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Gosnell and his staff made inadequate efforts to resuscitate Mrs. Mongar Editor’s note. Abortionist Kermit Gosnell is charged with eight counts of murder and was arraigned today. One of those eight counts is for the death of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar. For the past four days we’ve run excerpts from the Grand Jury’s report on the circumstances surrounding Mrs. Mongar’s death. Tomorrow we will complete the excerpts on Mrs. Mongar’s death and then move Friday to a discussion of “How did this go on so long?” Emergency personnel, who were called far too late, found Mrs. Mongar without a pulse when they arrived. It was after 11 p.m. – long after O’Neill, at least, had decided Mrs. Mongar was dead – that Lynda Williams finally asked Ashley Baldwin to call 911. Emergency personnel responded to the “code blue,” indicating cardiac arrest, within two minutes of receiving the call, arriving at the clinic at 11:13. They found Mrs. Mongar in the procedure room, lifeless. She had no pulse and was not breathing. Paramedics reported that Gosnell was just standing there, not doing anything. The paramedics immediately intubated Mrs. Mongar to give her oxygen, and started an intravenous line to administer emergency medications to stimulate her heart. They hooked up the patient to a heart monitor, confirmed that her heart was not beating, and began CPR. They were surprised that, in a medical clinic, basic steps had not already been taken before their arrival. After twice administering medication – epinephrine and atropine – to stimulate Mrs. Mongar’s heart, the paramedics also used a defibrillator that they had brought to the scene, and were able to restore weak heart activity. Mrs. Mongar’s slim chances of survival were seriously hampered because it was exceedingly difficult for responders to get her to the waiting ambulance. The emergency exit was locked. Gosnell sent Ashley to the front desk to look for the key, but she could not find it. Ashley told us that a firefighter needed to cut the lock, but “It took him awhile … because the locks is old.” She testified that it took “twenty minutes, probably trying to get the locks unlocked.” Mrs. Gurung and her mother-in-law ran outside, crying. Mr. Ghalley and Mrs. Gurung, frightened, watched the firefighters struggling to get the door open, while Karnamaya Mongar lay motionless. After cutting the locks, responders had to waste precious more minutes trying to maneuver through the narrow cramped hallways that could not accommodate a stretcher. Once the EMTs finally succeeded in getting Mrs. Mongar into the ambulance, they continued to administer medication and use the defibrillator. Sherry West went to the hospital with Mr. Ghalley and the family, in Ghalley’s car. According to the family, West gave directions, but there was no real conversation. West told them that Mrs. Mongar was unconscious, but not to worry. When the ambulance arrived at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania shortly after midnight, Mrs. Mongar was in extremely critical condition. She had no heartbeat, no blood pressure, and was not breathing. After 45 minutes to an hour of aggressive resuscitation efforts, doctors were able to restore a weak heartbeat. Mrs. Mongar was sent to the Intensive Care Unit in extremely critical and unstable condition. She never regained consciousness and had no neurological function. One doctor explained to us that, while many of the body’s organs can be resuscitated 15 or 30 minutes after the heart stops pumping, the brain will shut down after about 10 minutes (the amount of time that Gosnell wasted retrieving the crash cart that he did not use and talking with O’Neill before calling 911). The doctor testified that, even though medical personnel were able to restore a weak heartbeat at the hospital, Mrs. Mongar was, by most people’s definition, “dead” at the abortion clinic. Mrs. Mongar remained on life support until family members could make the trip from Virginia to say good-bye. As a result of the cardiac arrest, she had stopped breathing and suffered acute anoxic encephalopathy – brain damage due to a lack of oxygen. She was pronounced dead at 6:15 p.m. on November 20, 2009. The medical examiner concluded that the acute anoxic encephalopathy resulted from the cardiac arrest, which itself had been caused “because somebody gave her a Demerol overdose.” While the family was waiting at the hospital, Gosnell came to the hospital to pick up