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Darrin Murray was racing around the recovery room at Children's Memorial Hermann Hospital in a blind panic. His teenage stepdaughter was in agony and no one was doing anything to help her.

Two days before, 14-year-old Sabrina had come out of surgery for a sinus infection that had developed into a brain abscess. Doctors assured her parents that she would fully recover in a matter of weeks from what appeared to be a successful and relatively simple surgery.

But by the next day, Sabrina began feeling nauseous and complained of incredible pain. Nurses dosed her with morphine, but the drug didn't seem to help. Begging, "Help me," and "Please, do something," Sabrina began vomiting. She tore away at the dressing on her head and began pulling at her central line I.V.

In response, nurses doled out another round of morphine and strapped Sabrina's arms down with restraints.

On this day, Murray had already dashed out to the nurses station pleading for assistance four times in the last 20 minutes, but each time all the nurses told him was that they were paging the doctor and couldn't do anything without a physician's consent.

Suddenly, Sabrina's body seized. Her back arched, she rose up and gasped, then collapsed back into the bed. Murray says everything went quiet, everything except the terrifying dead-hum of her heart monitor. She had flat-lined.

"I almost had a heart attack because I thought she'd died," says Murray. "Everyone came in there and pushed me out of the room and ran a tube down her throat. I was panicking and crying, it was so awful."

The medical staff were able to revive Sabrina, and a doctor performed emergency brain surgery to reduce the swelling pressure in her head.

Sabrina's mother, Beatrice Lopez, who had to be at work, sped over to the hospital and arrived while her daughter was still in the operating room.

"Right after the second surgery," she says, "we went to see Sabrina and her head was so enlarged it just didn't look like her. A lady doctor appeared who we had never seen before, and she gave us the worst news that we could hear. The doctor told us that Sabrina'd had two strokes and because of them, she was in a coma that they didn't think she was going to come out of. And if she did, she would be a vegetable."

As shocking as the devastating news of their daughter's condition was, Lopez and Murray say it would not compare to what happened next.

Within about three days of the second surgery, Lopez says, doctors "started talking about our options. And we started getting scared, because the options were not good."

Lopez and Murray say that doctors and hospital staff began pressuring them to withhold treatment and feeding, which would ultimately starve Sabrina to death. To the parents, this was unacceptable. They wanted their daughter to live.

"I was very disappointed with the way Memorial Hermann handled things," Lopez says. "They put it out on the table that we were being selfish."

Murray and Lopez accuse the hospital staff, doctors and nurses of doing everything they could to try to end Sabrina's life during the ensuing six weeks, including:

• Refusing to implement simple procedures such as giving Sabrina feeding and breathing tubes that would have enabled the parents to take their daughter home and care for her themselves,

• Attempting to turn relatives and friends against Lopez and Murray by encouraging them to persuade the parents to withhold treatment, all the while violating federal privacy laws by discussing Sabrina's healthcare information,

• Entering two separate do-not-­resuscitate orders against her parents' wishes, and

• Threatening the family with convening the hospital's ethics committee, which under Texas law can overrule the family's wishes and withhold life-support treatment from a patient.

"It was like we were caught in a bad dream," says Murray. "We couldn't believe this was happening."

Lopez and Murray allege that the hospital staff did not properly monitor Sabrina's sodium levels after the first surgery and did not give her the fluids she needed that they say would have prevented the strokes. Instead, doctors and nurses kept giving Sabrina morphine, a drug known to deplete sodium.

As Lopez and Murray saw it, the hospital and physicians that caused their daughter's condition were now trying to end her life. And it seemed like there was nothing they could do to stop it.

Terrified, Sabrina's parents called the nonprofit organization Texas Right to Life, which referred Lopez and Murray to an attorney. The parents were able to transfer Sabrina to Texas Children's Hospital, where Lopez says Martin received treatment that doctors at Memorial Hermann had refused to give, treatment that saved her life.

Now, two years later, Lopez and Murray are suing Memorial Hermann and Martin's doctors and nurses for allegedly failing to properly treat the teen. The family's lawyer, Robert Painter, says that in his opinion Memorial Hermann and the doctors and nurses working on the case wanted Sabrina to die to bury the evidence of malpractice and limit the potential damages in court. So far, Memorial Hermann and the others have denied any wrongdoing.

The family is seeking tens of millions of dollars to help pay for what will now be a lifetime of rehabilitation and care for their daughter. For, while Sabrina Martin's life was saved, she will never be exactly right again.
_____________________

For more than three weeks during the early spring of 2006, Sabrina had been complaining of crushing headaches. At first her parents thought they might be related to stress.

Sabrina, a star athlete, was finishing up with basketball and was getting ready for track season. Plus, she was involved in a number of other after-school activities including the honor society and the yearbook. The teen was also starting to date, and was gearing up to take the TAKS standardized testing for eighth graders at Klein Intermediate School.

Write Your Comment show comments (10)

  1. As a practicing physician I can assure you that convening an ethics board (containing physicians, nurses and laypeople)to review every aspect of a case in great detail is the last thing a physician who had made a mistake would want to do.
    The laws in Texas are a blessing and exist so that physicians and nurses have the right to NOT continue painful and unnessesary treatments even if the family wants to continue. This is to protect the patient from unrealistic family members and the staff from doing things they find morally and profesionally wrong. They must continue full treatment until an independent group makes a decision.
    A DNR order is usually approved by the family, but is a decision made by a physician that advanced recusitation on a patient would not be benificial and would cause suffering for no reason.

