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Final update.
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This will be the final update about my friend's condition.
Yesterday his family changed their mind after consulting with the doctors in Lincoln, so his feeding was cut off once again. We were all quite angry with his family for being so wishy-washy and for cutting off his food and water again.
Somewhere around 1:00 PM that day I received a phone call from Hospital 1 (which is downstairs from 203 Kennedy, which used to be Pediatrics/Nursery) saying that I was to bring Jon's feeding pump back down. Phone calls had been made and BSDC had decided to take a much more firm position on the matter, parental/guardian wishes or not.
So I got a chance to see Jon. Other than his breathing being less than impressive, a fever, and an unfortunate spike in seizure activity he didn't look or act any different than he had before the surgery. If he really is terminal he is putting on one hell of a bluff.
The sudden change in the way BSDC is dealing with the situation came after phone calls were made to confer with the State Attorney Office and they made it clear that unless his family gets a court order to discontinue food and hydration we do not have to honor their current request (legal precdence being the Schiavo case). Because all of our residents are there on a voluntary admission we also have the right to "kick" them out. So word has come down from High that there will be policy drafted that will outline our official stance that we will not honor any requests to deny nutrition and hydration, and that should a court order come down compelling us to do so we will simply ask that they be removed from our facility and placed in another, due to the voluntary nature of admissions.
That is the good news. Now for the bad.
The family has decided to be very vindictive and is now lashing out at the staff that has cared for him for 36 years. Today his ex-social worker informed us that his parents have asked him to be a permanent resident of Hospital 1, and that the only staff that are allowed to visit/see him will be Hospital 1 staff, and with the move he will be assigned a new social worker. Paperwork I had to sign off on, and I had no choice. It's amazingly stunning that we are being punished for doing our jobs. We are responsible to look out for the welfare of our residents. That's what we were doing. Had this been a blatant Schiavo 2.0 I could let it go. I would have told his social worker that it's time to just let it go. But Jon is not in the same boat as Terri. Terri had a brain that was reduced to goo and only showed the most involuntary of responses (blinking, breathing). Jon is still there.
But this is the last on the matter I will be able to say, because I am now no longer legally able to see him. I think it will only be fitting to see what punishment comes from violating the rule, and how many times I can get away with it before I get fired.
Maybe I'll handcuff myself to his bed, or find some other form of protest to exercise. It's deplorable that we can just be walked all over by people who haven't seen their child in 20 years and have had no interest in his life up until this point. I can only hope that if I do meet them they aren't too elderly that I'll feel bad for knocking their faces through a wall.
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