December 15, 200520 yr http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/wfaa...an.bb0e76d.html The juicy bits. Tirhas Habtegiris was an East African immigrant and only 27 when she died Monday afternoon. She'd been on a respirator at Baylor Regional Medical Center at Plano for 25 days. "They handed me this letter on December 1st. and they said, we're going to give you 10 days so on the 11th day, we're going to pull it out," said her brother Daniel Salvi. Salvi was stunned to get this hand-delivered notice invoking a complicated and rarely used Texas law where a doctor is "not obligated to continue" medical treatment "medically inappropriate" when care is not beneficial. She wanted to get her mom over here or to get to her mom so she could die in her mom's arms," says her cousin Meri Tesfay. Ten days was not enough time, they say, to get a mother from Africa to America. The family and hospital desperately tried to get Tirhas moved to a nursing home but they say no one would take her. "A fund issue is what I understand. Because she is not insured and that was the major reason the way I understood it," Salvi said.
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