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

Today, I want to once again read out a question from one of our members that we worked with last year who had their grandma in ICU and how we helped her to save her grandma’s life because the ICU team was pretty adamant that the best option for her was to die because she won’t have any “quality of life” in the future anyway and deemed her almost like a worthless person to live, which is terrible and should not happen in this day and age. It should never happen. No one is worthless of living. It’s just atrocious what’s happened there. But, with our help, we were able to help her and her family step-by-step so that her grandmother could get best care and treatment.

So let me read out one of her emails. “So, I had a question. My grandma’s been in the ICU for three weeks now and she suffered a stroke when we found her on the ground on August the 14th. She was intubated for two weeks and currently has a tracheostomy that was done on August the 27th. She’s on 6 liters of oxygen has been tolerating this pretty well.

We’re trying to buy more time trying to keep her in ICU. Well, she was taken out of ICU initially but she’s currently in a step-down ICU. We have not agreed to a PEG (Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy) tube as you advised us, but doctors and nurses are pushing it. We keep saying no.

Social workers started calling me asking what we want to do. Obviously, my goal is to keep my grandma in the hospital because I don’t want her to be sent out somewhere else. They just called me today saying that the social worker, the case manager, their boss, and the doctor, want to have a meeting with me and my parents. Do we have to attend the meeting or are we allowed to kindly decline?”

I need to stop here, and I need to interject before I keep reading out the email. My question is this, if the intensive care team asked you to jump off a bridge, would you jump off a bridge? So, can you decline a meeting? I guess the answer is self-evident. You can decline anything you can decline. Everything in life is negotiable. You need to approach every situation like that. Everything in life is negotiable.

So, let me continue the email from our member, “Do we have to attend the meeting or are we allowed to kindly decline? I know what they will tell us because they’ve been telling us that we have to send my grandma out to a facility. But if we’re not ready to have a meeting, can they force it upon us?” No, they can’t.

“If it comes down to it and we have to have a meeting, of course, I would submit a payment for a phone consultation to Patrik and on the line helping us to ask questions and listening to what they’re telling us anyway.”

So, what happens with our membership as well is, as a member, you have unlimited email access to me and my team and also have access to the membership area. You can then always upgrade to a paid phone consulting options with a 20% discount if you’re a member to the regular price.

So anyway, “Hi, thank you so much for sending us the message and for the information. You mentioned, “They just called me today saying that the social worker, case manager, and their boss, and the doctor want to have a meeting with me and my parents.”

The next step is to ask them for a written agenda so you know what’s going to be discussed and if you don’t feel like going to the meeting, you can do so. End of story. They cannot force you into that.

But just in case you will be attending the meeting, yes, you’re right, you need to get myself involved so I can help you to ask the right questions and guide you through the appropriate decisions that need to be made. Hope this information helps.” And that’s what we actually did at the time.

I was involved in the meeting and, of course, we stopped the ICU to send our client’s grandmother to LTAC because they can’t force you. They can’t force you. But so many families in ICU believe everything that the intensive care team is telling them without doing their research. Then they have big regrets after they realize they’ve been fooled and after they realize they have been misled.

Anyway, then they have had sent the client an agenda. I just read out the written agenda, “These are the topics we need to discuss in the family meeting.

Number one, nutrition. As mentioned, she cannot have the nasogastric tube in the long term and the skilled nursing facility will not take her with a nasogastric tube.” Well, how good is that? That a skilled nursing facility won’t take her with a nasogastric tube? Well, then you just keep the nasogastric tube and then she won’t go anywhere.

“Number two, long term care goals. I know you mentioned that taking your grandmother home is not an option as no one is able to care for her 24/7. We spoke about custodial care at the facility but with her medical still pending, it will be very difficult to place her.

Please let me know if we can sit down tomorrow at 10 a.m.

From a social worker.”

So, you see what happens when you actually ask for a written agenda, you see what happens. How interesting is that, that they want to comply?

So then in this situation, well, she decided not to go to the family meeting because she didn’t want to discuss those topics. She had already made up her mind that no matter what they say that she won’t go to the family meeting. I can tell you the outcome.

The outcome was that she stayed in ICU for at least 6 months at the time with a nasogastric tube and she did not go to LTAC (Long Term Acute Care). No one could force you to do a PEG tube or a nasogastric tube. Remember that. No one can force you to do anything, anything less, anything different means you have given in, you have sold your soul. Do not give in to anything. You are not prepared to give in.

Just on the topic again of nasogastric tube versus PEG tube, again, in many other countries where there are no LTAC, patients in ICU or long-term patients in ICU can be on a nasogastric tube for many months on end. No issue. No issue. Again, like I mentioned in my last video, the PEG tube has the perception in the medical field and in the nursing field of a permanency which means no one wants to try to keep feeding your loved ones again, orally.

Nursing homes unfortunately, are full of patients with PEG tubes because that makes it easy for nursing home to give nutrition to patients without actually spending the time to feed them, assuming they can’t feed themselves. Therefore, when someone has a PEG tube, there’s this perception that patients will never ever eat again orally. So, you need to stay away from a PEG tube. With a nasogastric tube, the perception is it’s temporary. So therefore, a patient needs to start to eat and drink again, very, very quickly.

So, I hope that explains to you what is really happening or what has happened here. I think that’s it for today.

Now, if you have a loved one in intensive care, you can also become a member in our membership for families of critically ill patients at intensivecaresupport.org. There, you have access to me and my team, 24 hours a day, in the membership area and via email and we help you just like I showcased you now with our member that had very great outcomes.

You can sign up at intensivecaresupport.org to become a member for families of critically ill patients. You have access to me and my team, 24 hours a day, in the membership area and via email and we answer all questions, intensive care related.

You can also upgrade to one-on-one phone consulting with me if you are a member. But I also offer one-to-one phone consulting if you are not a member. I talk to doctors and nurses directly. I have participated in many, many family meetings with intensive care teams and with families advocating for them, breaking things down for them, making sure they’re asking all the right questions, making sure they’re not getting walked all over by intensive care teams with hidden agendas. I offer phone consulting via Skype, phone, Zoom, WhatsApp, whichever medium works best for you.

We also offer medical record reviews in real time if you need a second opinion, please contact us as well. If you need a medical record review after intensive care, if you have unanswered questions, if you need closure, or if you are simply suspecting medical negligence, please contact us as well. We can help you with that as well.

If you have any questions about our service or about our membership, go to intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or simply send us an email to [email protected].

If you like this video, subscribe to my YouTube channel, give it a thumbs up, click the notification bell, share the video with your friends and families, and comment below what you want to see next or what questions and insights you have from this video.

Thank you so much for watching.

This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com and I’ll talk to you in a few days.

Take care for now.