#PIANO PRODIGY BABY SISTER MURDER SERIES#

#PIANO PRODIGY BABY SISTER MURDER SERIES#

In extensive interviews over three months, Tom and Truc-Co told The Chronicle that they had been desperate to understand what went wrong: how a devastating series of events, starting with Ailee’s diagnosis and a promise that she could be cured at John Muir Health, ended with their child’s blood all over an operating room, her body barely recognizable. The likelihood of dying in surgery or before discharge from the hospital, however, is very low, with studies showing some mortality rates under 2%. Liver resections on children are risky surgeries with high complication rates. And after Ailee’s death, reporters found, the hospital did not request that the county coroner autopsy her body, nor did it have her case evaluated by its internal Medical Executive Committee, which can take disciplinary action and implement new policies. John Muir did not disclose any of this when doctors discussed the surgical plan with the family, the Jongs told The Chronicle. John Muir’s decision to move forward with the surgery, and the legal fight that has emerged, raises questions about whether the hospital risked patient safety in pursuit of profit and prestige - an idea that the hospital leaders called “patently false.” While Stanford has a renowned pediatric liver surgical center, John Muir Health had never performed a liver resection on a child, according to current and former medical staff and the Jongs’ lawsuit.Īlthough the surgeon who performed Ailee’s procedure was from Stanford and had previously performed liver resections at its hospital, the lawsuit says the anesthesiologists were not affiliated with Stanford and had only recently finished fellowships in pediatric anesthesiology. “This fact is most tragic when the patient is so young.” “Life-saving procedures on extremely ill patients are not always successful,” CEO Cal Knight and three other executives said in a statement. John Muir Health leaders, responding to The Chronicle’s reporting, said Ailee had been “frail” due to her illness and rounds of chemotherapy, was “provided extraordinary care,” and died despite “heroic attempts” to save her. These allegations are reflected in a lawsuit the Jongs filed Wednesday in Contra Costa County Superior Court, seeking unspecified damages. One of John Muir’s medical directors at the time said in an interview that she told a top hospital executive that the surgery would be a “clean kill.” Brontë Wittpenn/The ChronicleĪ Chronicle investigation has found that in the weeks before the surgery, John Muir Health leaders discounted warnings from their own staff that the hospital was not equipped to perform such a specialized operation, known as a liver resection. Truc-Co and Tom Jong hold a photo of their 2-year-old daughter, Ailee, who died on an operating table at John Muir Medical Center in Walnut Creek.

“I said, ‘Mommy loves you,’” she recalled, “and I let them take her and placed her in their hands.” Her daughter closed her eyes, and Truc-Co kissed her. 12, 2019, Truc-Co squeezed her hand and told her to focus on a monitor displaying colorful stripes. The girl was never without what she called her “towel,” and at night her mother would tuck one under her chin before lying next to her and singing.Īs an anesthesiologist administered Ailee’s medication around 7:30 a.m.

In a pre-operative room, Ailee clutched one of the blankets that Tom and Truc-Co had used to swaddle her as an infant. But the couple discovered that John Muir Health, a community health system in Contra Costa County, had formed a multimillion-dollar partnership with Stanford to bring in pediatric doctors to treat more urgent and complex cases in the East Bay.ĭoctors and hospital leaders at John Muir had assured the Jongs they could perform Ailee’s surgery there, giving them confidence that they would receive Stanford-level care 40 miles closer to home, the couple told The Chronicle. In researching the best care for Ailee, who was the youngest of their three girls, Tom and Truc-Co Jong had initially focused on Stanford’s prestigious children’s hospital in Palo Alto.

Piano prodigy baby sister murder