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Quick Tip for Families in Intensive Care: My Daughter had a Car Accident & a Brain Bleed & She’s Off the Ventilator After a Week & Not Waking Up!

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

So today, I will read out an email from Jason and Jason says, “My 24-year-old daughter had a head-on collision. She had a bleed to the brain as well as swelling to the brain. She’s now off the ventilator after a week, but she’s not coming round. She says, ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to questions in the right context, but she has only opened her eyes a few times and just wanted to know how she should be responding and why she isn’t fully awake yet?” Now Jason, great question there, and I think your daughter is on the right track. In situations like that, you have to be very patient. Most importantly, she’s doing purposeful movements. She’s saying things that make sense. That is actually the most important sign that she’s on the right track.

Obviously, you have to ask the neurologist or the neurosurgeon whether they think there is some potential long-term brain damage, but those are good signs after a couple of weeks in ICU. And I can tell you that many patients in ICU without a brain injury when they’re coming out of an induced coma, wouldn’t respond any better than this. It’s just the nature of being in an induced coma and all the side effects from the medication.

And also, you got to keep in mind, if she was in a head-on collision, she’s probably just slowly recovering from this massive traumatic event, and you got just got to give her time. Two weeks is not a long time in intensive care, and it can take sometimes weeks, sometimes months to recover. So, I know that’s probably not what you want to hear, but patience is a virtue and you just got to bide your time and look at the positives.

There are a lot of positives from what you are sharing. She’s off the ventilator she’s responding to ‘yes’ or ‘no’ in context. That’s fantastic. As I said, to put this in context for you, a lot of patients in ICU when they come out of an induced coma without a brain injury, may not even say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ because of the side effects of the drugs from the medically induced coma. Sometimes takes days, weeks to wake up.

So, just be patient. Be encouraging to your daughter. Make sure she’s getting physical rehabilitation. Make sure she’s getting stimulation. Make sure she’s getting things like having a shower, getting natural daylight, which can be sometimes difficult to be achieved in ICU. But if she can only get outside for half an hour, if they wrap her up in blankets, in a wheelchair, if she can, having a shower, that works wonders. It’s the natural things that might help your daughter. And again, keep encouraging her, keep talking to her, play her favorite music, whatever it is that helps her to get back to normality as quickly as possible.

So, that’s 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 simply send us an email to [email protected].

Also, have a look at our membership for families in intensive care at intensivecaresupport.org. There, you have access to me and my team, 24 hours a day, in a membership area and via email where we answer all questions intensive care related.

Also, if you need a medical record review for your loved one in intensive care, go to intensivecarehotline.com as well and contact us. We can review medical records while your loved one is in intensive care or after intensive care, especially if you suspect medical negligence but we also do it in real time. In this day and age, hospital and an ICU should just give you access to medical records with a link to a URL, to a website with a username and a password. It’s as simple as that. Access to medical records is a right, not a privilege. Don’t let anybody else convince you differently.

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

Thanks for watching.

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

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