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If you want to know what progress for your critically ill loved one in intensive care can look like, even though intensive care teams are telling you they’re not going to survive and they’re not going to improve, stay tuned. I’ve got news for you.

So currently, we are working with a client who has their 80-year-old father in ICU, and he had a cardiac arrest and supposedly a hypoxic brain injury, but the ICU has been delaying giving access to the medical records and they’ve been very vague about giving them access to the medical records. They’ve always been saying from Day 1, “Well, your father is not going to survive and if he is going to survive, he won’t have any “quality of life”.” What is quality of life anyway? It’s not for you or for me to decide what’s acceptable for someone’s quality of life. It is just a perception. In any case.

The ICU team kept this patient sedated on propofol for way too long and we’ve always challenged the team, and we said to the family, “You need to ask them to stop Propofol so, they can actually verify that your father is as brain damaged as they say he would be.”

Now, after two weeks of back and forth, they finally switched off the propofol. Just for the records, propofol is sedative. Now, interestingly enough, within 24 or 48 hours of completely eliminating sedation, i.e., the propofol, the father starts to obey commands and he’s wiggling his toes on command and he’s opening his eyes on command and he’s trying to squeeze fingers on commands.

Now, that is anything but the brain damaged patient. Nothing like it. Those are the first positive signs of someone coming out of an induced coma and those are the first positive signs of someone making steps towards a recovery.

If someone is severely brain damaged, like the ICU team claims this man is, he wouldn’t be obeying commands. He wouldn’t be following anything that the family or the doctors or the nurses ask him to do.

So, it is absolutely critical that you always use word of discrimination in terms of how you view things, what questions you ask. It is absolutely up to you to question everything because if you don’t question everything, your critically ill loved one may die.

If the family had given in, if they hadn’t sought advice from us, they would have given in and the ICU team would have moved this man towards palliative care, end of life and hospice, and he would have died. They would have never seen that he can obey commands.

Now, obviously, the trust now here is broken because how can you trust the intensive care team’s clinical judgment if they’re saying, “Well, even if he will survive, he won’t wake up and he won’t have any quality of life.”

Now, clearly, his brain is working and there’s the potential for a meaningful recovery. But once again, what is a meaningful recovery? That is in the eyes of a family, not in the eyes of an intensive care team.

Why do they say things from the beginning like they do to many other families that your loved one won’t survive, if he does survive, he will have brain damage. They do that because they want to empty the ICU bed as quickly as possible. They want to get rid of this patient dead or alive. That is just the reality.

If they can kill patients early to empty the ICU bed, they will in some instances, in this instance, they want now do a tracheostomy and send the patient out to an LTAC (Long Term Acute Care) facility. This is obviously a client in the United States. So, once again, you have to question everything.

Once again, keep in mind, 90% of intensive care patients approximately survive. That’s 9-0. That’s 9 out of 10 surviving. So, why would your loved one be the one out of 10 not survive if the odds are in your loved one’s favor? So, always keep that in mind.

Do your own research, question everything, let someone get to review the medical records because that’s what we’ve done then for this family after they have finally access to the medical records. So, you don’t need to believe anything, and you can make up your own mind.

You can control the narrative. As a matter of fact, you need to control the narrative because they are trying to control the narrative. If you don’t know how to control the narrative, please reach out to us. We help you with controlling the narrative.

I have worked in critical care nursing for 25 years in three different countries where I worked as a nurse manager for over 5 years, and I’ve been consulting and advocating for families in intensive care since 2013 here at intensivecarehotline.com.

I can very, very confidently say that we have saved many lives for our clients in intensive care all over the world and you can verify that on our testimonial section at intensivecarehotline.com or you can verify it on our intensivecarehotline.com podcast section where we’ve done client interviews.

We have helped hundreds of members and clients over the years, that is why we’ve created a membership for families of critically ill patients in intensive care. You can become a member if you go to intensivecarehotline.com if you click on the membership link or if you go to intensivecaresupport.org directly.  In the membership, you also have exclusive access to 21 e-books and 21 videos that I’ve personally written and recorded and the access to me and my team and the e-books and the videos will help you to make informed decisions, have peace of mind control, power, and influence so that your loved one always gets best care treatment.

I also do one-on-one consulting and advocacy over the phone, Zoom, Skype, WhatsApp, whichever medium works best for you. I talk to you and your families directly. I handhold you through this once in a lifetime situation that you simply cannot afford to get wrong. I also talk to doctors directly. When I talk to doctors directly, I ask all the questions that you haven’t even considered asking but must be asked when you have a loved one, critically ill in intensive care. I also represent you in family meetings with intensive care teams.

We also do medical record reviews in real time so that you can get a second opinion in real time. We also do medical record reviews after intensive care if you have unanswered questions, if you need closure, or if you are suspecting medical negligence.

All of that, you get at intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or simply send us an email to [email protected] with your questions.

If you like my videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care, click the like button, click the notification bell, comment below what you want to see next, what questions and insights have from this video, and share the video with your friends and families.

I also do a weekly YouTube live where I answer your questions live on the show. You will get notification for the YouTube live if you are a subscriber to my YouTube channel and if you are a subscriber to my intensivecarehotline.com email newsletter at intensivecarehotline.com.

Thank you so much for watching.

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

Take care for now.

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