Jason Wallace and Crystal Vitelli are considering suing Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children after providers removed their 14-month-old, Kaylee, from a ventilator without their approval. (Toronto Sun) The parents explained that they watched helplessly as their daughter fought to breathe on her own for 27 hours. (The parents posted on their Facebook page a video of Kaylee apparently struggling to breathe.) "We walked back into the room to see our daughter struggling, and I mean struggling in a torturous way." Both parents are calling for an internal investigation by the Hospital for Sick Children. They are also considering complaining to the Ontario Association of Physicians and Surgeons and the Attorney General. (680 News)
As she famously did last year, Kaylee managed to pull through and is expected to be released in a few days.
1 comments:
The original crisis - and the coverage of it - was a pretty disturbing mix. Kaylee was described as an infant who "stopped breathing" when asleep, with the word "apnea" consistently avoided.
Since some research I did back in the mid-nineties left some knowledge about Joubert syndrome lodged in my brain, I engaged in one of the fastest bits of research I've ever done and got a blog entry out to ask a few pointed questions that seemed to go begging at the time:
* How does this child's disabilities differ from the majority of non-terminal children with the same condition?
* Was the possibility of treating the apnea ever seriously considered?
* Given the possiblity of improvement of apnea over time, why is ventilator assistance being withdrawn?
* Is this child really "dying" or is this a "quality of life" decision? Shouldn't we try to be clear about which type of situation we're talking about?
Entire blog entry here: http://notdeadyetnewscommentary.blogspot.com/2009/04/kaylee-wallace-disturbing-coverage-and.html
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