(Terminally ill Canadian) Baby Joseph's family gets help from 'a mama grizzly' (friend of Palin)

[alp227]

Source: CBC News

The parents of a terminally ill Windsor, Ont., baby are being represented by a prominent U.S. lawyer who has ties to Sarah Palin.

CeCe Heil is connected to a Washington law firm, which has fought for right-wing Christian causes throughout the United States.

Heil said she hopes to find a hospital in the U.S. that will agree to care for Joseph Maraachli, who has been on life support for months at a hospital in London, Ont., due to a fatal neurological disease.

Doctors want to remove his breathing tube, and a judge has sided with them, but the family of the 13-month-old boy wants a tracheotomy performed so he can be taken home to die.

Palin supported Heil in her unsuccessful bid to represent the Republicans in the 5th Congressional District Congress in Tennessee in August 2010. The former Alaska governor and candidate for vice-president described the Nashville attorney, who has sought to become a member of Congress, as a "tough mama grizzly."

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/story/2011/03/04/baby-joseph-lawyer.html

[Fridays Child]

1. Uh, where were the fundies when Gov. Jan Brewer began presiding over the denial of transplants...

...here in Arizona? I guess a mother of four who needs a new kidney, for example, doesn't have the same "right to life" as a baby with a terminal disease. And where will the fundies be when Arizona's beauty school dropout presides over the cutting of untold thousands of seriously mentally ill adults from Medicaid? Barricaded and cowering in their pretty foothills homes, I hope.

[area51]

9. +1, thank you

Republicans are complete hypocrites. If they cared at all about human life, they'd be on the forefront of trying to get single-payer health care here.

Every day is a death sentence for 273 people who die due to lack of health care in the U.S.; that's 100,000 deaths per year. Where is the republican "pro-life" outrage?

We need single-payer health care, not a welfare bailout for the serial-killer insurance agencies.

"Employer-based health insurance has always been a bad idea. Your life should not depend on who you work for."
-- T. McKeon

"Any proposal that sticks with our current dependence on for-profit private insurers ... will not be sustainable. And the new law will not get us to universal coverage ...." -- T.R. Reid, The Healing of America

[catrose]

2. Better not try Texas

When Bush was governor, he signed a law to the effect that hospitals don't have to keep people on life support for longer than 10 days--unless they can pay for it. The cases I know of where someone was taken off life support over their family's objections include a terminally ill baby, an elderly man in a coma (http://www.samefacts.com/2005/03/schiavo/schiavo-hudson-and-nikolouzos/), and a 27-year-old conscious cancer patient who wanted her ventilator left on long enough for her mother to get to her bedside (http://cbhd.org/content/cost-benefit-ethics-case-tirhas-habtegiris-article). The Baptist hospital refused and removed the ventilator on the 11th day after they gave her notice.

[cynzke]

11. Oh Look!

A death panel! Thanks for posting this. Very relevant to the GOP war on the poor! I'm sharing this with all my friends on facebook.

[Raschel]

3. How is Palin helping? The article doesn't say Palin is paying for the attorney.

I was actually surprised to read she was helping someone, but after reading the article I don't see any indication of her help.

[alp227]

4. CBC just referred to that lawyer as "mama grizzly" even though she's not Palin

the lawyer is just an associate of Palin - read the article please.

[Raschel]

10. I did read it. Too fast I guess. I got duped by the use of Mama Grizzly.

[petronius]

5. Setting aside all the Palin blather, is what this family wants so wrong?

A tracheotomy can't be that major of a procedure, so as long as it won't inflict excess suffering on the child I don't see why it shouldn't end in the way that will give the family the most peace...

[amandabeech]

6. This poor little guy cannot breath on his own.

I read elsewhere that the hospital has tried to wean him off his ventilator (breathing machine) but they have not been able to do so. He stops breathing. If he cannot breath on his own, the tracheotomy will not help him.

The little boy had an older sister with the same disease. She went into the hospital which managed to get her breathing on her own. They then performed the trache, and she was able to go home where she died a few months later. She was not as sick in the hospital as this little boy, so the trache worked to give her some time with her family. Unfortunately, this little boy is much sicker, and is ready to go now.

The doctors and the hospital also assert that no activity can be found in his brain stem, where breathing is regulated. He also does not respond to stimulation, has fixed pupils and cannot keep his body chemistry stable, also according to the doctors and the hospital.

The hospital is willing to take the baby, his breathing equipment, and his family back home to Windsor, Ont, which is across the river from Detroit. It's an hour or two drive on an expressway from London, where he is now. If the parents remove the ventilator at home, the baby will die peacefully at home. However, the parents have refused this option and insist on the trache, like their daughter had, which the hospital sees as futile.

Warn the parents that the baby will die in the hospital, then give the little boy the trache. Otherwise, this is going to drag out with the little guy either suffering or already in heaven.

[K8-EEE]

7. +1 interesting info thanks nt

[amandabeech]

12. You're welcome. n/t

[petronius]

8. So it just can't do what they think it will? In that case the hospital's position makes

sense...

I can't imagine how those parents feel, losing two children to the same disease. :(

Thanks for the details.

[amandabeech]

13. You're welcome.

I can't imagine what the parents feel, either. They are really in a terrible place emotionally. That's why I think that the hospital should just give them what they want even if it doesn't turn out the way the parents think it will. At least the parents can feel like they did all they could. That's not much, but I don't think that there's much else that can be done to help them or their little boy.

[Anakin Skywalker]

15. "The little boy had an older sister with the same disease." Umm...and the parents are not getting

THE MESSAGE?

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Anakin Skywalker]

14. SiegSieg Heil?

[The Nexus]

16. I would've said, "ummm, no thank you"

I rather have my child die with dignity than have a Palin thug henchman stick her nose in it. Cruel as it is, I have my standards and morals. So sorry if I offend anyone

[Vinca]

18. This has more to do with accepting death than anything else.

Sadly, the baby is going to die and if it can't breathe without a tube, it won't make it home anyway. I wish Palin's buddy could find it in her to fight for Americans. Like the Brewer Death Panel Americans who have a chance of survival.