Jahi McMath 'Deteriorating' Reports State, as Family Fights to Keep Her Alive
Jahi McMath's condition is reportedly in bad shape after leaving Children's Hospital Oakland and being transferred to a new facility. Her family is fighting hard, though, to get her body back to where it needs to be in order for the 13-year-old to make a full recovery.
"She looks very peaceful," Jahi's uncle Omari Sealey told KGO News. "She looks like she's sleeping and I think I even saw her smile when she left Children's Hospital."
Yet reports state that Jahi's body is in bad physical condition because she did not receive a feeding tube or a tracheotomy before leaving the hospital. Children's Hospital Oakland refused to perform the procedures necessary to insert those tubes, arguing that they would not perform any medical procedures on a deceased person. The Hospital declared Jahi brain-dead almost a month ago and has battled the McMath family for the right to discontinue life support; the McMath family won the right to take the teen home, and she was released on Sunday night.
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"She's being given antibiotics to help combat infections that have been growing while she was lying in bed. She is being given some nutritional support. She's being given essential supplements such as potassium," family attorney Christopher Dolan explained. "What we always wanted to do was have her mother have the ability to make a choice as to whether or not her daughter would stay on or come off of a ventilator."
The Hospital, however, told the press that there was very little to be done for Jahi, given that her body was already showing signs of deterioration in the aftermath of her death.
"She's deceased and unfortunately a body, and this is in our court record in the court statements we filed on Friday, her body is deteriorating and that is a natural course of events when a person is deceased," spokeswoman Melinda Krigel explained.
For now, Jahi is at an undisclosed location, but there is the possibility that she could be transferred to New York and the New Beginnings facility, which specializes in treating patients who need long-term care.