    Comment by Robert — April 30, 2008 @ 12:31PM

  2. A physician is making my decisions or the decisions of my family? No way!

    Any person who calls themselves a physician and is in the business of killing should have their license revoked forever.

    This poor girl would have been dead if the doctors who promise to do no harm had their way. Now, she's in a loving home and has a loving friend and laughs at her jokes. The decision to kill her is not anyone's decision.

    These "independent" boards that help doctors cover up their mistakes is a joke.

    Comment by Astralis — April 30, 2008 @ 02:00PM

  3. I hate sue happy people, but in this case....SUE, SUE, SUE.

    Blessings to the family, I'm so sorry this happened to your little girl.

    I know there are two sides of this story and only one side was presented, but from what is being reported this never should have happened.

    Comment by Barb — May 1, 2008 @ 06:17AM

  4. hey, im one of sabrina's ex boyfriends....i have been close to this family for a long time, even before all this started....to get straight to the point...those doctors DID NOT treat sabrina with care...what so ever..they can deny it all they want, but if they would have just did their job, we would not be in the situation right now. Those doctors CRUSHED Sabrina's dreams and future...i would be at the hospital EVERY DAY to check on sabrina...and everytime i would go, it seems like she got worse and worse...sitting in her room, and her monitors would start beeping, and doctors would not come in and check on here...they seriously NEGLECTED her.she's had seisures, strokes, HER HEART STOPPED!! 2 years later and she's making a little progress, slowly but surely...don't take your child to memorial herman children's hospital!!!!!!

    Comment by joey thomas — May 2, 2008 @ 03:15PM

  5. hey, im one of sabrina's ex boyfriends....i have been close to this family for a long time, even before all this started....to get straight to the point...those doctors DID NOT treat sabrina with care...what so ever..they can deny it all they want, but if they would have just did their job, we would not be in the situation right now. Those doctors CRUSHED Sabrina's dreams and future...i would be at the hospital EVERY DAY to check on sabrina...and everytime i would go, it seems like she got worse and worse...sitting in her room, and her monitors would start beeping, and doctors would not come in and check on here...they seriously NEGLECTED her.she's had seisures, strokes, HER HEART STOPPED!! 2 years later and she's making a little progress, slowly but surely...don't take your child to memorial herman children's hospital!!!!!!

    Comment by joey thomas — May 2, 2008 @ 03:15PM

  6. Many people are patients at Hermann hospital and never pay their bills. It is a huge place that handles most of the local trauma . Many lives are saved at Hermann. For the ones that will not make it, the DNR is a kind way to let nature take its place. The story of that child is a sad one but things happen that are out of the control of all parties concerned. A reality check is needed here. The child appears to be in a vegetative state and no doubt, if she were able to communicate she would prefer to be set free. Often times parents suffer from guilt, selfishness in terms of wanting to hold on to their children even though they should let go. In this case, these people are determined to get money to satisfy their point of view and greed. They are wrong for doing so. They will not win. Hospitals try their best and not all will end up satisfied. We have to face reality that all things do not end up the way we expect.

    Comment by alumette — May 3, 2008 @ 07:35AM

  7. Frankly, no one gives a shit if they need to save their own asses. Since when do doctors really care if you're in pain or if treatment is unnecessary. BULLSHIT. She has a right to life. THere are many stories of people who defy the odds, so whose to say that one day she will be at least 50% better. As you can see towards the end of the article, she isn't a 'vegetable'...the way i see it, the parents can afford the supposed "unnecessary treatment" then is it really HURTING the doctors to treat the patient?? Last I checked, the doctors didn't give birth to her, they're not her parents, they don't know the emotional devastation of what losing a kid does to you; so they should get off their biggity high horse and treat the patients..that's what they get paid for. I'm currently in med-school and I would NEVER see myself playing God with someone's life. I hope they get sued up the ass.

    Comment by becky — May 3, 2008 @ 08:54AM

  8. The first time I found this article I was mortified. I read it out loud to my wife and a friend of ours. At the time I was only able to read the first half of the article. I just finished it and though I'm very saddened by it, I am also very happy that Sabrina recovered even if not fully. I don't know what I would do if a member of my family was suddenly in this condition. I do know though that there would be some medical staff that would be suffering as much if not more than my family for that negligence. Good wishes and prayers to Sabrina and her Family and Friends.

    Comment by Shane — May 6, 2008 @ 03:57PM

  9. Though I'm sure that this unfortunate girl's money hungry family and obviously highly educated ex-boyfriend are providing a completely unbiased veiw of the situation, I wish that the Press would have included some of the physician's side or at least 'A' physicians side of the story. The reporting is a little sensationalistic and one sided.

    Comment by Micheal — May 7, 2008 @ 09:42AM

  10. Yeah, what's up with doctors on their "biggity high horse". Becky, who is obviously in medical school ;), seems to of stated a very non-emotional, well thought out point. (you can tell from all the exclamation points and profanity) It needs to be stated that doctors are the caretakers of the PATIENT, not the family. Many times, especially in pediatric cases, the family/random boyfriends etc fail or refuse to understand and exept the situation. In that case many helpless people are subjected to painful and unneccesary procedures (intubation, feeding tubes placed through the abdominal wall, etc) that only prolong the inevitable. My sister and I wanted everything done for my father, even though, in retrospect, he had no chance of survival. A very patient and caring physician at Hermann helped us understand the process and my father died naturally in peace with us at his side. The doctors at Hermann did us a great service and saved my father a lot of needless pain.

    Comment by Dakwan — May 7, 2008 @ 09:44AM

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