Payton Summons ruling: Brain-dead daughter

Payton Summons ruling: Brain-dead daughter.

A Texas judge has declined to extend a restraining order that would keep a brain-dead nine-year-old girl on life suppport.

Payton Summons’ parents have been fighting the courts in a bid to keep their daughter on a ventilator at Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth, even though doctors have told them she no longer has brain function.

She was taken to the hospital and put on life support after suffering cardiac arrest on September 25, but her mother and father still believe she can recover.

But Judge Melody Wilkinson of the 17th District Court of Texas ruled that the parents did not meet the burden of proof for injunctive relief, according to family lawyer Justin Moore.

It means Payton will be taken off will be taken off life support on Monday, if her family cannot find another hospital to treat her, Moore explained to CNN.

They have so far struggled to find another facility to take in their daughter, and are now trying to decide how to move forward.

‘There are no winners today obviously,’ Moore added, after the ruling.

Cameras were not allowed in the court room.

He further stated: ‘This presents a great issue for parents in the state of Texas.

‘They don’t know how to proceed when they have a child put in this condition as Payton Summons has been put in.

‘So I believe our fight is going to continue on in order to carve out some real narrow language in the law to provide courts, lawyers and parents guidance because that’s what they need in times like this.’

‘This is probably one of the most trying days in my career as a young lawyer.’

Summons went into cardiac arrest while at her grandmother’s house on September 25.

The youngster has already survived cancer once.

The girl had been sleeping when she woke up, ‘screamed for her grandmother to help her and said that she couldn’t breathe … then she collapsed,’ her mother, Tiffany Hofstetter, explained to KTVT.

Summons was taken to the hospital, and doctors were able to detect a heartbeat, but the girl was placed on a ventilator because she stopped breathing.

Doctors were able to revive her heartbeat, but found that Payton couldn’t breathe on her own. She was without oxygen to the brain for almost an hour.

They then discovered she had a tumor twice the size of her heart, which is currently crushing Payton’s heart and lungs and cutting off her circulation.

Twenty-four hours after Payton was admitted to the hospital, doctors conducted a brain death exam and found it conclusively confirmed she was brain dead.