A young California girl is brain dead after going to the hospital to get her tonsils removed.

Jahi McMath, 13, underwent the routine surgery at Oakland Children's Hospital last week but suffered complications during her recovery.

The child's mother, Nailah Winkfield, had taken her daughter for the tonsillectomy in hopes the procedure would help McMath with her sleep apnea, and grandmother Sandra Chatman say hospital staff failed to provide adequate care and attention to the clearly ailing patient.

Winkfield said McMath felt a little nervous before the operation, but felt better after her mother assured her she would feel better after her tonsils were removed.

McMath appeared to undergo the surgery without difficulty, but in recovery she started bleeding from her nose and mouth.

"My daughter had actual clots sliding out of her mouth," said Winkfield who asserts hospital staff failed to provide her daughter adequate care and attention when she was clearing suffering complications.

"They gave me a cup and said, 'Here, catch [the blood clots] with the cup so we can measure them,"' Winkfield told the local ABC-TV affiliate.

McMath's grandmother, Sandra Chatman, a surgical nurse herself, said the hospital nursing staff did not seem to respond to what was happening with McMath until the family screamed for help.

"I was the last one to see Jahi ... I said, 'Somebody help my baby please!' And they came in and starting working on her," Chatman said. "The next thing I know, the doctor said, 'Oh no, she doesn't have a heart rate anymore.'"

Jahi McMath had lapsed into cardiac arrest, but was resuscitated and placed on a ventilator.

McMath remained on the breathing machine, in critical condition, through the next day. Then, by 2 a.m. of the third day, doctors said she had swelling in her brain.

McMath was declared legally brain-dead three days after her tonsilectomy, according to the Oakland Tribune.

Today, McMath is on life support while her family tries to understand and go forward from everything that's happened.

They say the hospital staff has only made the situation worse by trying to persuade them to remove McMath from life support sooner than later, in order to free up the bed space.

"They just have a social worker follow me around all day long asking me, 'Do you have any other family that needs to see her?' like trying to put a rush on it,"Winkfield said.

"We're very sad about this outcome, about what's happened to her, but at this point I have no information on the details of the surgery," a spokesperson for the hospital said in a statement. "We will certainly investigate what happened. In any surgery there are risks and there can be unexpected, unanticipated complications."

So far, her family has no plans to remove McMath from life support. Chatman told the Oakland Tribune that as long as the heart of her granddaughter is beating, they will keep her in the hospital.

"As long as she has a pulse, we want her on life support," offered Omari Sealy, McMath's uncle. "We want her to come home for Christmas. We want to give her presents. We want a chance for a Christmas miracle."

Said Sealey: "It's shock, it's disbelief. You never think something like this will happen to you."