dg.nsf/PrintPrint/E9063B787C2F9E0F852565FD006F1130
Now the only thing anyone seems to care about (reporter and reader) is who gets power of attorney. It would feel redundant to restate what is essentially most of all of the articles.
5) If the courts give power of attorney to either parent, either (or both) of them could sue a hospital (or both). What is important to note, however, is that the operation (which has an 8% complication risk) was allowed by both parents. Who is at fault for this debacle really – the parents or the hospitals?
News which generalizes instead of specifies is not news. Why do you think these news sources would delve so deeply into what is easily considered a very private matter? If the answer is sensationalism, then I feel like spitting – sensationalism is not news.
p.s. I should really convert from Notepad to Wordpad.
They “allowed” him to pay child support; they should also “allow” him to have a say in the matter, if only from the purely businesslike “I invested in this child, and should have a say in the matter” perspective.
Hell No! Death is irreversible. It should be a decision both parents can live with.
…OR they could sell the decision on ebay
As a dad myself, I would say no. These situations are all so different. I wouldn’t know WHAT to think unless I was involved with every aspect. The media lots of times makes things much worse than they are and then when it benefits them the most, they make something NOT seem like a big deal that IS a big deal. If this were my daughter, I would have to know EVERYTHING about the shape my daughter was in. I know if it was hopeless, I would want to go be with Christ my Savior instead of living a life totally dependent on others, not to mention the strain and heartache it would put on my family. I don’t know, sitting here thinking about it, if there was no way humanly possible for them to breathe or eat or even communicate, even though miracles can happen, I would say unplug the machine and let God make the choice if He wants to perform the miracle….THIS IS ONLY IF THERE IS NO HUMAN POSSIBLITY OF RECOVERY. It’s just heart breaking no matter what!
The mother has already decided…now it’s getting the dad to agree.
the parents should have some level of control depending on custody.
As far as the answer i don’t know…tough decision to make
What I am going to be involved with in the next four days?
I can die.
I value my life that little.
I almost want to die. People tell me I can die. I believe them. I want to die.
I fucking live in New York. I’ve wandered hunts point Bronx lost trying to find a venue and lived. I’m going to wander vauxhall London and people tell me I can die.
I don’t give a fuck. I want to die. Who is this girl? She should die.
If the father is willing to pay for her to be on life support forever in a nursing home, and plans to go visit etc… Then yes, he should have a say, but if not NO
Hell no!!!! He is still her father!!!!!! He obviously loves her if he wants her to live. Sometimes people come out of these things and sometimes they don’t. She can’t do anything anyway. He hasn’t ever signed away his rights.
I’m damn glad I’m not the judge who has to make a ruling on that case!
while he deserves some say in it, I would think that the mom knows something about the dad that she’s going to take him to court for…think about it…she couldn’t handle her daughter being like that…but dad could stay away and just be content to know his baby is alive. she knows he’ll flake on the responsibility. that’s not fair to the mom.
oh…and….should I ever become a human vegetable for more than two months with no signs of getting out of my coma…please, for the love of God…pull the damn plug.
although….I had a friend who was in a comatose state for three months, and he was the lowest functioning you could have…so yes, miracles happen, but there is a time and place to let it go.
Life isn’t like that movie “just like heaven”
being only 16, i seriously doubt that the girl stated whether she would want to be put on life support or not if this situation ever ocurred. therefor, the parents should come to an agreement. i agree with a couple of people, the mother seems to be selfish. she’s not the only parent. the father deserves a say so as well.
after all, daughters do soften their dad’s hearts.
another reason why people should marry, and actually learn to be TOGETHER in order to PARENT a child! THEY NEED us!
prayers for them, and her, and why do the rest of us have to keep paying for their disputes to be resolved? Adults need to learn to become adults.
Hopefully, they can enlist a mediator who can help the two come to a resolution, or create guidelines, like a living will stipulates. If this, then that, etc. This could help everyone, even in grief resolution.
No.
No, the mother shouldn’t be able to pull the life support. Miracles can happen. The father happens to be an advocate for the possibility of a miracle. ”Irreversible” is a matter of opinion, and expert medical opinions are what got Javona into the position in the first place.
yes, the girl doesn’t have a life anymore. she is basically dead and the father just won’t let her go.
No.
both father and mother made this child have life.
why should one and not both get to decide upon death?
it’s still his child. just because she may not have lived with him does not mean he did not love her. he obviously does. if he did not care at all about his daughter he would have a completely nonchalant attitude about it. why should he care about whether her daughter is alive or not if she can’t even function? he obviously cares about her enough to have doubt. he loves her enough to put so much thought into what is best for her.
it’s a tough situation, i can get that. i have a very sick father. i have a brain condition in which i have too much CSF in my brain. this could be me.
all i’m saying is: if one were her father, would one be so quick to condemn?