Being Brain Dead

[OnlyHis]

I've been following the story of Terri Schindler-Schiavo and remembering something that happened to a childhood friend of mine 11 years ago.

Unlike Terri, my friend was brain dead. She was hit by a semi because the driver didn't want to stop at a redlight. I had known her since before we started school. She was a beautiful 27 year old Christian mother of an 18 month old daughter. Our daughters were actually born a week apart. She was put on life support only because her father, who was also a truck driver, wanted to say goodbye. And also because she was an organ donor. Ok, here's the question:

If a person dies and is kept alive on machines, is that person in heaven already or are you bound to your body until someone pulls the plug? I've always wondered when my friend, her name was Andrea, when she was declared brain dead, was she already at home with Jesus, or still here until her father said goodbye and they harvested her organs? This is morbid, I know, but I have always wondered. I'd like to think she was already home with Jesus. Hmmm...it's been 11 years and it still hurts me.

[Jade]

This is just my opinion and not based on any scripture, but only on my medical background. I hope others will feel free to jump in here and speak their opinions whether they agree with mine or not.


I believe that once a person is brain dead, then that is it. The reason for this is that without the input from the brain, the heart cannot continue to beat, nor can the body continue to breathe. The is no chance of recovery from brain death. The brain is gone and will not return to any function. (Not the case with someone in a coma where there is evidence of brain activity even though they are non-responsive.)

The question arises about where is the "seat of the soul" or where is our consciousness located? I, personally, do not see how a body, maintained by machines without any brain function for any of the slightest of thoughts can be considered alive. Otherwise you could take anyone who dies from cancer and put them on machines to continue to have a heartbeat or breathe. That does not make them alive.


I found this interesting article on Jewish thought regarding brain death. They didn't have any conclusion about it.

http://www.jlaw.com/Articles/brain.html

Edited to add: Once she was brain dead, I think she was with the Lord, not still in her body.

[OnlyHis]

Thank you, Jade. I went to the link you provided...very interesting. I have hoped that once she was brain dead she was with the Lord, but it bothered me because I wasn't 100% sure. Now I am.

[antsinmypants]

I'm unsure, but I think when the heart stops beating, then you're gone if you're brain dead.

See, there's something your body does called a "death rattle" -- which is the sound that is made when your soul leaves your body in your last breath.

Unless that has happened, I think you're still there.

Might be wrong..

[OnlyHis]

I didn't know that, ants...interesting.

My aunt passed away a couple of years ago. She'd had cancer and she was a Christian. My mother sat with her until she drew her last breath. My aunt was totally oblivious to anything or anyone. My mom said that her body struggled so hard for that last breath, even though my aunt was unconscious. I'll have to ask her if she'd heard the rattle. I've heard about it but never that explanation before. Interesting.

[Jade]

From 3 different medical dictionaries/encyclopediae:

death rattle
n.
A gurgling or rattling sound sometimes made in the throat of a dying person, caused by loss of the cough reflex and passage of the breath through accumulating mucus.


Death rattle is found in about 1 dying patient in 4. It is highly predictive of death within 48 hours. Death rattle is the noise caused by oscillatory movements of secretions in the upper airways with inspiration and expiration in dying patients.

Death rattle, a rattling or gurgling in the throat of a dying person.

[blitzkreig]

You have to define "brain dead" for your question. So called older definitions of death are not valid... and can be reversed. "Brain dead" is just that... and it is irreversible by any means, except by our Lord, Lazarus being the easiest example to cite.

