A CALIFORNIA car crash
victim who has been languishing in hospital for years in a
“minimally conscious state” is at the centre of a landmark legal
struggle between his mother, who wants to keep him alive, and his
wife, who is asking to let him die.
Robert Wendland, 48, suffered severe brain damage when he rolled
his pick-up truck on September 29, 1993, while making a U-turn on a
motorway on-ramp. He was not wearing a seat-belt and was found to
have twice the legal limit of alcohol in his blood.
The salesman was admitted to hospital in a coma, but emerged into
semi-consciousness 16 months later and is now sometimes able to
perform simple tasks with his left hand, such as picking up a ball
or writing the letter “R”.
His wife of 22 years, Rose, the mother of the couple’s three
children, had the right to ask doctors to remove her husband’s
feeding tube while he was comatose, under a California law
establishing the right-to-die, but she chose not to do so because
she hoped that he would pull through.
When he “woke up”, however, his feeding tube repeatedly became
dislodged and she decided, after the fourth incident, that her
husband was trying to tell her that he wanted to be allowed to die.
As his “legal conservator”, Rose made plans in 1995 to remove the
feeding tube. Somebody, however, tipped off his mother, Florence,
who went to court to save her son.
Judge Bob McNatt, of the San Joaquin County Superior Court,
ruled, before even hearing the mother’s witnesses, that Rose had not
presented “clear and convincing evidence” that her husband would
have wished to die.
“I don’t know at this point,” the judge said, “whether here today
I am preserving Robert’s life or if I am sentencing him to life.”
The case set a legal precedent and is now heading for the
California Supreme Court. Because of the implications for
semi-conscious patients, the tug-of-war between mother and wife
could end up at the US Supreme Court.
Advocates for the disabled fear that a decision allowing his wife
to remove Mr Wendland’s life support would increase the possibility
of relatives effectively putting down accident victims, stroke
patients and people who suffer from advanced Alzheimer’s disease.
But the California Medical Association and a number of hospitals,
as well as the American Civil Liberties Union, have sided with Mr
Wendland’s wife, who argues that he has the right to refuse medical
treatment.
Doctors say that if Mr Wendland’s feeding tube were removed, he
would probably die of dehydration within 14 days. But because he can
experience pain, he would have to be given painkillers — or even be
put back into a coma — to save him from suffering before he died.
His mother, 78, who takes the bus to the hospital three times a
week to visit him, says the second of her eight children is
conscious enough to kiss her hand and can respond to basic commands.
His wife insists that he is just a shell of his former self and
believes that she and her children believe they will meet him again
in heaven.
In 1997, one of Mr Wendland’s doctors asked him a series of
questions to which he responded by pointing or pushing bars
designated “yes” or “no.”
“Do you have pain?” the doctor asked. “Yes,” Mr Wendland
answered.
“Do you want more therapy?” Mr Wendland answered: “No.”
“Do you want to die?” Mr Wendland did not answer.