How could the family not take into account the father's choice, like, huh? If there's a financial burden, i.e., if this happened in the States, I'm sure the father would've taken it on, no questions asked.
It's not that simple. I lost a daughter to cancer. The final week we had a decision of putting her on life support when the doctors told us it was a lost cause. I didn't want her dying with a tube down her throat. My wife wanted any chance we had.
What would you do in that situation?
I'm sorry for your loss. I hope you and your wife are well.
To u/reallynowfellas who seems to have commented talking shit and then blocked me right away, I didn't see your comment, other than the first bit. Idk why my comment is the top comment under another comment. I'm sorry if it wasn't personalized enough for you. I don't know this person so...
Don’t mind me asking but what did you do?
I was losing her no matter what so I agreed to let her be intubated but have no resuscitation attempts if needed. I also requested if possible that they remove the breathing tube before the end. When her blood oxygen levels began to drop they informed us it was coming and removed the tube.
She passed away peacefully in our arms.
Unbelievably difficult decision but the bravest decision you will ever make. As a physician - proud of you and I hope you’ve been able to heal.
I'm so sorry, I saw my father with the tubes in since an autopsy had to be done. It broke my soul. I'm so sorry you went through that but I'm happy you got to hold her as she left. Something I wish I could have done when my dad left.
Thank you for sharing.
Iam sorry.
Jesus christ guy
As a doctor? One decision is reversible, one is not. Seems like a simple choice.
I also need to say that I cannot imagine what you went through surrounding that decision, and I don’t want to remotely imply that it was an easy one for you or your wife to make.
As a doctor, that is a more difficult choice than you could ever imagine. You don’t have to round on this poor girl every day getting stuck for blood, lines coming out of every hole on her body, tube down her throat, getting bed sores, pneumonia, looking nothing like herself.
It’s horrible and it is not at all a “simple choice.” There are things worse than death.
As a doctor outside the US this is an easy decision. I do not torture people to death when it is futile. The end.
Amen. I wish we could all get more families to understand this.
It surprises me that when the dog gets a metric ton of cancer or injured beyond all recognition, we put them to rest because they don't deserve to suffer.
But as soon as a human experiences the same thing we just grab every tube we can find and put them through hell and when they say they would rather die we act like they crazy.
Well yeah, you can charge a whole hell of a lot more to house and take care of a person than a dog, and we all know when we get a dog we'll probably have to put it down. Nobody wants to "put a human down," and it's more confusing in that we're trying to wrap our heads around what they would want us to do. With a dog, they can't vouch for themselves
I mean, I see it as possibly much darker. Some hospitals could be extending emergency life saving measures due to the exorbitant fees associated with it, instead of moving to end of life care or hospice, which is slightly less. Maybe I've just seen too much corporate greed or too many movies?
What a stupid comparison
Why? You cannot communicate with the dog to ask it if it would prefer to stay, nor can you with the human that is a vegetable that has third degree burns on most their body and severe scarring.
But you would be more than willing to put the human through whatever you can in an effort to bring them back.
And when they do get back and they look at themselves and say they don't want to live like this, we just give them pills and phycologists and act like they just "aren't in the correct state of mind."
Afterall assisted suicide is illegal in most places. We refuse to let people choose if they want to survive a gruesome accident or medical diagnosis. By God they will live as long as we can make them. No matter how much they scream and beg.
I'm not saying that we should put the human down for breaking every bone in his body after getting wrapped around a semi. I'm saying there comes a point where we value our own emotions over their well being and we should let them go when they clearly would rather.
It's not so simple when you're the one making the choice. In some cases you're asking people to destroy their entire world, and irrevocably change their lives forever.
I understand the logic of what you're saying, and in my head I know that it is the right choice in some cases, but as a father I do not know if I possess the strength to make that decision should I ever need to.
I’m not asking people to do anything. I give them options. Sure, I may have an idea of what I think would be best since I’ve probably seen the ending to this particular movie about a hundred times before, but I never start a conversation with “so we’re not gonna do anything, they’re as good as gone.”
In situations where the presenting clinical exam and radiographic findings are not irreversibly moribund, I start my conversation surrounding goals of care with “So when someone is as sick as your mom is, we have two paths to consider. One is extending the quantity of life at all costs, and the other is pushing for the best quality of life.”
