Potential Med Mal practice case over brain injured child
By ANDRIA SIMMONS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 02/10/08
Nonnie Hawkins remembers standing beside her daughter’s hospital bed, steeling herself for a final goodbye.
She turned to physicians at DeKalb Medical Center, who minutes earlier had disconnected a machine that was breathing for 18-year-old Tara Bottoms-Hawkins. Hawkins thought her daughter was in a coma, as she had been for four months. But doctors said the young woman was brain-dead.
Photo courtesy of Nonnie Hawkins
(ENLARGE)
Tara Bottoms-Hawkins.
Kimberly Smith/Staff
(ENLARGE)
Nonnie Hawkins of Lithonia plays with her grandson, Emmanuel Hawkins, who was born in 2004 to a mother on life support.
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It was March 18, 2004, two days after Tara gave birth to a premature son, bucking the predictions of some doctors who said the fetus wouldn’t survive.
Hawkins said she looked at the four doctors, the hospital administrator and the respiratory therapist. She called each of them by name. She thanked them individually for everything they had done to bring her grandson, Emmanuel, into the world.
Then she told them, “Tara’s blood is on your hands, because you just killed my child.”
Hundreds of people die daily in Georgia, almost all before they’re declared brain-dead. That designation usually comes into play when a person suffers a traumatic injury or stroke and is attached to devices that maintain organ function.
When doctors determine the brain is not working anymore, families and hospitals usually agree that life support should then be removed, said Dr. Richard W. Cohen, chairman of the ethics committee for Wellstar Health System for more than 20 years.
Sometimes, however, the family disagrees with the diagnosis.
That was the case with Nonnie Hawkins. Hawkins says her daughter was alive and responding — albeit minimally — to people in the hospital room. On one occasion a doctor had noticed Tara was breathing over the ventilator on her own.
The hospital kept Tara on the ventilator for four months — as long as her unborn baby was alive. They couldn’t perform certain tests to determine the extent of Tara’s brain damage without damaging the fetus, said Hawkins’ attorney, John Crongeyer.
After Emmanuel was born, however, doctors evaluated Tara several times over the next two days. They determined that she was brain-dead, but Hawkins was not convinced.
About 10 minutes before her daughter was taken off the ventilator, Hawkins says people were gathered around the bed praying and pleading aloud “Please wake up, the baby needs you,” when Tara moved her hand. When Hawkins went to get the neurologist, he said it was just a reaction from the spine, she said.
“It was like their mind was already made up,” Hawkins said. “There was nothing besides Tara opening her eyes and sitting up that she could’ve done to stop them from taking her off life support.”
Hawkins filed a lawsuit against DeKalb Medical Center, the doctor and DeKalb Neurology Associates on May 15, 2006, on behalf of her grandson. The lawsuit alleges medical malpractice, wrongful death and negligence. Hawkins said she never consented for the hospital to take her daughter off the ventilator.
At the crux of the case is whether Tara was brain-dead or just brain-damaged.
