http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-07-18-brain-dead_x.htm
ARLINGTON, Va. "” Susan Torres "” a cancer sufferer who is brain dead, pregnant and being maintained on a respirator "” is on course to deliver a premature baby girl probably in the next three to five weeks, her family says
"It's week-to-week, or more accurately, day-to-day right now," says Justin Torres, her brother-in-law and family spokesman. "Her cancer clearly is progressing, but she seems to be fighting all that much harder to give the baby a chance."
Susan Torres, 26, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, collapsed May 7 from an undiagnosed tumor at the base of her brain. Doctors told her husband, Jason, that her brain functions had ceased and could not be restored.
Because she was about 15 weeks pregnant, Torres asked that his wife's heart, lungs and other organs be maintained in the slim hope that her pregnancy could continue long enough to produce a baby.
Doctors agreed, he said in an interview last month, but they said it was a long shot. Last week, Susan Torres entered her 25th week of pregnancy, the minimum that babies can survive and prosper outside the womb, doctors tell her family.
Melanoma, the aggressive form of cancer that struck Susan Torres, has spread to her liver, increasing chances that the baby will have to be delivered well before a full term of 40 weeks, Justin Torres says. If her liver begins to shut down, doctors have told the family they will recommend an immediate cesarean section.
The story of Susan Torres, her husband and their 2-year-old son, Peter, touched readers and viewers when it was
reported by USA TODAY and other media in mid-June.
(Related graphics: Susan's baby, at 21 weeks)
A Web site set up by the family "”
susantorresfund.org"” has received hundreds of letters and donations from two dozen countries. More than $400,000 has been raised to help pay for her care, estimated by her husband at more than $8,000 a day. Her insurance will cover about $150,000.
Last month, Jason Torres, also 26, left his job as a commercial printing salesman and moved into his wife's room at Virginia Hospital Center here.
Contributions included an anonymous donation of $15,000, as well as an envelope with coins from a 10-year-old's bank.
The story has also brought Jason Torres a measure of celebrity. Last week, Chief Justice William Rehnquist was hospitalized in a room near the Torreses. He recognized Jason and made friendly conversation, his brother says.
Strangers also approach Jason Torres in restaurants "as if he were a saint," says his brother, 30. "Believe me, he's not. He's a guy doing what he knows his wife would have wanted, and it just so happens that that's a lot right now."
The family learned recently that the baby is probably a girl. To his knowledge, Justin Torres says, his brother has not settled on a name. Before his wife was stricken, "Cecilia Ann" was the front-runner.
Jason Torres spends nearly every night with his wife, while family looks after Peter, the brother says. The room next door has been refitted as a delivery room.
After the baby is born, Jason Torres said, he'll give the order to disconnect his wife's respirator and "let her go."
"That'll be hard," Justin Torres says. "We know that by some legal standards she's considered dead already, but we don't believe it. All you have to do is spend any time in the room with Susan, her doctors, her family or Jason. She's the strongest person in that room."
absolutely amazing ...........
Brain-dead woman could deliver baby soon