The medical definition of death

Looking back throughout the history of medicine, there was a time when people believed that death occurred when the heart stopped and breathing ceased (Burnell 67). Cessation of respiration was often determined by placing a feather beneath the nose of the patient where it would move with the slightest breath. Cardiac activity was checked by simply placing one's ear on the patient's chest and listening for a heartbeat. Because little was known about states of limited or nonexistent consciousness in which a heartbeat was undetectable to the human ear, some people were buried alive, and it became clear that new methods were needed to verify death (Larue 11). But along with the development of technology designed for the purpose of more accurately determining death came technology that could keep a body alive almost indefinitely (Burnell 67). For example, some people who have experienced severe hypothermia and who exhibit all of the classic symptoms of death have been successfully resuscitated, and others under the influence of certain substances, such as anesthetizing or paralyzing drugs, may appear dead although they are still alive (Larue 11-12). The definition of death is further clouded by resuscitative measures that are only partially successful, resulting in an individual whose heart and lungs continue to function but whose brain is irreversibly damaged ("A Definition of Irreversible Coma" 337). Modern medical technology has enabled physicians to keep patients such as these biologically alive, although they are capable of existing only at a vegetative level (Wennberg 109).

Fewer than fifty years ago, a person who had stopped breathing and had no heartbeat was considered dead. Now, however, brain function is also considered in the definition of death (Burnell 16). In 1991, the Multi-Society Task Force on PVS (persistent vegetative state), a conglomerate of physicians, ethicists, and lawyers sponsored by the American Academy of Neurology, defined brain death as the "permanent absence of all brain functions, including those of the brain stem. Brain dead patients are irreversibly comatose and apneic and have lost all brain stem reflexes and cranial-nerve functions" (Part 1 1502). But due to the introduction of the electroencephalogram (EEG), which makes it possible to monitor the functioning of the brain, and the advent of organ transplantation, which makes the monitoring of brain activity necessary, the shift of attention towards the brain as the organ that ultimately signals death took place many years earlier (Hoefler and Kamoie 55).

The actual concept of brain death was introduced in a 1959 article by two French neurophysiologists, Mallaret and Goulon, who studied patients on artificial life support who showed no electrical brain activity. They concluded that these comatose patients were "beyond coma" (Burnell 68). No definitive standards of brain death emerged until a group of physicians, theologians, lawyers, and philosophers on the Harvard University faculty formed the Ad Hoc Committee of the Harvard Medical School to Examine the Definition of Brain Death early in 1968 (Barnard 31-32). According to the report of the Ad Hoc Committee in the Journal of the American Medical Association, a permanently nonfunctioning brain must exhibit four criteria: unreceptivity and unresponsitivity, in which there is a "total unawareness of externally applied stimuli;" no movements or breathing during a period of at least one hour in which the patient is continuously observed by physicians; no reflexes, such as blinking, eye movement, and stretch-of-tendon reflexes; and a flat electroencephalogram, assuming that the electrodes have been properly placed, the equipment is functioning normally, and the personnel operating it are competent (337-338). The Harvard Criteria, as these standards came to be known, have proven to be reliable indicators of brain death, and physicians have generally reached a consensus about continuing to apply them.

More recently, a commission created by former United States president Ronald Reagan in 1981, for the purpose of, among other things, establishing a definition of death, concluded that the diagnosis of death would require that physicians establish the presence or absence of brain activity, given that no bodily functions can occur spontaneously without the help of the brain (Burnell 68-69). From this new definition, it can be argued that death occurs at the moment that the brain activity necessary to control autonomous biological functions ceases. In fact, patients who are determined to be brain dead, based on the Harvard Criteria, are medically and legally dead, and no further medical treatment is required (McCuen and Boucher 25).

[Jade]

I was going by the current medical definition of cessation of all brain activity.

[OnlyHis]

Originally posted by Jade
I was going by the current medical definition of cessation of all brain activity.

Me too. She was brain dead, no brain activity at all. :cry

[Mommy2KandM]

We had a similar situation in my family onlyHis. Except it was my 17 year old cousin thinking he was cool paying with a gun he found with his friends. He accidentally shot himself in the head as they all played with it. He was brought to the Emergency room and for a short bit I guess tried to communicate.. but then went into a coma like state. They ran brain tests on him and he was brain dead.. no brain activity. So it was just the machines keeping him alive. He was on the machines for a day I think it was to give my grandparents and his Father a chance to come in from out of town to say goodbye. He was already gone in my opinion... but it was nice for family to be able to touch him once again while his body was still warm and say their goodbyes. His organs were donated so he was kept on the machine till the surgery where they harvest the organs. It was hard for his mother (my aunt) to let them take him up, she would not be able to be with him for that moment when his heart stopped beating. But she did tape her cross necklace in the palm of his hand so she would feel like a part of her was with him when he died.

