Brain-dead woman gives birth

WASHINGTON – A cancer-stricken woman declared brain dead three months ago gave birth Tuesday to a baby girl at an Arlington, Va., hospital.

Susan Torres was about 15 weeks pregnant when she was felled by a brain tumor in May. She was hooked up to a ventilator and other machines in the slim hope that her baby might survive.

She had hoped for a girl, and Susan Anne Catherine Torres was delivered by Caesarean section at 8:18 a.m. Tuesday at Virginia Hospital Center, weighing 1 pound, 13 ounces and measuring 13.5 inches long.

There were no complications during delivery, and she appears healthy, said the girl’s uncle, Justin Torres.

Meanwhile, Susan Torres’ husband, Jason, who has slept by his wife’s side for the past three months and has decorated her room with pictures, held her hand and even talked to her at times, faced the moment he knew would come.

Sometime – perhaps today or Thursday, if it hasn’t happened already – his wife’s body, full of cancer, will be unhooked from the web of machinery that has kept it going for the past 13 weeks and allowed to die, an end that Jason Torres, Susan Torres’ family and a team of doctors all agreed was inevitable.

Even as the baby continued to grow during the past several months, Susan Torres’ cancer, melanoma, has grown as well, spreading down to her lymph nodes, to her lungs, to her liver and all her other vital organs, relatives said.

As recently as last week, there was no evidence that the cancer had reached the placenta, but there were a multitude of other complications that could have forced the delivery, including infection.

It was a bona fide race between life and death, one that family members decided to broadcast around the world in the hope of raising money to help with their mounting medical bills.