Jack Guest

1941 - 2016  (75 years)

• Name	Jack Guest
  Born	1941
  Gender	Male
  Eby ID Number	Waterloo-189871
  Died	Dec 2016
  Person ID	I189871	Generations
  Last Modified	1 Dec 2024

  
  

• Notes

  KITCHENER - Jack Guest Jr. was sitting in his favourite chair when the heart attack struck on Christmas morning, 2016. He'd felt ill since he woke up, complaining of shortness of breath and feeling sick to his stomach. His common-law wife, Anita Hoffman, says she was on the phone with paramedics when he collapsed. "I called 911, and all of a sudden he just keeled over," Hoffman said. Guest, a 74-year-old Cambridge musician who played open mic shows around the region, had no pulse when the ambulance arrived. Paramedics, discovering he had severe gastrointestinal bleeding, worked for half an hour to get his heart started again and rushed him to Grand River Hospital. But Guest never regained consciousness. Four days later, he was declared brain dead and was taken off life support. His case, which prompted a formal complaint to the regulatory body for the province's doctors, highlights the need for living wills - a legal document that explains a patient's health care wishes if they can't make decisions for themselves. Five months after his death, Hoffman says she's still agonizing over those four difficult days in the hospital. As Guest's common-law wife, she was his substitute decision maker, giving her legal right to make decisions about his care while he was unconscious. She says she fought hospital staff to keep him alive, and did not consent to the decision to end his life. But his three adult children argued their father should not have been kept alive artificially. They wanted him to be allowed to pass away peacefully. That disagreement pitted Guest's partner against his offspring and put the hospital in the middle of an emotional and ethical debate. With no living will to explain his wishes, both sides argued they had his best interests at heart...... Mercer, G. (2017). Family was split over pulling life support | TheRecord.com. TheRecord.com. Retrieved 11 June 2017, from https://www.therecord.com/news-story/7365603-family-was-split-over-pulling-life-support/