He authorized the disconnection of a terminally ill patient thinking that he was his brother

Shirell Powell, from St. Barnabas Hospital in New York, learned that her younger brother, Frederick Williams, had been admitted with serious risks. After two days of testing, they declared that his condition was brain death. The doctors asked Powell if he wanted to disconnect him, knowing that there was no possibility of recovery. The 49-year-old woman decided to end the waiting. He called Frederick's teenage daughters and her other sister to be fired. When they prepared the funeral, the second moment arrived. The medical examiner told him that the person they had disconnected was not his brother, but another person of the same age and bearing almost the same name. His brother was alive in a prison.

Powell's brother called Frederick Williams and the victim of this terrible mistake was Frederick Clarence Williams. As such, it appeared on the social security card that he wore, but the hospital still called the first emergency contact, according to the lawsuit brought by Powell to the health center.

The alleged brother was a man who was admitted unconscious in mid-July for an apparent overdose of drugs. "He had tubes in his mouth, an orthopedic neck …" Powell tried to explain in the New York Post, which brought the news forward. "I was a little bloated … but he looked a lot like my brother."

The other sister hesitated. When he entered the hospital room and saw the patient on the stretcher, he said, "This is not my brother." However, it has come closer and "recognized" between swelling and medical devices. "The eyebrows, the nose, the structure looked like [nuestro] brother, "Powell continued to clarify the US media.

On July 29, with his uncle and sister at his side, Powell allowed the hospital to withdraw vital support from Frederick Williams, the trial describes. He thought he had done him a favor: "It was very devastating." According to her aunt, Brooklyn, 17, and Star, 18, are the most affected girls.

With the mourning post preparing for the funeral, the coroner's office in the city revealed after the autopsy that the deceased was Freddy Clarence Williams. Powell's attorney, Alexander M. Dudelson, told The Post that he had been trying to get information about the stranger who had paid for the consequences of the confusion, but he had no answer: "They mostly spit in my face." The medical examiner's office also refused to give him details about the relatives of the victim who had claimed respect for their privacy.

The tragedy led to the true localization of Frederick Williams. Rikers Island Prison, New York. A few weeks later, Powell was able to see his younger brother at a Manhattan Supreme Court hearing. "I saw my brother … I could not believe it.I felt very relieved." They talked on the phone about what had happened and although Williams was shocked by the decision that his sister had taken for him, he finally understood and blamed the hospital for the bad time that his family had to live.

Powell tells in the article that she is now obsessed with who is the man she decided to disconnect and who she cried for. "I'm just sleeping thinking about it all the time," he admits. In the meantime, he is waiting for the unspecified claim for damages to continue. For the moment, the only response from the hospital on this is that she does not consider Powell's request to be warranted.

Source: El País

CM