Usually followed by something like “we’re really good at extending the quantity of life. We can breathe for you, replace your liver and kidneys with machines, and can even do the work your heart is supposed to do”…etc etc describing in detail what it means to be on a vent, hooked up to CRRT or MARS, on ECMO, with someone cleaning your bed sores and managing to catheter in your urethra and tube in your rectum, feeding you through a tube we place through your skin and into your stomach, and so on.
People truly don’t know what extending life at any cost looks like. This is why doctors and nurses almost universally express that they do not want extensive lifesaving measures in the event of catastrophic injury or illness. It’s tantamount to torture. If there’s no end game, what’s the point? Who are you helping? If their best quality of life they’ll ever have is being a vegetable fed and watered through a tube and turned every two hours so they can get their bedsores re-dressed and their feces cleaned off their backs, why are we putting people through this?
I’m not saying it’s not the right choice for some people. Some people have very clearly stated “do everything for me, don’t ever give up on me.” Fine, it’s your body and we’ll code you and do chest compressions and break every rib you have and fuel your heart with pressors until your extremities rot off or until you’re stable enough for discharge to an LTAC. But this conversation is for the family that can’t bring themselves to understand that a peaceful and respectful death is a wonderful thing we are lucky enough to be able to provide when it’s time. And often, it’s time.
Thank you for trying to explain how horrible it can be. Everyone saying that they would do everything has no idea how bad it was for her. NO FUCKING IDEA. They couldn't even guess half how bad it was. I don't think people can understand how bad it can get before the body can die with modern medicine. I could post some pictures of her towards the end but I don't want to burden anyone else with that horror.
It definitely made me decide I will never go through what she did. I have told all my family my wishes are "do not resuscitate". I will honestly take my own life before I let myself get to the state my poor daughter was in by the end. I'm a strong proponent of MAID now.
I wish nothing more than to be holding my daughter right now. I did not want her to die but at some point the suffering had to stop.
This doctor thought it was futile and it wasn’t. Let the wife have her hope if she believes she should take a chance.
Edit: doctor in op’s post *
How does being outside the US change the conflicting opinions of the family? Its the same decision
Murica bad.
The entire point of the OP is that is sometimes not futile even when the medical professionals (with all of the thought and care they give to a single patient out of the hundreds they see a year) think it is. The end.
Indeed. I remember them keeping my grandmother on life support when she had stage 4 lung cancer. After a certain point there’s no need for that, a few extra days weren’t worth it when she didn’t even have the energy to stay awake. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone because it was torture
Simple choice /= easy choice.
I’m not saying it’s right to keep all people on life support. I’m saying that as long as there is a choice between the two options, a disagreement between parents should be automatically settled with the option that has the fewest permanent consequences.
As long as we agree those decisions should be made by loved ones, your opinion on whether mom or dad is right is ultimately irrelevant, regardless of the emotional toll that caring for people on life support carries.
If we want to change laws so that life support is determined by medical opinion and not familial…well, I’ll hear you out, but I don’t think most Americans will.
My grandma was in hospital as you described begging to go. Begging to met her husband on the other side. If there's a chance at getting better then it may be worth the suffering. If it's a lost cause and all your buying is time in a hospital until your eventual death that's no way to "live".
As someone who has almost died 3 times from an autoimmune disease, I'm glad I wasn't given up on. My body wanted to, but my soul wouldn't let me. My medical team took very good care of me all three times.
I imagine that families of loved ones sometimes have a soul connection and know when to let them go or to keep on fighting for their survival. I was also a cna for hospice, so I totally get that some people won't let their loved ones pass because they can't let go.
As a doctor, just because torture is reversible, doesn’t make it justified.
My mother didnt want to live that way. Granted, she had the option to go on hospice and make that decision herself, but its easy for people that arent near death or dealing with chronic problems to say they would want to live no matter what. Cancer can be a rollersoaster to the end, as was with my father. Or organ failure with no hope of replacement that goes slowly and takes peices of you over time, as with my mother. Some people might not want to come back after a certain number of times waking up again after another trauma.
I mean, I totally agree – I would absolutely not want to live in many of the medical situations I have heard of. But who am I to determine that for others, too?
The point I’m making is that as long as we are allowing family to determine these things, we have to play within those boundaries. If parents are divided, probably we should not default to the permanent, irreversible option. Of course, if the person in question made their wishes clear beforehand, that should be a major factor in the decision as well.
