Doctors mistakenly declared Chicago boy dead, lawsuit claims

Associated Press

CHICAGO

The parents of an 8-year-old boy have sued a Chicago hospital, alleging doctors pronounced their son dead though he was still alive and refused to listen to desperate relatives who insisted he continued to move his eyes and body.

The lawsuit, filed last week, accuses Mercy Hospital and Medical Center of negligence and alleges that nearly five hours passed before staff agreed to perform a cardiac ultrasound, which showed Jaylen Dorsey’s heart was beating.

“You didn’t have to be a doctor to see that the heart was pumping blood,” the boy’s father, Pink Dorsey, said at a news conference Friday.

Hospital officials deny the allegations.

Jaylen, who has a disability that keeps him bedridden and on a ventilator, was found unresponsive by his mother, Sheena Lane, on Feb. 18. He was taken to Mercy Hospital, and doctors there pronounced the boy dead.

The family says Jaylen’s eyes continued to flick open, but that his parents were told the lingering effects of medicine were causing that to happen.

“We’re not doctors, so we just went along with what they told us,” Dorsey said.

So family members began to plan a funeral for the boy.

But when other relatives arrived at the hospital, they gasped when they saw Jaylen’s eyes opening, the boy’s father said.

The boy’s parents also worry that the hours he was off his respirator while at the hospital may have worsened his condition.