Removal of Comatose Woman’s Feeding Tube Sought

Two women sued an El Monte nursing home Wednesday in an attempt to have their 77-year-old mother, comatose since an automobile accident seven years ago, disconnected from a nasal feeding tube.

While Avis M. Flott is still able to breathe on her own and shows small reactions to pain, she has not regained consciousness since the accident left her with massive head injuries and irreparable damage to her nervous system, according to the suit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

“During all of her adult life, she made numerous statements to relatives and others that she never wished to be maintained in a helpless condition, never wished to be kept alive by any sort of machine or artificial device,” Vivian McMahon and Florence DuBois said in their lawsuit.

Prosecution Feared

But doctors at the El Monte Golden Age Convalescent Hospital have refused to disconnect the feeding tube that is keeping Flott alive because of fears of criminal prosecution or loss of the facility’s license, the suit said.

The situation is complicated by the fact that Flott is not clinically “brain dead,” a common barometer used by doctors in deciding when to disconnect life support systems. Nor has Flott ever signed a “living will,” or any other formal indication of the wishes she apparently expressed to her daughters, the suit concedes.

Also named in the suit are the state and county health services departments, which license nursing homes in California. The suit seeks a court order removing the tube and $10,000 a day in damages for every day the tube remains in place.

‘Business of Preserving Life’

“All I can tell you is I’m in the business of preserving life and giving the best care to all my patients,” said Ruth Dinglasan, administrator of the El Monte nursing home.

Kenneth Stern, her attorney, said the issue is complicated because it does not involve, for example, simply removing the patient from a respirator and allowing her to die.

“Is removing a person’s ability to take food the same type of issue? It’s not a mechanical device that supports a person’s life, it’s merely the avenue that person has to accept food.”

Moreover, he said, there are questions about whether McMahon and DuBois can really speak for their mother’s wishes. Until his death, Stern said, Flott’s husband visited his wife almost daily for five or six years.

Never Pushed Issue

“He had never indicated a wish to have the life support systems removed,” he noted.

In their suit, the two daughters concede that they never pushed the issue while their father was alive, recognizing that the visits with his wife were giving him “emotional support and meaning to his life.”

Representing the daughters is attorney Richard Stanley Scott, who earlier this year won a widely publicized court order on behalf of quadriplegic Elizabeth Bouvia, who had sought removal of a nasal feeding tube in order to starve herself. Bouvia has since been eating voluntarily.