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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care.
So, we’ve got an email from a reader who says, “My 32-year-old son is in ICU with double pneumonia. He is having an infection, sepsis. He is having multi-organ failure and the intensive care team is painting a grim picture. He’s been in ICU for one week now, and there’s no sign of improvement. And the ICU team is saying, that he’s probably going to die. Can you help me with this situation?”
Now, what you need to understand is, if a patient is in intensive care for seven days with double pneumonia, sepsis, and multiple organ failure, it’s not a long time. And especially if your son is young, you’ve got every reason to be optimistic. The first thing that you need to understand is, that only about 10% of patients in intensive care actually don’t survive. That means 90% of patients in intensive care do survive. And the younger a person is, the higher chances are that people do survive.
You should be focusing on the positives here and not so much on the negatives. Now, intensive care teams are always pointing out the negatives and they’re always painting doom and gloom pictures. And you shouldn’t be concerned by that too much. You should be concerned about your son’s situation, of course, but you got to learn about intensive care and you got to learn about intensive care quickly.
The biggest challenge for families in intensive care is simply that they don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know what questions to ask. They don’t know what to look for. They don’t know their rights and they don’t know how to manage doctors and nurses in intensive care. And that’s what a lot of your question comes down to here, that you seem to haven’t been in a situation like that before. And, that’s a good thing that you haven’t been in a situation like this before, but here I can help you with, putting perspective around this situation.
What does multiple organ failure mean? Does he have brain damage? Does he have heart failure? Is it the lungs that are failing? Obviously with double pneumonia. Is it the kidneys that are failing? If the lungs are failing, he’s on a ventilator. If the kidneys are failing, he can get on dialysis.
So, you got to ask the right questions because he might be in kidney failure and they haven’t even offered you dialysis. Again, it comes down to asking the right questions.
And what does being negative mean? What else is happening? Is he on inotropes? Is he on vasopressors? What sedation is he on? What do blood results show? What medications is he on?
When someone is in intensive care, there are dozens of things happening simultaneously. And you simply need to know what to look for. And you simply need to put perspective around the case and not get bogged down by the negativity of the intensive care team. Intensive care teams will always be negative to manage expectations.
You got to get a second opinion, which is exactly what we can do here at intensivecarehotline.com. We can help you with insights. We can talk to the doctors directly. We can look at medical records and we can just simply explain things to you in words, and in a language that you can understand. The intensive care teams, put too much medical jargon around things, and we can break things down for you in real terms, so you can make sense of it.
So that is my quick tip for today.
If you have a loved one in intensive care, go to intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, or send us an email to [email protected].
Also, have a look at our membership for families in intensive care at intensivecaresupport.org.
We also provide medical record reviews for patients in intensive care or after intensive care. Please contact us if you want a medical record review.
Also, like this video, give it a thumbs up, and share it with your friends and families. Subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates and tips for families in intensive care and click the notification bell.
Thanks for watching.
This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com, and I will talk to you in a few days.