Cheryl Samons
2.5K posts
The Gestone family asks for your prayers for Tony, one more time.
They were unable to find a hospital that would take Tony, so the brain death tests will happen today at 5:00 pm.
As a reminder, brain death tests do not look at all areas of the brain and they do not prove brain death.
Science and medicine do not know where consciousness exists in the brain, and some areas of the brain can be active, while other areas show no activity.
This family was justified to want to delay the hospital from doing tests that would have all but certainly not shown brain activity in the days following his accident.
A brain death prognosis means a person is legally dead while biologically alive, and it would have allowed the hospital to take him off support without giving him nearly enough time.
People with very traumatic brain injuries can be recoverable, but most are not given time to prove it.
Thank you so much to everyone who has prayed, shared, called and emailed the hospital, or taken part in any way.
The efforts will not go to waste because so many great and helpful connections have been made so that we can hopefully help others more easily. The publicity of this case has certainly raised awareness.
And the effectual, fervent prayers of a righteous person avails much. Those prayers never go to waste.
English
I hate to give the sad update that Tony Gestone has passed.
There are no further details at this time. If the family makes a statement, I will pass it along.
English
@washingtonpost Such a stupid article. It will lead to fewer vaccine injuries and deaths.
English
Breaking news: The Trump administration’s move to drop the long-standing recommendation for newborn hepatitis B vaccination within 24 hours of birth will likely lead to additional infections and millions in added health care costs, new studies show. wapo.st/3QLrZXe
English
@cheryl_samons I hope that was helpful! So much depends on the % oxygen coming through the ventilator (the FiO2).
English
@DrMargaretShow Thank you so much for this information. I will get back to you on this.
English
Cheryl, how much oxygen is he on? 100%? And can we have the vent settings of PEEP? The last blood gas and/or the oxygen saturation on the pulse oximeter (96%)? And the heart rate would be helpful (heart rate of 120 beats/min vs 80 beats/min). I’ll reserve my opinion on whether a trach or an ETT is appropriate.
No one needs a PEG tube for transport. At all, ever.
English
@heidiklessigmd @DrMargaretShow Thank you and thank you for giving that update for me! I will pass it along to them if Dr Byrne hasn’t done that already.
English
Please check with Dr. Byrne, but as I recall he and Jahi’s parents managed to transfer Jahi McMath from California to New Jersey without either a tracheostomy or PEG tube, and both of those procedures were subsequently performed in New Jersey. It’s a more risky transfer, certainly, but it can be done.
English
I just received the following text from Tony Gestone’s uncle regarding the hearing.
“They are giving us two options basically. The hospital is allowing transport but they’re not allowing us to give him a peg and trach from an outside physician, he needs those survive the transport. Option 2 is go to court and let the judge decide what should be done and our counsel has said that we most likely will not win. The lawyer they hired had been on many cases specific for situations like these regarding TBI. They want to do this brain profusion scan (which is an inaccurate test) because they want to end this now. They are not following due process of brain death and they’re basically going off the prognosis. Also the problem with us taking the 24 hours is he will die if he doesn’t not have the peg or trach. My sister is looking at her options like this: 1: she kills Tony by trying to transport him or two she allows the hospital to kill him by doing these inaccurate tests”
English
@GemellaOne44913 Thank you, but I’m not family. I’m just an advocate who got involved to bring some people together. Please pray for Tony and his family. But I’ll take all the prayers I can get! 😊
English
Update on Tony Gestone…
Tony’s uncle sent me a text this morning.
If you’re in the area, they could use your support at the hearing tomorrow.
From Tony’s uncle:
“There is a hearing for my nephew Tony tomorrow at 2pm at Nassau County Supreme Court in Mineola. We could use all the support we can get. Thank you for your continuous prayers. God is listening. 🙏 please share this and repost it in Facebook groups etc. We really could use the whole community’s support. If you can’t make it please say a prayer for him.
We had an outside neurologist come and evaluate him yesterday and I think he’ll be giving testimony if they can’t come to an agreement prior. We’re trying to get him transferred, there’s two routine procedures in order to get him transferred. The hospital is refusing to do them. They are basically giving us an ultimatum saying if he takes the brain profusion scan they will do it. So they’re still treating him as brain dead. And we’ve had many experts tell us that these procedures could be done to my nephew Tony. These procedures would make it much easier to transfer him and the hospital is basically blocking it.” ~ Joe Hauser
As a reminder, the brain death tests do not show all brain activity, and do not prove the brain is dead.
When hospitals do tests that do not detect all brain activity, it allows them to declare brain death, and then they don’t have to continue support or treat the patient like a living person.
And they definitely won’t do procedures that are necessary to allow them to be transferred to a facility that will treat them properly.
Brain death is a legal term used by the medical community to take vital organs from living people and to clear ICU beds.
English
@HighWireTalk Here’s an update. If you can be there for support tomorrow, the family would appreciate it.
