SwiftVets.com

[SBD]

WorldNetDaily

Wednesday, April 20, 2005
MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH
'Grandma' gets better day to day
Asks for chicken sandwich and ice cream
Posted: April 20, 2005
2:25 a.m. Eastern


Ora Mae Magouirk, the 81-year-old Georgia widow at the center of an intense family dispute over her medical treatment and right to live, is growing stronger every day, despite having been denied food and water for nearly two weeks before being airlifted to the University of Alabama-Birmingham Medical Center in Birmingham for treatment of an aortic dissection.

Her nephew, Ken Mullinax, 45, of Birmingham, told WorldNetDaily that Magouirk is listed in stable condition, her vital signs are "very good," her blood pressure is normal, and the aortic dissection, the reason for her hospitalization in the first place, is contained.

He said she smiles and laughs, but speaks in whispers because of the nasal feeding tube. The feeding tube saved her life, but Mullinax figures his aunt is anxious to dispose of it in favor of more substantial nourishment.

He said he asked her, "What is the first real food you'd like, Aunt Mae?"

"And she whispered, 'I want a really good chicken sandwich with lots of mayonnaise.'"

And not just any kind of chicken sandwich, Mullinax explained. "It's got to be a fried chicken filet."

"That was on Sunday," he noted. "On Monday she asked for ice cream."

Mullinax said that although his aunt's medical condition has greatly improved she is still exhausted and "as weak as a little newborn kitten" – not only from not having adequate nourishment or fluids, "but from the morphine cocktail she was on for several weeks."

Magourirk's sister, Lonnie Ruth Mullinax, 74, of Birmingham, has been a patient at UAB for the same condition, brought on, says her son, by the stress she's suffered worrying about her sister.

But when Magouirk was transferred to UAB on April 9 and began receiving food and water, her sister's medical condition improved dramatically and she was scheduled to return home yesterday.

The two sisters visited several times this past week, and Ruth Mullinax says she has noticed steady signs of improvement in her older sibling.

"She's got a long ways to go because they kept food, water, everything away from her for so many days," Ruth Mullinax told WND. "But she is communicating."

"It's such a miracle that she communicated with us," she exclaimed. "Sister knew who we [she and Ken] were. We asked her her name and she told us. And she said she wanted ice cream. She communicated. The Lord has blessed us."

As WorldNetDaily reported, Magouirk suffered an aortic dissection on March 13, and was admitted to a local hospital in LaGrange, Ga. Although Magouirk has a living will specifying that fluids and nourishment should be withheld only if she were either comatose or "vegetative" – and she was neither – her granddaughter, Elizabeth ("Beth") Gaddy, 36, also of LaGrange, had Magouirk moved to a hospice on March 22. Also, upon Gaddy's request, the hospice withheld food and water from the patient.

When they learned of this, Magouirk's immediate next of kin – Ruth Mullinax and her brother, A.B. McLeod, 64, of Anniston, Ala. – attempted to have their sister transferred from the hospice and to UAB Medical Center for treatment.

But Gaddy obtained an emergency injunction from Troup County Probate Judge Donald Boyd to prevent the planned air transport.

At a hearing held April 4, Gaddy told Judge Boyd that since she held a general power of attorney for her grandmother, she believed she was entitled to make medical decisions on the older woman's behalf. Boyd granted a temporary guardianship to Gaddy and her brother, Michael Shane Magourirk, but required that their grandmother be given adequate food and water. Provisions were made for a possible transfer to UAB.

McLeod, Ruth and Ken Mullinax say Magouirk was not properly nourished, and she was severely dehydrated when admitted to the UAB Medical Center on April 9.

Ruth Mullinax said until this recent incident involving her sister, she had "nothing but good things to say about hospice and I still do."

She explained that her husband and his brother, her mother and grandmother all died in their homes and hospice nurses came to help the family with nursing chores.

"You can't judge them all by the one [where Magouirk was placed]," observed Mullinax. "But Lord Almighty, the day we walked in there, Sister's little old tongue was just cracked open and there was just some ice chips sitting there."

That was on Monday, April 4, following the hearing before Judge Boyd.

Lonnie Ruth met and talked with the doctor who had signed the forms admitting Magourik to hospice.

"That doctor, the one that gave the release to put her in hospice, he acted like Dr. Kavorkian to me," she recalled. "He said, 'Well, if she were my mother I'd put her in the hospice. She's old, and she's not going to get well."

"And I thought, 'Well, bless your heart. You might be there yourself one day."

She said she was so upset by Magouirk's condition and the way she was being treated that she cried "all the way home" to Birmingham.

The rift between herself Ruth Mullinax, her brother and son on the one hand, and her sister's granddaughter on the other has hurt her deeply. She says she has no idea why Gaddy decided to place Magouirk in a hospice with orders denying her food and water.

"We were always so close, all of us," she said sadly. "Real close. At least I thought we were, but apparently we were not. Maybe she was led by this doctor. I just don't know."

Nor does she understand why the younger woman apparently snubbed her on Monday.

Ken Mullinax was wheeling her to Magouirk's room, just as Gaddy and another granddaughter were leaving. He describes his cousin's departure as "bolting from the room."

His mother found it perplexing.

"I love her. I still love her," she says. "I don't like what she did [to Magouirk], but I love her. And as we were going into Sister's room, Beth and her sister, Kim, were going out. I yelled at her, I said, 'Beth, Beth,' but she didn't turn around to acknowledge me or anything. They just continued to walk."

"I wasn't going to be rude to them," Ruth Mullinax continued. "I was just going to hug their necks. I love them – I just don't like what she did. I just don't understand it."

SBD

[Rdtf]

I am still in shock that anyone, especially a doctor, could agree to starve and thirst someone so alive to death.

[Doc Farmer]