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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care.

Yesterday, I was talking to a client Steven and Steven’s mom has been in intensive care now for 18 days after a cardiac arrest. Now, the Intensive Care team wants to stop treatment or once look at another option, which is to do a tracheostomy but they are more pushy towards end of life and stopping life support.

Now, my advice to Steven is,  don’t agree to stop life support because that in essence means your mom is going to die. But rather opt for a tracheostomy. Steven said that the ICU team has been very very negative and has been painting the doom and gloom picture and has been very very negative.

So my question to Steve is well, as long as your mom is alive, don’t you think she can live. And that’s the bottom line and you got to look at actions and outcomes. Not so much of what people are saying. The bottom line is your mom is alive and yes, she may not have any good quality of life at the moment, but with head and brain injuries after cardiac arrest and the hypoxic brain Injury needs time, sometimes takes months to recover from that.

So you got to look at what’s possible and don’t buy into the doom and gloom and the negativity. The Intensive Care team is just trying to manage their worst case scenario, which is basically to empty the ICU bed and create resources so they can admit more patients.

So that’s my tip for today. Look at what’s happening. Don’t pay too much attention to the negativity and look at what’s happening. If you’re loved one is alive, that’s a good sign. So let’s take it from there and let’s push towards a meaningful recovery and not towards end of life.

That’s my tip for today and I’ll talk to you in a few days. This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com.