Casey Kasem's Kids Pulling Life Support

Nutrition, fluids, just putting him in more pain, they say
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 12, 2014 8:58 AM CDT
Casey Kasem's Kids Pulling Life Support
Jean Kasem, wife of veteran radio personality Casey Kasem, talks to the media outside Los Angeles Superior Court Wednesday, June 11, 2014.   (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

Casey Kasem's children have decided to remove life support for their father, allowing him to die at a hospice facility in Washington state with them by his side. They tell TMZ Kasem's health directive document says that he does not want "life-sustaining procedures, including nutrition and hydration," if "the extension of my life would result in mere biological existence, devoid of cognitive function, with no reasonable hope for normal functioning." And a judge in the contentious conservatorship case surrounding Kasem yesterday reversed a ruling requiring doctors to keep the 82-year-old alive, so Kasem's kids have decided to withhold food, fluids, and medications.

The judge said he received medical records showing that Kasem was not responding to the nutrition and fluids he's been receiving, that painful complications have resulted, and that doctors recommend the nutrition and fluids be withheld, the New York Daily News reports. He upheld daughter Kerri Kasem's conservatorship over her father, despite the fact that Kasem's wife, Jean, with whom the children have been feuding over his care, insisted Kasem told her last week, via eye and eyebrow movements, he wants to live. She said as she left the court hearing that Kasem's kids will have their father's blood on their hands, but Kerri Kasem insists to the Daily News they've done all they can: "We had to take him off [fluids] because his lungs were filling up. It sounded like he was drowning," she says, and "the feeding was backing up because he can’t digest." (More Casey Kasem stories.)

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