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Hi, it’s Patrik from intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care.
So yesterday I was talking to a client, Jennifer and Jennifer says that her 75-year old father has been in intensive care now for two months after COVID, after cardiac surgery and with a tracheostomy and a ventilator.
And she says that her father can’t come off the ventilator, he’s ventilated still overnight. He can breathe spontaneously off the ventilator during the day, but he can’t breathe by himself overnight.
And I asked her, why does she think he can’t come off the ventilator overnight? And she says that they are sedating him with Oxycodone or Oxycontin, which is a very strong painkiller or opiate. So the bottom line is this here, the biggest challenge for families in intensive care is always that they don’t know what they don’t know.
I can’t stress enough that intensive care is such a highly specialized area that even with as much research as you want to do, you can’t get to the bottom of things unless you’re talking to an intensive care professional, like myself, that can provide you with a second opinion.
So when someone has overdosed on Oxycontin or Oxycodone or any other opiate, they can’t come off the ventilator. It’s like pushing a rock uphill. It’s like trying to run a marathon while you’re asleep. It’s just not happening.
So one of the first things that need to happen when someone needs to come off or weaned off the ventilator is simply, they need to get off sedation and opiates. So there’s much more to it, but that’s a starting point. You can’t be weaned off the ventilator if you’re not awake.
Again, this is why professional consulting and advocacy is so important for families in intensive care because you simply don’t know what you don’t know. You don’t know what questions to ask. You don’t know what to look for, and you don’t know how to manage doctors or nurses.
Imagine this lady comes to us after two months of watching this. If we had talked to this client two months ago, her father would probably be off the ventilator by now. Again, the biggest challenge for families in intensive care is simply that you don’t know what you don’t know.
So this is my quick tip for today. Like this video, comment down below, share the video, and subscribe to my YouTube channel for new updates for families in intensive care.
And if you have a loved one in intensive care, contact us on one of the numbers on the top of our website at intensivecarehotline.com or send me an email to [email protected].
This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com and I’ll talk to you in a few days.