Couple push to keep daughter on life support despite resistance
Doctors say one year old, who has been in a coma since July, has no chance to recover
The Toronto parents of a one-year-old girl were set to find out Tuesday if their daughter will stay on life support despite a recommendation from a medical team to pull the plug on the ventilator and let her die.
Kaiomi Hall-Kemp has been in the Hospital for Sick Children’s Pediatric Intensive Care Unit since July, after sustaining a severe brain injury when she drowned in the family bathtub. She has since remained in an unresponsive coma and doctors say she has no chance to recover from it.
“I don’t have any particular expectation, but as a mother I just want to give her as much opportunity as possible,” mother Brittany Hall told the Consent and Capacity Board Monday during a hearing process that was undertaken after the parents rejected the medical team’s recommendation.
Hall became emotional while being cross-examined on the events that followed Hall-Kemp’s drowning, including the CPR performance before and after paramedics arrived. At some point she was allowed to go off video Zoom and respond through audio only.
She told the hearing she has been through the “traumatic” experience of losing a child twice before, and she’s determined to fight for the survival of her daughter despite what the medical team may recommend.
Members of the medical team responsible for Hall-Kemp’s care have been testifying about why discontinuing the life support care is the best recourse, as there’s no prospect of improvement in her neurological status.
During the hearing on Sunday, Dr. Andrew Helmers said the infant’s parents have shown a degree of hope that he characterized as “misplaced.” Despite medical evidence showing that HallKemp will not recover, they’ve continued to use statements such as “her brain is fine,” he said.
Helmers told the hearing the medical team has the ability to measure various degrees of a functioning brain and forms of stimulation, and all of that is absent in Hall-Kemp’s case.
She has been in a coma for close to two months and keeping her on life support is “not in her best interest,” said Helmers. If the board dismisses the application to pull the plug on ventilation, there are risks of possible damages and deterioration to the patient’s lungs, which could lead to acute signs of pneumonia, as well as other infections for an immobile patient, he explained.
If she stays on life support, Hall-Kemp will not experience any kind of physical pain or anxiety, and is unlikely to register any physical or mental growth, Helmers explained.
In testimony to the board Sunday and Monday, Hall-Kemp’s father, Daniel Kemp, said he disagrees with the doctors’ recommendation to stop life support treatment because he believes she can come back from this coma.
“Never is a strong word,” he said. “They haven’t given her a chance” by exploring other possibilities, specifically the hyperbaric oxygen therapy and infrared light therapy — methods that he said are used for brain treatment in the U.S., but not officially approved in Canada. Both parents have been exploring these options for a possible treatment for their daughter, including ongoing discussions with a hyperbaric oxygen centre in Toronto.
He said he and the mother have been alternating to provide care and company to their daughter in hospital, with one of them staying by her bedside at all times. He said he has seen signs that their daughter may be experiencing some form of feeling: moving her head away when her music is brought nearer, clutching her hands into fists, sweating when it gets very hot. Even her body seems to become less stiff, he said.
But doctors say those movements are not purposeful and are not a result of brain activity.
Adjudicator Mark Handelman, who’s been presiding over the hearing, will render the final decision Tuesday morning.