West. Mr. Ghalley, waiting outside, saw him and asked Gosnell to explain what had happened. Gosnell repeatedly told Ghalley that he hadn’t done anything wrong, that he hadn’t made a mistake. Gosnell, according to Ghalley, said the victim’s heart stopped beating, but “don’t blame me.” Gosnell and his staff tried to cover up what drugs were administered, who administered them, when, and how. The evidence indicates that Sherry West made false entries on Mrs. Mongar’s file before handing it over to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Ashley Baldwin testified that the paramedics asked for Mrs. Mongar’s file so they could take it with them to the hospital. Instead of giving it to them, Ashley said, West grabbed the chart and took it herself to the hospital. By the time the file was turned in to the hospital doctors, it had notations about medications that Ashley said had not previously been there [See Appendix D]. The notations were totally inconsistent with all of the other evidence – from Lynda Williams, from Mrs. Gurung, and even from Gosnell – and grossly understated the amount of medication that was given. Williams, West, and Gosnell all contradicted themselves and each other about how much medication Mrs. Mongar received, who gave it to her, when, and even how. The file notations indicated that Mrs. Mongar received 10 mg. Demerol, 0.6 cc (cubic centimeters) promethazine, and 1 cc. diazepam at 8:14 p.m., followed by another dose of 10 mg. Demerol, 0.6 cc promethazine, and 2 cc diazepam at 10:45 p.m. An entry made by West in the clinic logbook, however, indicated that Mrs. Mongar was given a much larger dose: 75 mg. Demerol, 12.5 mg. promethazine, and 10 mg. diazepam. Lynda Williams was interviewed by law enforcement on the night of the February 2010 raid. At first, she told her interviewers that she did not put IVs in patients, that Gosnell administered the medication, and that she thought he gave a “heavy” dose (50 mg. Demerol, 12.5 mg. promethazine, and 5mg. diazepam). When pressed to tell the truth, Williams changed her story, admitting that she had administered the anesthesia. She insisted, however, that she had called Gosnell before administering 10 mg. Demerol and 12.5 mg. promethazine at 6:00 p.m., and an additional “custom” dose (75 mg.Demerol, 12.5 mg. promethazine, and 10 mg. diazepam) when the “local anesthesia” wore off. She said that she injected these medications into the patient’s arm. Dr. Herlich, the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center anesthesiologist, testified that the first dose of Demerol described by Williams made no sense – that there is no such thing as a 10 mg. dose of Demerol. He further explained that a 10 mg. dose of Demerol, if it existed, “would be barely noticeable in terms of pain control” in the average adult. The dosage Williams claimed had been administered would not, in any case, have had the effect witnessed by Mrs. Mongar’s daughter. She said that her mother had been in a lot of pain in the recovery room before the procedure, but that the medicine administered intravenously by Williams and West put her mother “to sleep.” It is notable that Williams’s story was different from the one given by Gosnell when he was interviewed by Detective James Wood, the FBI, and the DEA on the night of the raid. According to Detective Woods’s notes, Gosnell first told his interviewers that medication was given by “one of his nurses or by a medical assistant, he wasn’t sure who …” – even though no nurses were employed in the clinic. He then said that during the “evening,” before the procedure, “one of the nursing staff” administered an unspecified dose of Demerol and diazepam (not promethazine) intramuscularly (meaning an injection into a muscle rather than a vein – which would be intravenous). He said that he then administered a dose of Demerol intravenously when he did the abortion procedure. He also told the DEA that he had performed a “successful and uneventful . . .suction and curette procedure” – even though Mrs. Mongar’s 19-week-old fetus was found in the clinic’s freezer completely intact. Gosnell’s statements to law enforcement contradicted what he had earlier reported to the Department of Health shortly after Mrs. Mongar’s death. … To do the best job possible I need your feedback on both Today's News & Views and National Right to Life News Today. Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com. If you like, join those who are following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/daveha |