14 DAY TRIAL // Late last week, 81-year-old comedienne Joan Rivers was rushed to a hospital in New York City after she went into cardiac and respiratory arrest at a private clinic where she was undergoing routine surgery. She’s been put in a medically induced coma and is now on life support, but her family is looking to make whoever is responsible for this accident pay.
Joan was alone at the clinic, having an endoscopy after complaining of problems with her vocal chords for some weeks. She was under general anesthesia when she was having the procedure done and she stopped breathing and her heart stopped.
By the time she arrived at the Mount Sinai Hospital, doctors deemed her condition critical and placed her in a coma, in the hope that she would stabilize by the time she came out of it. Right now, it is believed that her condition is still serious but stable, but she’s “entirely” dependent on machines.
Reports online claim that her family, including daughter Melissa, who has been by her side since she was taken to the hospital, are now considering whether to turn off the machines and see if Joan can pull through on her own.
At the same time, family sources tell the New York Daily News, they’re fearing the worst even if she does wake up: apparently, doctors have warned them that she could be left in a completely vegetative state or lose her motor functions.
Melissa wants to sue the staff at the clinic, for putting a woman her mother’s age through surgery, albeit a routine intervention, as an outpatient. She’s also trying to find out what medication Joan was administered before the intervention, to have her current doctors determine if it played any part in the stroke.
“Shock and upset is turning to anger, and they are looking for someone to blame,” an inside source explains. “An 81-year-old should not have that procedure as an outpatient. Melissa is apparently totally hysterical and is at a loss for what to do.”
Perhaps worse, she knows how her mother would feel if she woke up to see she could no longer be able to do things as she did before because “[Joan] would not want to live unless she could enjoy a full and active life... (She) would never want to be a burden on anyone,” the report explains.
Officially, the family is “keeping [their] fingers crossed” for Joan to come out of this just as direct and funny as before, and that she’ll be cracking jokes about this in her typical fashion in almost no time.