I don't think he was with us any longer.... just his body. But his personality, soul, etc... was gone I feel. He was brain dead.. there wasn't anything of him left except his outer being and organs that would stop except for machines not allowing them too.

The sad part is I have no reassurance or fruit to lead me to think he was saved. Perhaps had he lived longer then 17 he would have come to that choice... but at 17 I don't know that he had made that all important choice and by outward appearances I would guess no before I would guess yes. But God knows his heart and is just so I have peace about that. God knows what took place in those moment before his brain stopped working. It is a sad death though when someone dies and you can't say for sure you know they knew where they were going. :cry

[Hootmon]

Being Brain Dead
I thought for a moment we were going to be discussing certain posters on the Message Board... :D: :peep

[duckdogger]

Clueless but not BD.

I tend to agree with the possibility of the soul's departure upon flat brain waves. Another consideration for discussion is why do relatives keep a brain dead loved one on artificial support when that is all that is causing the blood to course through the veins?

[Jade]

Denial.

Once the plug is pulled, that's it. They hope for something that will not happen. In a crisis situation, it is not easy to let go.

[duckdogger]

Yeah. Hard to be objective with a spouse or your child involved.

[toddlemom]

So brain dead is different from persistent vegetative state, right?

I feel :confused sort of brain-dead myself at this point.

[OnlyHis]

Originally posted by Mommy2KandM
We had a similar situation in my family onlyHis. Except it was my 17 year old cousin thinking he was cool paying with a gun he found with his friends. He accidentally shot himself in the head as they all played with it. He was brought to the Emergency room and for a short bit I guess tried to communicate.. but then went into a coma like state. They ran brain tests on him and he was brain dead.. no brain activity. So it was just the machines keeping him alive. He was on the machines for a day I think it was to give my grandparents and his Father a chance to come in from out of town to say goodbye. He was already gone in my opinion... but it was nice for family to be able to touch him once again while his body was still warm and say their goodbyes. His organs were donated so he was kept on the machine till the surgery where they harvest the organs. It was hard for his mother (my aunt) to let them take him up, she would not be able to be with him for that moment when his heart stopped beating. But she did tape her cross necklace in the palm of his hand so she would feel like a part of her was with him when he died.

I don't think he was with us any longer.... just his body. But his personality, soul, etc... was gone I feel. He was brain dead.. there wasn't anything of him left except his outer being and organs that would stop except for machines not allowing them too.

The sad part is I have no reassurance or fruit to lead me to think he was saved. Perhaps had he lived longer then 17 he would have come to that choice... but at 17 I don't know that he had made that all important choice and by outward appearances I would guess no before I would guess yes. But God knows his heart and is just so I have peace about that. God knows what took place in those moment before his brain stopped working. It is a sad death though when someone dies and you can't say for sure you know they knew where they were going. :cry

Kristina, I am so sorry that your family had to go through this too.

Yes, I believe now for sure that when a person is brain dead, then they are with Christ if they are a Christian. I know it is tough wondering if someone is with Christ or not after they die. I have been there. It about drove me crazy a couple of times, until I realized that there is nothing I can do to change things and came to the same conclusion that you did. God knows their heart and I just have to trust Him. And I do, even though it is hard wondering where it was they went. I often think of my own grandfather, he thought once you're dead, you're dead. That is it, no more. You are just no more. Gone. No heaven, no hell. That was his belief. It breaks my heart and I just hope he changed his mind before he died. It is hard. :cry

[Mommy2KandM]

Originally posted by toddlemom
So brain dead is different from persistent vegetative state, right?

I feel :confused sort of brain-dead myself at this point.

yes I believe the two are different. Brain dead means you don't have brain activity and if they removed the heart lung etc.. machines those organs would stop working because the brain couldn't tell them to do their jobs.