Lawyers for the family of Tinslee Lewis, a 17-month-old girl being kept alive at a Fort Worth hospital despite severe heart and lung conditions, have asked a Tarrant County judge to allow a new doctor to treat the child.
In a motion filed Tuesday, the attorneys are asking for Cook Children’s Medical Center to grant emergency privileges to a Michigan-based doctor so he can perform a tracheostomy on Tinslee later this month.
They also want the doctor to examine her for a condition, malacia, that they say could explain what the hospital has referred to as constant “dying events” that the girl suffers. Malacia is a condition in which weak cartilage in a child’s airways causes breathing problems.
Cook Children’s has not yet responded to the motion. One of the girl’s doctors has previously testified that Tinslee “doesn’t have any hope of surviving,” and a previous filing by the hospital said that some nurses sought different shifts to avoid what they described as “unethical and even ‘cruel’” work caring for her.
The hospital has previously said it cannot comment publicly about the case because the girl’s family revoked their decision to allow it. Tinslee’s mother confirmed this during a January news conference.
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Tinslee, who was born prematurely Feb. 1, 2019, was diagnosed with a congenital heart disease while in utero.
A rare condition called Ebstein’s anomaly means that one of her heart valves isn’t properly formed, allowing blood to flow backward in the right side of her heart. Because of this, the left side of her heart works harder and is enlarged, weakening the heart.
Tinslee developed pulmonary hypertension, which is common in patients with weakened hearts. She also was born with underdeveloped lungs and suffered severe respiratory distress.
Cook Children’s has said that Tinslee is sedated almost constantly to prevent her heart from working too hard, which would eventually cause it to stop. She has severe sepsis and is fed through a tube, and she has multiple “dying events” each day, the hospital has said.
Her physician, Dr. Jay Ducan, told The Dallas Morning News in January that the girl’s conditions, in combination, “make further surgical intervention futile.”
Doctors at the hospital had originally planned to take Tinslee off life support in November after invoking the state’s “10-day rule.” In cases where a health care provider and the patient’s family disagree on ending such treatment, life-sustaining treatment can be stopped if an ethics committee agrees with the doctors and a new facility can’t be found to take on the patient within 10 days.
A judge ruled Jan. 2 that the hospital could end life-sustaining treatment for Tinslee, But the following day, a state appeals court told Cook Children’s to keep the girl on life support until it issued a final ruling in the case.
Tinslee has remained on life support since then.
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In the new court filing, lawyers for Tinslee and her mother say that Dr. Glenn Green, who is based in southeastern Michigan, has reviewed the girl’s medical records. He is willing to fly to Texas on July 24 and 31 to perform a tracheostomy on the girl and evaluate her for malacia, a treatable condition he believes could be the cause of the “dying spells.”
A second outside doctor examined Tinslee in January and agrees that allowing Green to follow that course of action is “medically appropriate” and in the girl’s best interests, court documents show.
The procedure would allow the child to be moved from Cook Children’s to another facility, such as a palliative-care facility, the lawyers say.
What the hospital is doing now prevents Tinslee “from having any opportunity to be transferred to safety and receive care that she needs to have for a better life,” they argue.
Tinslee’s mother, Trinity Lewis, has testified that her daughter would smile at her family and favorite nurses, and that she likes when Lewis paints her nails.
Asked by an attorney what she wanted for the girl, she said, “I want to be the one to make the decision for her.”
Staff writer Charles Scudder contributed to this report.
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