Jahi McMath Family Lawyer: 'Brain Dead' Girl's Health Improving with Treatment

Jahi McMath Family Lawyer: 'Brain Dead' Girl's Health Improving with Treatment

Christopher Dolan, lawyer for the family of Jahi McMath, says the 13-year-old girl is improving after leaving the Oakland hospital which gave up on treating her after declaring her deceased.

“She is doing very well and getting the treatment she should have gotten 28 days ago,” Dolan said Wednesday, referring to what happened to Jahi after a December operation.

“Doctors are optimistic that her condition has stabilized and that her health is improving from when she was taken from (the Oakland hospital).”

Her tonsils, adenoids, and uvula were removed on December 9, and she went into cardiac arrest three days later. Three neurologists said McMath could not breathe on her own and that her brain was not receiving blood. Her family won a stay to keep her on a ventilator and transfer her to a new hospital. They insist she is still alive while her heart is beating. On Sunday, January 5, the family did receive the breathing and feeding tubes.

Doctors filed a declaration of her condition when the family was fighting to keep her on the ventilator:

The deterioration of Jahi’s body is now the only possible course and “became inevitable the moment she died,” according to a court declaration from Dr. Heidi Flori, a critical care physician at Children’s Hospital & Research Center Oakland, which had sought to remove the teen from the ventilator after she was declared brain dead Dec. 12.

“The medical team and I believe that additional and more dramatic signs of the body’s deterioration will continue to manifest over time, regardless of any procedures and regardless of any heroic measures that any facility in the country might attempt,” Flori said in the declaration filed in U.S. District Court.

“Mechanical support and other measures taken to maintain an illusion of life where none exists cannot maintain that illusion indefinitely,” she added.

The family will not release the name of the facility or their location due to threats.

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