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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com with another case study today.

So last year in September, we were approached by a family in the UK. And the family told us that their 46-year old sister and mom was in intensive care with COVID or with pneumonia. And she had a long standing medical history. So the prognosis from the intensive care team was very, very poor. She was on a breathing tube at the moment. She was heavily sedated and she wasn’t waking up.

So she was never in a position to have a say on her own care, treatment and life going forward. So the intensive care team at the time was adamant that she should be extubated, a “one way extubation”, which means the breathing tube would’ve been removed and never to be put back in, in case she needed it to save her life. And they also wanted to push a DNR, a do not resuscitate order. And the combination of both would’ve been the end of her life and the intensive team nevertheless was adamant that she wouldn’t even survive the next 48 hours, no matter what they did.

Well, lo and behold with the help of ourselves and the family, we put a stop to all of that. We were advocating strongly that at the young age of 46 there should not be a one-way extubation, there should not be a DNR and she should have a tracheostomy instead. She should be woken up and then she can make her own decision. Again, the intensive care team was adamant that it was not “in her best interest”. And that the only way for this young lady was to let her die, because that would be in her “best interest”. Now I’ve yet to find out how someone dying is in the best interest of them unless they’re suicidal, or they have a terminal illness, which this lady didn’t have.

So cutting a long story short, we ended up helping the family to get a tracheostomy for their sister and for their mother. She’s then spent several months in ICU, but now we are in February of 2022 and she’s out of ICU. She has the tracheostomy removed and she’s off the ventilator. And she’s now finally in a position to determine her own destiny. And she has beaten all the odds of what the intensive care team was telling her, was her destiny.

Now, you need to know that over 90% of patients in intensive care do survive. But intensive care teams won’t tell you that. Their worst case scenario at the time was that she would spend months in ICU with an uncertain outcome. Now it did happen that she spent months in ICU, but the outcome was that she survived and that she’s now in a position to determine her next steps. And that should be the goal of any patient that they’d be brought in a position where they can determine their own fate and destiny. And they can tell everyone what they want about from their life and how they want to live their life.

So it’s another success story. And it’s another story how you should never trust intensive care teams because they have their own agenda. And their agenda is to empty their beds, no matter the cost. And they want to empty their beds as quickly as possible because the demand on their beds and on their staff is so high. That should not concern you. As you can see in this situation, once again intensive care teams, don’t get it right all the time. And whilst there are wonderful things happening in intensive care, especially when it comes to perceived end of life situations, you need to advocate vehemently and you need to get the professionals like ourselves involved so we can tear it all apart for you. And we can ask the right questions and hold the intensive care team accountable for their actions or for their non-actions. And then you will see what happens next.

That is my quick case study for today.

If you have a loved one in intensive care and you need help, go to intensivecarehotline.com, call us on one of the numbers on the top of the website, or send us an email to [email protected].

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Take care for now.