I'm an anesthesiology resident, have worked in various ICUs over the course of my medical experience and training since before COVID.
There is a lot of potential suffering at the extremes when we pull out every intervention possible - whether mechanical, surgical, or pharmacologic - to keep people alive (or, when braindead, to keep tissue perfused pending likely same-day organ procurement for transplant). Especially when those interventions are a bridge to nowhere meaning there is no feasible path to weaning them off interventions or returning to anything that could be reasonably considered a semblance of a functional life (e.g. permanently ventilator dependent, on trach/PEG and solely lying completely unresponsive in a long term care facility for the remainder of their time alive), many people (whether through a written advance healthcare directive or via proxy through a healthcare power of attorney) would consider it a degree of torture not worth spending their last moments alive living through. In the case of the person you replied to, that mother or father probably didn't want their poor child's last few moments alive to be afraid, in pain, and powerless to help themselves while interventions are further escalated and they die a slower, more painful death. It is an extremely difficult decision, especially for a parent - do you let your kid have a "more pleasant" death but live with the guilt that you are hastening it, or do you try to have them hang on for dear life and live with the guilt that your decision will not affect the fact that they will die very soon and they may feel scared, alone, and tortured in those moments. For most people that have had the experience of a loved one with terminal cancer where they've had the time to have these discussions and make their peace, offer closure and get their affairs in order, they tend to more readily choose the first option, having the view that death is inevitable but we at least have the agency to choose how we go; for others, where decision foist upon them is not anticipated and prognosis may not be as definite (e.g. severe trauma, drowning), people more commonly go for the latter. It's always a discussion where we try to get as many people as possible in agreement (though legally the healthcare proxy or closest relative in the order of legal spouse, adult child, parent, siblings, then it gets murkier/may depend on locale, gets final say). Most times, everybody comes to a reasonable decision together. When that does not or cannot happen, typically a hospital ethics committee gets involved while by default they are kept alive to the best of our ability.
As far as what happened in the OP, sounds like whoever did the braindeath exam on this patient royally fucked up. There are various tests that are done whenever braindeath is suspected (brainstem areflexia via testing of multiple very central reflexes and noxious stimuli; apnea testing in absence of abnormal core temperature, blood pressure, CNS-depressant and neuromuscular blockade drugs, and severe electrolyte imbalance and prior acid-base disturbance; further ancillary tests possibly including EEG though this is less common; tests must also be done in absense of organophosphate intoxication, guillain-barre syndrome, and very high cervical spinal cord injury).
You wrote this during a routine Appy didnt you...
Get him in Trendelenburg, Shitpost!
I plea the fifth.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Luckily, you're not doctor. Do no harm. Medical interventions, especially invasive ones... Are not neutral. It's pretty clear when someone has no chance at a meaningful recovery. Being alive, but brain dead, non verbal, trach'd is not what people want for their families... Some do...(Which blows my mind) But most people would not classify that as a good quality of life.
I think you missed my point. I think life support like that should be illegal. Because it isn’t, because we leave it up to families, we shouldn’t make permanent irreversible decisions without unanimous consent.
Even the term life support is a loaded term. Plenty of people are vents short term for reversible causes. Should that be illegal?. People are put on ECMO and recover. Should that be illegal? Are you mainly referring to people that medical professionals have deemed either brain dead or for no meaningful chance of recovery, placing them on type of long-term support?
Yeah man, I have no idea, which is why I’m saying we should leave those decisions up to medical professionals and not biased families.
I know that gut punch. I hope you and your wife are both doing okay now.
I would ask my wife if it's a chance that we are giving or more suffering, because WE (not our daughter) cannot accept our daughter passing away.
It's a tough world and things happen outside of our control. I am sorry for your loss.
Sorry for your loss.
As I worked with terminal patients I told my parents that we need to talk on how to proceed if something similar happens. It's never easy to decide because of the emotions, but knowing what the person wanted might help.
Fuck man, much love xxx
I can't imagine the grief and sorrow of that situation.. but at the same time isn't the choice pretty logical and clear? If there's any chance she could recover and survive I would put her on life support and give her a chance to fight.
