‘She’s still alive’
A Brampton mom is in a coma, declared brain dead by doctors. An injunction preventing the hospital from taking her off life support expires today, pitching her family into a wrenching race against time to save Taquisha McKitty
A Brampton couple are fighting to keep their daughter on life support, even after her attending physician issued a death certificate declaring her brain dead last week.
“She’s still alive,” said Stanley Stewart of his daughter Taquisha McKitty, 27, who is the mother of a 9-year-old girl. “She’s still in there.”
Stewart and Taquisha’s mother, Alyson McKitty, believe Brampton Civic Hospital acted too quickly in declaring their daughter dead, and that doctors are ignoring what the family believes are Taquisha’s responses to “stimulus,” including squeezing their hands and moving her thumb when asked to do so.
On Wednesday, friends of Taquisha stood outside the hospital, holding signs that read “She has a heartbeat,” “Save Taquisha McKitty” and “Keep Taquisha Alive.”
Many in attendance sang “Made a Way,” a gospel song, asking for a miracle.
The family went to court on Sept. 21 and won an emergency injunction temporarily preventing the hospital from removing the respirator that is keeping McKitty alive.
That injunction expires on Thursday, when the matter will be back before Superior Court Justice M.J. Lucille Shaw in Brampton. The injunction arrived at the last minute, said Bishop Wendell Brereton, who is helping the family and hop- ing to find a “legal team” willing to join their fight.
“The injunction showed up 30 minutes before (the respirator was to be disconnected),” Brereton said. “It was like something out of a television show.”
Dr. Omar Hayani had already signed a death certificate declaring Taquisha died the day before — at 12:55 p.m. on Sept. 20, six days after she suffered a drug overdose.
Taquisha’s parents say they just want to give her a chance to live.
“The goal for us was to have some time and to be able to get an independent second opinion,” Stewart said.
But they can’t transfer her to another hospital or have another doctor examine her without getting the death certificate cancelled.
“It’s been crazy,” Stewart said. “You get a call that your daughter, her heart has stopped, so you think you’re going to lose her. Then, you come to the hospital, and they have resuscitated her.”
Doctors used ice to treat the swelling on McKitty’s brain, and she was breathing on her own and moving, though unconscious, in the intensive care unit. But after 72 hours of observation, her breathing stopped, although her heart is still beating.
“You sit there for three days and hope that the doctors are doing something to make her better,” Stewart said.
“It’s been crazy . . . You sit there for three days and hope that the doctors are doing something to make her better.” STANLEY STEWART TAQUISHA MCKITTY’S FATHER
But the family said doctors told them there was no treatment for McKitty.
She has never regained consciousness and remains in a coma.
Justice Shaw ordered life support to remain connected until a decision is made by the province’s Consent and Capacity Board, as per the Health Care Consent Act.
A spokesperson for William Osler Health System, which includes Brampton Civic Hospital, could not speak to McKitty’s case due to privacy issues.
But in an email to the Brampton Guardian, Alineh Haidery said that “before health-care decisions are made, there are a number of processes that physicians and care teams must follow in order to ensure decisions are made appropriately and that they are in the best interest of the patient.”
The hospital, she wrote, follows a “recognized standard of practice” and criteria for neurological determination of death.
“At Osler, all neurological death de- terminations are determined by two experienced physicians in this field,” Haidery wrote.
Stewart will hold a press conference outside the Brampton courthouse at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday. With files from Jaren Kerr