Texas boy in coma starts breathing after doctors insist he's 'brain dead'

A 12-year-old Texas boy is breathing on his own just days after doctors tried to declare him “brain dead” and turn off his life support, according to LifeSiteNews.

Joey Cronin suffered cardiac arrest after a severe asthma attack on Jan. 14. Doctors at Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Christi revived Joey but gave his parents little hope he would survive. The Cronins had to fight the hospital, taking their case to court, to get doctors to give him life-saving care.

Joey’s case illustrates the challenges family members can face when doctors decide treating a patient is futile. In some cases, like Joey’s, the patient’s condition isn’t as dire as the initial diagnosis suggests.

“They told us a lot of things that night, you know, that he was not going to be able to make it through this event,” Joey’s father George Cronin told LifeSiteNews of the day his son arrived at the hospital. “On the night he came in, they told me it could be a matter of hours before they would have to [remove Joey from life support].”

But then Joey showed signs of life: opening his eyes, grabbing his parents’ hands, and responding to external stimulus tests. The hospital put Joey on a ventilator to help him breath, but did not give him a feeding tube. A little over a week after being hospitalized, Joey slipped into a coma. His dad said one day he was grabbing their hands and the next day he wasn’t.

Last week, the hospital decided to proceed with a brain scan to see if Joey had any brain activity. The test uses radioactive material to image blood flow to the brain and measure brain waves. But one doctor expressed doubt about whether the test would accurately measure activity, given Joey’s swollen brain. His parents feared the hospital would use the test to declare Joey “brain dead,” a diagnosis that would allow doctors to obtain a death certificate and remove life-saving care.

George Cronin withdrew his permission before the test, scheduled for Friday, and doctors said they would delay the procedure temporarily. The Cronins desperately worked to get Joey transferred to a hospital in Houston that said it would accept him.

“It’s a race for my son’s life,” Joey’s mother Susan said in an interview with Kiii News last week. “Will these transfers come through, or will the hospital run out of patience and move to declare him brain dead so that he can’t be transferred?”

Then late last Friday night, attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom successfully helped the Cronins obtain a court order requiring the hospital to give Joey nourishment through a feeding tube. Within hours, he began chewing on his breathing tube. On Saturday, doctors gave him a tracheostomy and Joey started breathing on his own.

Joey’s parents are hopeful they will be able to transfer him to another hospital this week. With the feeding tube providing nourishment, doctors believe he will be able to survive the transfer.