There was essentially no chance. That was made clear. We aren't even talking a 1% chance. We were basically told she can die now or die in a short period of time. You also hadn't seen the suffering she went through for the previous six months. I just didn't want her in anymore pain.
Sadly in that case I think that is the compassionate decision. If there's no chance and nothing awaits but suffering... people deserve to die with dignity and as pain-free as possible. That's a truly horrible situation.
Side with your wife obviously. Bro.
Because these "hurr durr good dad" posts always leave out the context that he was initially part of the decision process with the rest of his family, but got kicked out of the hospital for showing up drunk and threatening doctors.
I don't know who's stupider, the dad or the people who keep reposting this as a feel good story.
The father may not have been the next of kin and so it wouldn’t be his decision. If he was married, it would be his wife’s decision.
More context: https://www.click2houston.com/news/2015/12/18/father-son-involved-in-hospital-standoff-speak-to-kprc-2/
This strikes me as -- at best -- a situation where a broken clock is right twice a day.
Maybe if he hadn't shown up at the hospital drunk and belligerent, they would have let him have a say in his son's life support in the first place ...
Because doctors are known to snuff out lives based on ire towards drunk people
Read the article:
Hospital staff told police they were concerned about Pickering’s behavior because earlier in the day he was highly intoxicated and belligerent. Hospital staff said Pickering's ex-wife and his other son were placed in the position of making decisions for George Pickering III.
If he hadn't been drunk and belligerent, he probably could have just told them he didn't want his son taken off life support, without all the drama.
He had a massive stroke so I’m guessing “full recovery” is an overstatement. Also we have no idea whether a slow wean from life support would have allowed recovery if he still had brain activity that was missed. There is no right answer in these situations. This is not a mad lad, just a drunk idiot.
That video literally says that he admitted to being drunk and belligerent that night.
Not the point being addressed is it?
I'm replying to someone else's comment about the son, my friend! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
*lose
Sorry I don't mean this disrespectfully, I just see it a lot
It's lose not loose
Gotta tighten up that faith.
LOSE NOT LOOSE HOLY SHIT!
Isnt it the Father's choice? (If the kother wasnt present/involved)
I think the rest of the family had already accepted it, the dad was the only one still objecting.
The last time this was posted, it was said that all other family members were at peace with withdrawing care.
So he wasnt even brain dead, just in a coma
Do they immediately unplug people declared brain dead?
Normally, no.
And in this case they didn't either.
"Hey my son is in the hospital and not doing well, my ex wife and son are in favor of not letting him suffer further on life support machines, I am not, so clearly the logical thing to do is: show up drunk to the meeting with the doctors to discuss next steps, completely misunderstand what they're telling me about what's going on, get kicked out for being drunk and threatening people, freak out, grab my gun, and get in an armed standoff with the police." - this dad
This, except he was right.
If he didn't his son would be dead, so yeah, good call all in all.
Couldn't he just have not shown up drunk, said "I do not consent to removing him from life support", and that would've been that?
Yep lol just because it worked out this time doesn't mean he's not an asshole
Lucky call. He could’ve just as easily not gotten his son back and would’ve been shipped off to prison.
No but they've no obligation to keep a corpse breathing,if that helps you understand better. It's kept on so families can say goodbye
So how can this story be true then?
There might be factors we aren't told that would force them to rush unplugging him
It's missing the context that the rest of the family asked the hospital to pull the plug, except the dad, who got outvoted. The implication that it was the doctors' decision is nonsense.
I saw a video by qixir about this. The son was severely injured and the doctors did the tests and concluded that he's legally dead. The dad didn't like that at all so he went in with a gun. Holding his son's hand he felt it squeeze back, confirming his son is alive. Long story short this was legal because he was saving a life but the government didn't want people bringing guns into hospitals so they charged him with improper storage of a forearm or something, can't fully remember. I'm guessing the doctors just overlooked the signs or something
He was epileptic…
This is not true. We only have the dad's story. The hospital can't tell what happened (and if mom or son came out to correct the story, corrections don't go viral). Brain death exams take a few days to conduct with multiple doctors and tests. And once you're brain dead you get a death certificate even if your heart is still beating. This story comes from a medically illiterate man who didn't actually understand what was going on and the media just ran with it.
Hospitals will cut off perfectly fine limbs by mistake sometimes posting rules of hospitals as evidence the dad’s unchallenged story is false is silly
Either the doctors missed something, or it was a medical miracle, they happen sometimes.
