Man Sues to Remove Mother’s Feeding Tube

The son of a 76-year-old convalescent hospital patient has filed a lawsuit in Orange County seeking to force the nursing home to remove the feeding tube that is keeping his mother alive.

Genevieve Margaret Cook, who is senile and incompetent because of multiple strokes and other degenerative neurological diseases, has been a patient at Beverly Manor Convalescent Hospital in Seal Beach for six years, according to the suit.

In the lawsuit, filed this week, Ronald Cook of Long Beach claims that his mother had expressed wishes before her illness that she did not want her life prolonged by artificial means.

The patient, who is bedridden and unlikely to recover, has been given food and fluid for the past three years through a nasogastric tube, which enters her nose, passes through her esophagus and into her stomach, the lawsuit says. She is forced to wear large, loose “mittens” to prevent her from accidentally removing or disturbing the tube, according to the suit.

The son, who became conservator of his mother’s estate after her husband died three years ago, said the convalescent hospital has refused to remove the feeding tube despite his requests.

Officials of the nursing home could not be reached for comment Wednesday night.

The patient’s former attending physician, Dr. Barry Allswang, referred the son’s requests to remove the tube to the nursing home’s medical director, according to the suit. The medical director, Dr. Jeffrey Gramer, promised the son that he would remove the tube but has since refused, according to the suit.

The suit also asks that the nursing home be barred from transferring the patient to another health care facility without the consent of the son.

The suit also names Gramer and the hospital’s Delaware-based owners, Beverly Enterprises.