Woman Dies 42 Days After Feeding Is Halted

A woman who had been in a coma for nine years died over the weekend, 42 days after doctors removed her from an intravenous feeding tube.

Bonnie M. Tomaszewski, 51, died Sunday at Western Neuro Residential Care Center in Santa Ana.

On May 17, Orange County Superior Court Judge Tully H. Seymour granted the request of George Tomaszewski that doctors be given authority to stop his wife’s intravenous feeding.

Tomaszewski of Scottsdale, Ariz., had said he believed that his wife would not want to continue living in a “vegetative state.”

Tomaszewski said his decision was extremely difficult, especially because his wife’s parents objected to letting their daughter die from a halt in feedings.

Although Robert and Agnes Boyer of Tucson expressed their disapproval of taking their daughter off her feeding system, they did not take legal action to prevent it.

The rest of the family, including Bonnie Tomaszewski’s two sons, supported the husband’s decision, George Tomaszewski’s sister said.

Eleanore Kownynia, the sister, said: “It’s been a very tough thing for everybody.”

Kownynia said she and her brother drove to Santa Ana from Scottsdale on June 25, when doctors said Bonnie Tomaszewski had just 24 hours to live. But when they arrived, she managed to survive until Sunday.

“It didn’t look like she was in pain,” Kownynia said. “She went comfortably.”

Bonnie Tomaszewski had been in a coma since 1982, when she was to have knee surgery. She was put under anesthesia and never regained consciousness.

Although she was not brain dead, she was not capable of conscious thought, and there was no chance of recovery, her doctors said.

She was brought to the privately funded Santa Ana facility in 1984.