Or, hear me out, the dad didn't understand what he was told because like 88% of the population he was medically illiterate (or the 21% of the population that's just actually illiterate) and he freaked out. The hospital can't correct the story because of patient privacy and story corrections don't go viral. This story is just a bunch of BS.
Welcome to the Internet.
Have a look around
It’s not true. Nobody declared him brain dead. The family elected to withdraw care. The father threatened the lives of healthcare workers simply acting at the behest of the son’s legal medical decision makers.
This is not a story to be celebrated.
“Acting at the behest of legal decision makers” gives off some real “just following orders” energy when it means you’re killing someone.
The mother and brother made the decision to end life support. That's how it works.
Pickering had lost his right to be included in that decision for reasons that aren't fully specific, either related to the divorce or related to his drunken behavior in the hospital.
Listen man. I can see you have literally no idea how medicine or end of life care works, and you’re going to think that providing a peaceful death in the face of medical futility amounts to “killing” someone, so why don’t we just leave it at that. We’ll just agree that one of us has a lot, lot, lot, lot more experience in caring for patients and guiding families through these decisions than the other.
What I’m saying is that you better be 100% absolutely damn fucking sure that you’re right before you kill someone. The father should not have needed to go to this extreme to protect his son.
Yes. That is what brain death testing is. We aren’t killing anyone. Brain death = dead. I can’t kill you if you’re already dead.
I also am not “killing” you if your family has arrived at the decision that they don’t want to prolong suffering in circumstances where chances of recovery to a satisfactory state of life are extremely remote. As much of a silly trope as it can be sometimes, when I said I would “do no harm,” I meant it. And putting people through the suffering and torture of medical procedures without any benefit is doing harm.
I’m glad you’re starting to understand.
Boo hoo this father saved his sons life an your crying over some rules not being followed. Go lick some boots dude
“Some rules not being followed” = threatening the lives of healthcare workers with a gun
Yeah ok dude. If it’s bootlicking to not want to see my nurses or fellow physicians have their lives threatened for simply doing their job to the best of their ability, sign me up to lick every boot in the hospital.
His mother and his brother made the decision to end life support. Pickering has lost his decision making rights.
That's not quite right. If active life support is viable, that's an option, but the family of course has to pay for that continued care. The mother and the brother had decided to end life support. The father objected, but had lost his right because he had been ejected from the hospital before for being drunk and belligerent.
His ex-wife and other son were in charge of making medical decisions for him. Irrc, they wanted the son to slowly be taken off life support. The dad was drunk and desperate. He thought everything was moving too fast and wasn't thinking clearly enough, only thinking that needed things to slow down for a few hours so he could save his son. The only solution in his mind was to barricade himself in the room.
Well he was proven right his ex was obviously just trying to get him out of the picture.
no and that is why chuck schuldiner wrote Death - Pull The Plug
If this story is true I am kinda gaining some scepticism in our modern EKG EEG technology. Like, to declare someone brain dead wouldn't you like make a pretty thorough measurement of brain activity? Probably for an hour or more?
Multiple measurements over a period of hours where I worked.
EKG is for the heart, EEG is for the brain. And an EEG is pretty much useless for assessing brain death, because it measures the surface of the brain near the skull, the areas responsible for consciousness and higher order thought. To prove death, you need to assess the deeper parts of the brain responsible for the basic functions of life.
There are a very rigorous series of confirmatory tests for brain death that essentially do not allow you to call someone brain dead unless they meet them. They are designed to be extremely specific; even narrowly missing criteria for brain death makes you not dead.
If you meet all of them, you are irrecoverably dead. There is no coming back. Your brain function has ceased.
Sounds like they definitely did not meet all of those tests then, but still decided to unplug him
That’s because there is a difference between “withdrawing care” or “compassionate extubation” and declaring someone brain dead.
When a family elects to withdraw care, the patient is not dead, but there is some recognition that either recovery to a satisfactory state would be extremely unlikely, or the patient would not want to be intubated, “kept on life support,” etc. These people are not brain dead, but they’re very sick. This is a decision made by the family and relayed to healthcare workers who then proceed according to the family’s wishes.
Brain dead patients are dead. This is a legal definition. We are not “withdrawing care” because the only care you provide for a corpse is to clean and prepare the body for the family and the morgue.
