Miriam Geller said that her father, Sam Golubchuk, who is unwittingly at the centre of a precedent-setting court case, is now “being weaned off life support” and “is awake and holding our hands.”

“The nurses have him up in a cardiac chair every day a couple of times a day for two to three hours” and “a physiotherapist comes in regularly to do arm and leg exercises,” she added.

Golubchuk is alive today because his family was able to get an ex parte injunction (without notice to the hospital) from Justice Perry Schulman of the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench that prevented doctors at Winnipeg’s Grace Hospital from removing his life support, which would have violated the family’s wishes and religious beliefs.

At a hearing on Dec. 11, the hospital and doctors maintained that Golubchuk had minimal brain function.

Following that hearing, the family’s lawyer, Neil Kravetsky, sought to file affidavits by Dr. Daniel Rosenblatt, a critical care physician in New Jersey, and Dr. Leon Zacharowicz, a neurologist from New York, that disputed the hospital’s position

After a Jan. 11 hearing, Schulman allowed Kravetsky to refile edited versions of these affidavits as evidence.

In his refiled affidavit, Zacharowicz said that even according to entries in Golubchuk’s medical chart made before Dec. 11, there “is no evidence whatsoever that he is brain dead, close to brain dead, or dying, from a neurological point of view.”

Zacharowicz concludes: “The decision of any medical professional to disconnect this clearly alive patient… whom medical records indicate is returning neurologically to his baseline, pre-admission clinical condition, is incomprehensible to me.”

Schulman is allowing lawyers for the hospital to cross-examine Rosenblatt and Zacharowicz on their affidavits and to file additional affidavits in response. The judge has not made a final ruling in the case.

Lawyers for the hospital and doctors maintain that the decision to withdraw a patient from life support ought to be made by treating physicians and should not be put in the hands of the courts.

On Jan. 30, Manitoba’s College of Physicians and Surgeons released new guidelines, effective Feb. 1, that say the final decision to pull the plug on a patient lies with his or her physician.

The guidelines say the minimum goal of life-sustaining treatment is for patients to recover to a level where they can be aware of themselves, their environment and their existence.

In the event a physician and a family don’t agree as to whether the minimum goal has been met, the guidelines say the decision ultimately rests with the physician, who must consult with one other physician and then communicate the decision to the family.

In the event a patient could achieve the “minimum goal” but his or her physician concludes treatment should be withdrawn, the doctor must give the patient’s family written or verbal notice 96 hours before life support is stopped.

Dr. Bill Pope, the college’s registrar, said the guidelines are not a response to the Golubchuk case and added that 100 stakeholders have been working to draft the new guidelines over the past three years.

He would not comment on the Golubchuk case, but he said the college would review its statement if Schulman rules in favour of Golubchuk’s family.

Kravetsky called the new guidelines “terrible,” adding that it’s “extremely suspicious that after taking three years to prepare these guidelines, the college would release them now and direct doctors to follow them immediately when the court is ruling on this very issue.”

Medical ethicist Pat Murphy, of St. Boniface General Hospital in Winnipeg, said the college has put patients and their families at a clear disadvantage.

“You and I didn’t elect the college,” she said. “Discussions around withholding or withdrawing life-sustaining treatment aren’t solely medical decisions. In Ontario, for example, where a physician and a family disagree, there is consent legislation providing a remedy to a third party that will hear both sides to the conflict.”

Murphy also said she considers the guidelines’ 96-hour-notice provision to be unreasonable, because it does not give sufficient time to allow a patient’s family to get legal advice and make an application to a court to issue an emergency injunction, as occurred in the Golubchuk case.

In response, Pope said some of the stakeholders consulted in drafting the guidelines felt “that the notice provision could be less than 96 hours.”