Hugh Finn and the other "Terris"

I'd read about Cruzan and Brophy, they are well known cases. However last night I was reading the Washington Post and came across and article about a person that has not been mentioned in the media with this case. Hugh Finn.....

Then I discovered he was not the only one with a court case, there were others during that same time period that did not get the same national media attention. I can't explain that, why some cases become the media moment of the year and others fade away. I do know in the case of Terri Schiavo it's been able to be continued by the parents because of heavy funding by several Right to Life groups, another connection shared with Cruzan.

Only days after Nancy Cruzan's death another parent, Peter Bussalachi, would obtain an order to stop his own daughter's food intake. Christine Bussalachi was bedridden and brain-injured as well and living in the same Mt. Vernon rehab facility.
No doubt, Hugh Finn reported the death of Nancy Cruzan. Several months later, when food was finally withheld, Christine Bussalachi barely made the back page of most newspapers.


Back to Hugh....

In March of 1995 while driving his two daughters to school one morning, the family car was involved in an accident. Another driver lost control of his vehicle and slammed into Finn injuring all three people in the car. The girls eventually recovered from their injuries, but their 44-year-old father's condition was critical. In the force of the accident Hugh Finn's aorta had ruptured depriving his brain of oxygen and leaving him unable to eat or care for himself. His wife Michelle, was his legal next of kin.

Just as in the Schiavo case, family members disagreed when Michelle announced the decision to disconnect his feeding tube. They also felt that Hugh was not in a PVS that he could respond to them. Some statements from the family during that time period:

Tom Finn, his brother, was so angry over the exchange he told Hugh Michele was going to kill him, an act he immediately regretted. '[Hugh's] face turned red. He pinched his lips in. His hands were on his chest grabbing [at his clothing]. He shivered and shivered for 45 minutes. I had begun to believe what the doctors said [about PVS], but then I knew. 'You do understand!''

John Finn, also Hugh's brother, represented the family, challenged Michelle for guardianship. At the July hearing before Judge Hoss in Prince William Circuit Court he lost. Hoss gave Michele permission to remove the tube after 30 days and assessed John Finn $13,300 of her legal fees plus other expenses.

VA State Rep Marshall, was asked by the family to get involved, he questioned the PVS diagnosis and called for a state investigation. Euthanasia is illegal in Virginia, but the Health Care Decisions Act permits dehydration and starvation of PVS patients who show 'loss of consciousness, with no behavioral evidence of self-awareness of surroundings in a learned manner.'

The Judge in the case refused to hear new testimony, prior to the appeal by the family being heard in court they decided at Michelle's request to drop the appeal. Some say they started to accept the decision that Hugh did have PVS, some state the family got tired of the legal battle and while they didn't agree with removing the feeding tube Hugh wouldn't have wanted to suffer.

On October 1st the feeding tube was removed, hundreds of protestors were outside of the Annaburg Manor, praying and holding signs. Gov. Jim Gilmore at Marshall's insistence became involved, Gilmore in a news conference in October 'Assuming . . . that Hugh Finn is in a persistent vegetative state, he is nevertheless not dying. On the contrary, the manifest purpose and effect of denying him food and water is to initiate a dying process not previously present . . . I believe my job as governor, my role, is to protect those people who are most frail in society and cannot necessarily protect themselves.'

The state tried to get a court hearing to reinsert the feeding tube. The Supreme Court of Virginia refused to hear the case. Since Annaburg Manor is licensed by the state, Marshall sought an investigation by the Medicaid oversight committee at Prince William Hospital and petitioned for a review in Federal Court.

On October 9th, 1998, Hugh Finn died; Prince William County health director Jared E. Florance ordered an autopsy done on Finn's body and asked the nursing home to release his medical records, according to the Post.

Lawyers for Finn's wife Michele immediately filed a motion to deny Florance's requests. Circuit Court Judge Frank Hoss Jr. " ordered the body returned and denied Florence access to the medical records, saying further medical investigation is unnecessary," the Post reported.

The main difference between the Schiavo case and Hugh Finn is the discussion around a brain shunt that was inserted in Hugh Finn's brain to help drainage and swelling due to his brain injury. Some doctors stated that if the shunt pump was not working properly it could interfere with Hugh's ability to communicate and could create a misdiagnosis of PVS.

It's easy to second guess years later, so if we are to base this on the initial decision that Michelle Finn was right in saying her husband would not want to have been kept alive in that condition, the shunt issue should have been addressed by the doctors at Annaburg Manor before a diagnosis of PVS was made.

In the end what this does show is that please have a living will or sometime of medical directive that your state will accept. Families disagree over small issues at times so for them to have disagreements over huge issues such as life or death happens more often than we are led to believe. We don't need more government control in this issue, what we do need is more personal responsibility on our own parts. Yes, no one wants to think they are not "immortal", yet consider the flip side, would anyone want their family to go thru the destruction that takes place due to no written directives?

The Washington Post article

As a postscript, I tried to get more information about the Bussalachi family but was only able to get basic confirmation of the facts as stated above.