Re: H1N1 flu virus associated with (2) deaths in Eastern Ontario
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/Health/rest/1737749/story.html
'Now he can be at rest?
Parents of teen who died from swine flu grateful suffering over for boy who was a fighter all his life
By Bruce Deachman, The Ottawa CitizenJune 27, 2009
OTTAWA ? Hans Wytenburg and Laurie Jeffrey each carefully measure their response to the question: Is the death of your son a relief?
?Honestly,? says Hans. ?I think it?s better for him.
?Now he can be at rest, and he doesn?t have to go through the pain and the rest of what would happen to him as he gets older.?
The important thing, Laurie adds, is that he?s no longer suffering, and that he was allowed to die with dignity, something the couple had been fighting for ever since James was born.
James Jeffrey Wytenburg, 17, died early Tuesday morning at CHEO, his existing respiratory problems complicated by the H1N1 virus. He was the first teenager in Eastern Ontario to die from swine flu, and the second area resident.
He had been a fighter all his life, says Laurie, and had the scars of dozens of operations to prove it. But when she got a call a week ago Friday from his caregiver, telling her that she?d had to take James to CHEO with respiratory problems, Laurie recalled what doctors had told her when he was an infant: that one day, a virus would likely overwhelm you son?s system, and he would die of respiratory failure.
?They said ?It will be a respiratory bug that finishes him off?,? Laurie remembers.
When James ? the first of Hans and Laurie?s five children ? was born on March 28, 1992, in a small rural hospital near Ottawa, his brain was deprived of oxygen for 30 minutes. Rushed to intensive care at CHEO, he was not expected to survive to the next day, and then not to the next week, the next month.
And while most of his organs recovered from the oxygen deprivation, his brain was significantly and irreversibly damaged. He eyes moved, but he couldn?t see. The only sounds he could process were high-pitched ones, and they distressed him. He couldn?t eat or drink, nor move his arms or legs with any control.
?He sometimes would just turn and stare into the sun,? recalls Laurie, a veterinarian who lives with Hans, a farmer, and James?s four siblings on a farm in Foresters Falls, near Cobden.
?Mentally,? explains Hans, ?he was not there.?
When James?s problems became apparent, his parents requested that in the event extraordinary measures were needed to save his life, he not be resuscitated; that he be allowed to die with dignity.
James was placed in a home where he would receive round-the-clock care and be in the company of other children with special needs.
?Everything he needed,? says Hans, ?they had to do for him.
?That was his family. We are his parents, but as far as his life was concerned, that?s his family ? he?s been with them so long. They?re very loving and caring, and treat him probably better than a lot of people treat their own kids.?
James?s parents? wishes that he be allowed to die without intervention did not sit well with many people, especially when they voiced their sympathies, when James was two, for Robert Latimer, the Saskatchewan farmer convicted of second-degree murder in the death of his 12-year-old daughter Tracy, who suffered cerebral palsy.
?I can very well understand why he did what he did,? recalls Hans. ?Unless you have stood in our shoes, or Mr. Latimer?s shoes or anyone?s who?s been in that situation, I would say most people have no idea what it?s like.
?I?m from the old school,? he adds. ?I would not allow my dog to live like they made (James) live.
?I live on a farm. I grew up on a farm. If somebody saw me treat animals like that, I would be in jail. But because he?s a human being, they try to make sure he doesn?t die.?
Along the way, Hans and Laurie had their share of battles with such organizations as the Children?s Aid Society, groups they felt did not have James?s best interests at heart.
Unable to see or hear, or do much, in fact, beyond sit in a specially fitted wheelchair, James was enrolled in school, a move Hans found ?insane.?
?He was there because this ridiculous government figured that putting totally challenged children in the classroom environment would make people aware of what the other side of life was like.
?There are times in this world,? he adds, ?where you have to just accept what?s going on and face reality.?
? ? ?
A week ago Friday, when she received the phone call from James?s caregiver at CHEO, Laurie returned to the hospital to say goodbye.
At the time, she was unaware that the H1N1 virus was involved ? Laurie says now that one of the other children at the home where James lived came in contact with it at school. All the children there tested positive for H1N1, she says, as did the caregiver. All have since been treated.
And Laurie and Hans are thankful that James was finally allowed to die without intervention.
?It happened very fast,? she says. ?On Sunday he was still doing OK. His breathing was bad, it was hurting him. He was getting bad and I didn?t think he?d be leaving.?
She admits she was worried, though, that there might yet be interference from an outside person or group.
She took one of her daughters with her Monday night to say goodbye to James, and was planning to take the other kids the next day.
?I figured it could be a few days, I figured it could be a few weeks,? she says. ?He?d always recovered before, but I felt this was the last time.?
It came faster than she knew. On Monday, now in palliative care, James?s hook-ups and monitors were removed and he was given morphine to ease his pain. He was, his mother says, finally at peace.
?To carry on life when there wasn?t a lot of quality of life ? I would not want to live in a bed all my life and not be able to see or hear or appreciate anything around me. But it was mainly that he was not suffering.?
? Copyright (c) The Ottawa Citizen
