For grieving parents, an investigation
By Lee Bowman Scripps Howard News Service
It starts with a phone call about a small life suddenly ended, about a baby found lifeless, unable to be revived.
Almost all of the more than 4,000 sudden and unexpected infant deaths in this country each year prompt an autopsy and a detailed investigation into the circumstances.
Details vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, but most of the time, the investigation begins at a hospital. Emergency medical workers usually try to resuscitate infants who aren't breathing, and rarely concede the fight before getting a baby to an emergency department.
But whether an infant is pronounced dead at a hospital, the home or some other setting, the need for police or investigators from the local coroner or medical examiner to quickly begin gathering facts inevitably intrudes on grieving families.
"The shock hit me so hard at the hospital," said April Poole of Huntsburg, Ohio, of the moments after she lost her daughter, Sommer, in 2005.
"After they pronounced her, they let me into the room to see her, but they'd left the breathing tube in her throat. It just seemed so cold to me."
Rachel Yerbich, whose son, Benjamin Allen, died suddenly in Granite Falls, Minn., last September, recalls spending much of the night holding her son in a family room of the ER.
"They unhooked him from all the machines and let me carry him in there and say goodbye, let my family gather with me to say goodbye," she said.
But other parents report not being able to hold, or even touch, their dead infant at a death scene, even at the hospital.
"There are some medical examiners who are totally against allowing contact with the infant's body before the investigation," said Dr. Deborah Kay, assistant chief medical examiner for the Virginia Office of the Chief Medical Examiner's central region in Richmond.
Kay said the Virginia medical examiner is issuing new guidelines for physicians and hospitals caring for infants and children who die suddenly and unexpectedly and whose deaths are subject to investigation.
"We wanted to have some consistency in what's being done around the state, while trying to be compassionate to the families," Kay said. More
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1 comment:
My son was born still, at home on December15, 2007. Within moments of this almost imcomprhensible and unexpected loss, 6 sherrif's deputies, one of whom was a training officer with two rookies,were traipsing through my home. They took my son as though he were merely evidence, to autopsy, without either of us getting to hold him, or say goodbye. Despite any evidence to suggest that this was anything but a tragedy, they questioned my DH for 4 hours in our home, while I was taken to the hospital, alone. That night I nearly died, as we discovered I had a previously undiagnosed heart condition. This experience was so traumitizing and in my opinion cruel, yet the agency assures me that this is all necessary, as there are "bad people" who do "bad things" and they needed to rule everything out. Never mind that our son is dead and we had to wait 2 months for the towel I wrapped around him to be returned. My only pictures of my son are "crime scene" photos taken by the medical examiner.
I am hopeful that this is something that will begin to change, not just with my local agency, but everywhere. Thank you for posting this and letting people who have had bad experiences that maybe there is hope for change and that in the future no other family will suffer this type of experience from the very people we call for help. Ps. I am a 911 operator and know that theses agencies don't have to respond everything but the SWAT team in these cases. They can change policy if they want to.
Thanks again,
Theresa
Henry's mommy
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