And in this case, unless the story we’re given is inaccurate, he was “declared brain-dead” when he clearly wasn’t. So your comment here isn’t really relevant.
He was never declared brain dead. He had a massive stroke and was in a coma, unlikely to recover. Everything /u/Tectum-to-Rectum is spot on.
He was not declared brain dead. That might be what you’re misunderstanding.
The lay public has absolutely no idea what goes into a brain death test. You can’t cheat on a brain death test. We don’t go “whoopsie lol the test was wrong hehe!”
If you meet all confirmatory criteria for brain death, you are dead. If you do not, you are not dead. It is an incredibly specific testing criteria that must be satisfied.
EEG is not a component of diagnosing brainstem death
EEG, not EKG, is what you're thinking of. EKG is for the heart. EEG is for the brain.
This story seems a bit exaggerated. We don’t do that at the hospital without consent. Atleast here in the States. And we also dont have context about his condition and prognosis.
W, what happened to dad afterwards though?
He got arrested, guy did bring a gun into a hospital, but his sentence wasn't that long and he eventually went back to his family.
thats good
He was charged with two counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. There was a whole SWAT standoff, he was also intoxicated FWIW, he barricaded himself inside the room, he didn’t surrender until a police robot came in.
That said, the prosecution eventually through plea negotiation with defense dropped one count and reduced the other—though I can’t tell if it reduced to a misdemeanor or if it was reduced to the lowest class felony. In any event, he was released at sentencing with credit for time served. He served less than a month in jail.
Fuck. Police Robot?
Look up the Dallas Police shooting a few years ago where they ended up sending in a robot with a bomb to kill the shooter.
No disassemble!
Yup. I mean I guess technically a cyborg. Dad had to fight him off. He wasn’t charged with murder because you can’t murder something that isn’t alive… It was actually just one of those little RC fuckers with a camera mounted on it
By police robot they don’t mean robocop. They mean a bomb robot that they strapped a brick of C4 to the manipulator arm to.
Wait, they sent in a robot to bomb a man and his son to death inside a hospital?
No, they were talking about the Dallas shooting.
that’s fucking awesome
Moderator removed comment
3d
I mean if he wasn't completly wasted perhaps he wouldn't have had to endanger everyone with his gun, and the doctors would have taken him seriously. Nothing wholesome about this.
Except the part where the dad saves his sons life.
That’s assuming that the dad’s side of the story, which is the only thing that has been publicized, is 100% factual.
Moderator removed comment
3d
Not until the family member in charge gives consent... the only way consent would be bypassed is if the heart stopped
And even then they do everything possible to revive them until a formal decision can be made.
Unless there's a DNR which if it was signed beforehand by the patient it could possibly go against the wishes of the family
We usually give family some time to come together, say their goodbyes, etc before discontinuing care of a brain dead patient. It’s not like you get the scan or the confirmatory tests and just unplug their shit from the wall and say welp see ya.
“You may be technically right Sir, but rules are rules and we have to unplug him”
Literally the exact opposite of fucking awesome. This is dangerous, stupid, and needs context for people to understand that he wasn’t “saving his son’s life from the stupid doctors,” he was threatening the lives of people tasked with his care, as it was defined by the son’s legal medical decision makers.
Do not celebrate this idiocy.
I get what you’re saying but as soon as they decided to unplug life support, they were no longer charged with his care, the exact opposite in fact.
The fact is, this guy was right and he saved his son’s life. The vast majority of these cases might not end that way but this one did. His son would be dead right now if he’d followed your advice.
Do you think patients are no longer cared for after withdrawing support? I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how medicine works.
We help families make tough decisions about how to care for people that are very often at the end of their lives, or at least at the end of what they considered life. Sometimes that means that a peaceful death for a loved one is the best decision. I advise those decisions based on our medical understanding. Then the family members who are the legal decision makers finalize their decision. If dad has an issue with it, he needs to take it up with the family, not threaten the lives of the people simply tasked with caring for the patient.
If you’re withdrawing care, you are by definition no longer providing care.
I don’t think you understand the definition but ok. We speak different languages, my friend.
preach
But he was right
Do you know how many people in the hospital every day think they’re right about their family member coming back from the dead? Do you know how many brain dead patients we take off ventilators despite some random family member thinking there will be a “miracle” and god will raise them from the dead? Can you imagine if every time we did this in our Neuro ICU, some family member thought it could help to bring a fucking gun to the hospital and threaten the lives of everyone around them?
