Jesse Ramirez: Working Out Instead of Dead

I have heard from the Jesse Ramirez family--and the news is good. Readers of SHS may recall that Ramirez was badly injured in an auto accident and quickly pronounced in a PVS. His wife wanted his feeding tube pulled, but this was resisted by his family. Litigation ensued, and--he woke up. Later, when I was in Phoenix speaking, he and his family came to meet me. It was a real thrill to shake Jesse's hand.

This is the latest news from Jesse's sister, which I share in an abridged and slightly edited form with SHSers with her kind permission:

Just a brief update since it's been just over a year when we experienced our hasty ordeal in the fight for Jesse's life. Since you last spoke and saw Jesse, he has made such a miraculous recovery! He walks semi without the gait walk, but is now running and really working out at the gym 3 times a week for 3&1/2 hours. WOW, considering a year ago he was said to have been in a vegetative state.

Why? He was not a vegetable literally speaking at all. He was a human with a life and deserved his dignity. What he has not experienced is his eye sight. He can see to some degree and he continues to get some eye sight back daily...[A]nd yet the medical staff and facility participated and agreed on what could of happened- days away to his door of death all by the means of starvation and dehydration and nothing related to the accident that could have killed him.

He wanted to Thank You for all your support on his case...Thank God for A D F [Alliance Defense Fund] they were Angels sent from up above. Again, Thank You for sharing Jesse's story to many others/organization speeches, this should inspire them to know that our family just didn't [stay] quiet there, the processing of saving brother's life, we took still another step ["Jesse's Law"] by making it clear that no one has that authority to remove hydration and nutrition from someone who is incapacitated...Our family believes Jesse was that statistic of being misdiagnosed. God Bless

This is the thing: How ready we have become generally to write people like Jesse off. How many have died as a consequence will never be known. But before we decide the time has come for "death with dignity," let us recall the lessons of Jesse, Haleigh Poutre, and Seema Sood: When in doubt, choose life.

I Shook Hands with Jesse Ramirez

I was speaking at a bioethics conference in Phoenix on Saturday. At lunch the sponsors asked me to come with them because somebody wanted to meet me. It was Jesse Ramirez and his sister and family! What a wonderful surprise. Here was a man that had been consigned to dehydrating to death and who suffered without food and water for five long days, but because of the loving commitment of his blood family--and good legal work by the Alliance Defense Fund--he was standing before me with his hand outstretched, a gentle smile on his face.

Jesse had a delicate countenance and is clearly still recovering from his ordeal. But he can walk on his own with the aid of a walker, is fully cognizant, and is clearly happy to be alive. He was later introduced to the crowd of 400 at the Center for Arizona Policy event and got a rousing standing ovation.

Whilst there, I spoke with someone involved with saving his life--not a member of the family. Apparently, to legally have a feeding tube pulled in Arizona one must either be a named surrogate on an advance directive or be a court appointed guardian and act pursuant to court order. In this case, from what I was told, neither applied--and that was why the dehydration was able to be stopped. Moreover, the dehydration had apparently commenced without Jesse even being examined by a neurologist, only a neurosurgeon, which is not the same thing at all. It was only because of the legal intervention that the neurologist was consulted and saw beginning signs of awareness. The rest is history.

I am hearing way too many stories like this, of decisions to end care made with seeming undue haste. As I noted in my recent Weekly Standard piece, I believe much of this owes to the Terri Schiavo debacle and the bad cultural message it sent to the medical community and the wider society. We must be increasingly vigilant against allowing the pernicious belief that there is such a thing as a life not worthy of living from seeping even further into our health care decision making and public bioethics.

A Thwarted Dehydration

I have been watching this case since it first hit the news in Arizona. On May 30, Jesse Ramirez was arguing with his wife when their SUV rolled over. He was left unconscious. The doctors said his case was "hopeless," that he would never wake up. The wife moved him to a hospice and had his feeding tube removed, that is, she decided to dehydrate him to death.

The parents objected. They obtained help from lawyers affiliated with the Alliance Defense Fund, and obtained a court order requiring sustenance to be maintained while the case was investigated.

And now, this news:

Two weeks ago, he was the center of a family battling over of whether he should live or die.Now, he can hug and kiss, nod his head, answer yes and no questions, give a thumbs-up sign and sit in a chair...Jesse is now ready to move from a hospice to a rehabilitation facility.

"We have had a lot of miracles," said Betty Valenzuela, Ramirez's aunt. "He would have been gone."

No, it wasn't miracles: It was a family that refused to give up on their loved one. It was a judge who didn't just decide that the wife had the right to pull the plug, especially given certain potential conflicts of interest in the case. It was the Alliance Defense Fund that was willing to step in to the breach and help a family in desperate need.

I also think that if Ramirez's doctors really called his case hopeless, they have a lot of explaining to do. As we have discussed here previously, PVS is often misdiagnosed. More importantly, it can't be done accurately after only a few weeks post trauma. So, why the rush in this case to write the man off?

This much is sure: But for parents willing to fight for his life, Ramirez would be dead today rather than entering the rehabilitation unit. And therein lies an important lesson for us all.