Tonsil Surgery Tragedy: Teen Declared Brain Dead (VIDEO)
The family of an Oakland 13-year-old girl, Jahi McMath, is demanding answers after the tonsil surgery tragedy: How did a routine procedure to help fix her sleep apnea turn tragic when the 8th grader was declared brain dead two days after having her tonsils removed?
Just moments after waking up from a tonsillectomy on December 9, Jahi was talking with her family and asking for a popsicle. Thirty minutes later she was choking on her own blood and went into cardiac arrest in the Oakland Children’s Hospital Intensive Care Unit, according to her relatives.
Now the head of the pediatrics department has told the family that Jahi will be taken off life support because she has been declared dead under California law, KTVU reported.
“I’m all cried out and angry,” Jahi’s mother, Nailah Winkfield, said outside the hospital Monday morning.
Jahi’s uncle, Omar Sealey, 27, said the family believes “an error was committed by the hospital, either before, during, or after surgery. I absolutely believe that somewhere along the way, there was a protocol that wasn’t followed, or there was a surgical error.”
The child’s grandmother Sandra Chatman, herself a surgical nurse, said nursing staff did not react until she began screaming for help. She said that hospital staff failed to provide adequate care and attention to the clearly ailing patient.
A spokeswoman for the hospital said staff is “currently reviewing the case and we do not have enough information to make any further statements at this time.”
VIDEO Report from NBC