A Fort Worth judge has extended a temporary restraining order against a children’s hospital that planned to take a 10-month-old girl off life-support, according to CNN affiliate KTVT.
Tinslee Lewis was born with a rare heart defect called Ebstein’s anomaly and suffers from chronic lung disease and severe chronic pulmonary hypertension, Cook Children’s Health Care System spokesperson Winifred King said in a statement last month. Her physicians believe she is suffering, and her condition is irreversible, King said, so the hospital planned to remove her life-support.
A judge granted Tinslee’s family a temporary restraining order against the hospital in November.
Judge Sandee Bryan Marion found that there was a reasonable expectation that the family could find a physician to take over her treatment and extended the temporary restraining order that would continue her care at the hospital, KTVT reported.
“This isn’t Tinslee’s first rodeo. She’s made it this far; I know she is going to continue to fight for her life,” Trinity Lewis, Tinslee’s mother, told reporters outside the courtroom.
“We all share the same sense of concern for Tinslee and her family as they face a very difficult situation. Our doctors and nurses have done everything humanly possible to save Tinslee’s life. Currently, any care we provide, including feeding, bathing, and providing treatments and medication, can cause her little body to experience a medical crisis, which causes even more intervention and pain for her,” King said in a statement.
Last month, King said that Cook Children’s had already reached out to nearly 20 facilities from Los Angeles to Philadelphia to see if another hospital would take over the infant’s care. But they all agreed with Cook Children’s assessment of her condition and said there was nothing more they could do, according to King.
King added that doctors have had to sedate and paralyze the infant to keep her from pulling at the lines connected to her ventilator. King said they believe she is reacting in pain when not sedated or paralyzed.
But Tinslee’s family said that they wanted to take every opportunity to keep her alive.
“She deserves the chance to fight for her life, and she’s got a troop that will help her 100 percent and above,” Lewis’ great aunt, Beverly Winston, told reporters. “That’s our baby, and we want to give her all the chances there are.”