Cheryl Samons@cheryl_samons
Update on Tony Gestone… Tony’s uncle sent me a text this morning. If you’re in the area, they could use your support at the hearing tomorrow. From Tony’s uncle: “There is a hearing for my nephew Tony tomorrow at 2pm at Nassau County Supreme Court in Mineola. We could use all the support we can get. Thank you for your continuous prayers. God is listening. 🙏 please share this and repost it in Facebook groups etc. We really could use the whole community’s support. If you can’t make it please say a prayer for him. We had an outside neurologist come and evaluate him yesterday and I think he’ll be giving testimony if they can’t come to an agreement prior. We’re trying to get him transferred, there’s two routine procedures in order to get him transferred. The hospital is refusing to do them. They are basically giving us an ultimatum saying if he takes the brain profusion scan they will do it. So they’re still treating him as brain dead. And we’ve had many experts tell us that these procedures could be done to my nephew Tony. These procedures would make it much easier to transfer him and the hospital is basically blocking it.” ~ Joe Hauser As a reminder, the brain death tests do not show all brain activity, and do not prove the brain is dead. When hospitals do tests that do not detect all brain activity, it allows them to declare brain death, and then they don’t have to continue support or treat the patient like a living person. And they definitely won’t do procedures that are necessary to allow them to be transferred to a facility that will treat them properly. Brain death is a legal term used by the medical community to take vital organs from living people and to clear ICU beds.
English
Tony's skull cracked when his head went through the windshield. Surgeons told his parents three times that he would not survive. Now the hospital wants to run a test that, if it confirms brain death, triggers their right to remove life support, and his parents are fighting to stop it.
This is not a family denying the severity of what happened. They know Tony is critically injured. What they are refusing to accept is a process where a single confirmatory test hands the hospital the authority to end their son's life, with the parents having little say in what comes next.
"It's up to God and Tony," his mother said. "If it's his time to go, it needs to be on him and my God, not a doctor just saying we're pulling the plug because of this test."
The family is now in a legal fight with Nassau University Medical Center to prevent that test from being administered without their consent. The questions this case raises about parental rights, informed consent, and who holds decision-making authority over a critically injured patient's life are ones every family deserves to understand before they are ever in this room.
This is a heartbreaking story. Please share to raise awareness about what is happening.
Full segment linked below 👇
English
@moreisdifferent @flo_mask You mean you were the only insane person at Harvard?! Shocking!
English
@TomFitton I don’t think so. Let the public have the freedom to walk away from his idiocy. I just don’t think censorship is the answer. It sets a precedent for whoever is in control to be allowed to censor.
English
Do you agree? Should Kimmel be fired?
The White House@WhiteHouse
President Donald J. Trump Calls on Disney and ABC to Fire Jimmy Kimmel Following His Despicable Call to Violence.
English
@richardursomd So your seatbelt only works when I’m wearing mine? Ridiculous. Educate about the dangers of dehydration and move on.
English
Rotavirus vaccine reduce the risk of severe diseases in infants by 85% to 90%. But these benefits last only when most babies get vaccinated. When vaccinated rates drop, rotavirus can spread more easily and more infants can get seriously ill
theconversation.com/rotavirus-case…
English
On Sat I attended the Neuroscience of Vitality and Aging conference at Harvard. There were ~700 people in attendance, and I was the only person masking (with an N-95 rated, easy-to-breath-through @flo_mask). This is madness! Viruses cause brain aging! #CovidisAirborne #COVID19
English
@SenatorBennet The flu shot, historically, is very ineffective. Healthy kids don’t die from flu. They should be looking into Tamiflu and Tylenol as a cause of deaths for these supposed flu deaths.
English
World Immunization Week is a reminder that we have the tools to save lives. Last year’s flu season was devastating for children, and 89% of the kids who died were unvaccinated.
That should be a call to action for all of us—especially the Secretary of Health and Human Services. If Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has changed his view on vaccines, now is the moment to make that clear and help protect America’s kids.
English
@DrNeilStone If the seatbelts caused people die when they weren’t even in an accident, they’d recall the seatbelts.
English
Seatbelts were invented a hundred years ago
We still have car accidents
Just saying...
illuminatibot@iluminatibot
The flu vaccine was invented 82 years ago. We still have the flu. Just saying...
English
In 2011, Jonn Flath was working out with his ROTC unit when he suddenly sat down and died.
His family was distraught, and understandably wanted to know why their son had died. But because Jonn was a registered donor, the organ procurement organization (OPO) was allowed to harvest his heart valves to be sold as medical devices BEFORE a coroner’s autopsy was performed.
Jonn’s father begged the OPO to wait until the medical examiner could determine why Jonn had died, but was refused.
After Jonn’s tissues were harvested, his heart was so destroyed that the coroner was unable to tell his family why he had died, leaving his grieving family without closure.
Tissues (skin, bone, corneas, heart valves) can ethically be removed from someone who is biologically dead — a corpse. But because organ procurement companies are being allowed to remove tissue before a coroner’s autopsy, I recommend that no one register as a tissue donor.
Simply tell your family that once they have all their questions answered about your cause of death, and are sure your death was not the result of a crime, they can release your corpse for tissue donation.
English