Think this through. His issue was with his son’s legal decision makers, not the hospital or the physicians. Get a lawyer, not a gun. Call the ethics committee, not start a hostage situation.
Ok and if he would have followed your advice his son would be dead. If he had went to get a lawyer his son would be did. If he called the ethics committee his son would be dead.
Moderator removed comment
3d
parent's love is so awesome.
Did the father not have a say in the decision to take him of life support?
If he was declared brain dead, wouldn't this be a pretty dumb thing to do? I'm assuming he wouldn't k ow better than the medical professionals. Idk, maybe I'm just not empathetic enough.
He was never declared brain dead.
- Ex-wife and other son were in charge of medical desiccions
- see 1. sometimes ppl do stupid shit if they lose hope
more detail here: https://www.click2houston.com/news/2015/12/18/father-son-involved-in-hospital-standoff-speak-to-kprc-2/
Oh, apparently he was also absolutely pissed, so that's another factor for why he did it.
Well he didn’t lose hope did he? His hope is the whole reason this happened
John q
User deleted comment
3d
Wow that guy is extremely unhinged. While drunk, he took two guns into a hospital, and from the context (ex wife and other son making the medical decisions, rather than dad) you can gather that his family didn’t want anything to do with him. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had another dangerous breakdown and kills himself or others.
Or his life was a wreck at that time because he spent however long watching everyone around him try to kill his son..? Rather than just blindly judging his entire life off one moment in time like a bot? Thats a hard situation for most anyone to handle with grace. Id do it for my child. For real, i get it, fuck the universe if it means living with letting someone murder someone i love in the name of medicine. Thats sick shit. Thatd be no universe id want to be a part of.
Drunk asshole>letting drs talk me into killing my son.
The mother of the child opted to withdraw care, not the doctors.
And the John Q parenting award goes to…
Wasn’t this the plot for the movie John Q with Denzel Washington?
Father of the century
"Had a standoff with a SWAT team" what? He took someone Hostage or something?
Opinions on this really demonstrate who of us are drones and who are not.
ITT: Many POS practically jerking off to the idea the son should have died, you have been warned :)
Sounds like that doctor deserves a malpractice suit.
MIL was pregnant, doctors said it was dead and they needed to extract it. FIL said double check. They did, said it was dead. FIL said check again. They said it was dead. FIL said just check one more time.
Today the daughter they had is happy and healthy and almost 30.
Bro DID know best
I'm about to have OSHA exam and you're about to make me cry off wholesomeness
Dad with faith and cojones
My parents don’t even talk to me
Some like movie script stuff right there.
Was John Q based on this or was there another incident
Previously on Grey's Anatomy...
i think they actually had an episode of 9-1-1: Lone Star based on this
The son woke up and said
STOP FIGHTIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIING
There is a video from Qxir on this. I highly recommend watching it.
Disbelief
He must be related to Dr. House
Prolly STILL went to jail
the real John Q
Source?
Went John Q on them bitches!!
He drunkenly held hospital workers at gunpoint. What a hero 🙄
Man they should make a movie about this…maybe cast that guy named Chris Rock?
This story and others always remind me of the Louis Theroux documentary when a patient was in a comatose state with apparently no brain function. All doctors telling family to switch off life support. Then later in documentary he is awake and walking. Gives real chills
But alternately there is hundreds of others who never gave up hope some spending everyday for years/life time with family member that they believe will wake up but haven’t and never will. So basically two victims. The comatose person and the other who is waisting their life in hope of a miracle that won’t ever come.
Wasn't this the story that the movie John Q was loosely based on? Father of a son with a heart defect takes hospital hostage until he gets his son a donor heart.
One of my all time favourite Denzel movies
I hate how this story is always depicted as the dad being a madlad. Context does a lot.
11 missing replies
For context: The son had a history of epileptic seizures, this wasn't the first time he was hospitalized and so the dad thought it would all blow over eventually like all the other times.
But when his son took longer than expected to recuperate the doctors and his family started to loose faith, and eventually they made the decision to turn off life support. The father, however, believed his son just needed a little bit more time, and so decided to give him just that.