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

So yesterday, I had a client call me saying that her four-year-old daughter has been in ICU for the last two weeks. She was in a near drowning event about two weeks ago. She probably sustained some form of brain damage, and she hasn’t woken up properly. The client couldn’t give me a Glasgow Coma Scale as she simply didn’t understand what a Glasgow Coma Scale is and how it works, and all of that.

Which then brings me back to that, the biggest challenge for families in intensive care is always that they don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know what to look for. They don’t know what questions to ask. They don’t know their rights and they don’t know how to manage doctors and nurses in intensive care. And this is exactly what this young mother is dealing with here, that she doesn’t even know what she doesn’t know.

So now the ICU team is telling her that tomorrow they want to withdraw life support and let her daughter die because she’s not waking up in a time frame that’s convenient to the intensive care team. Bear in mind. This is a four-year-old child, a four-year-old girl. So, the ICU is basically telling the family, well, it’s “in the best interest” for a four-year-old girl to die. Now, let that ruminate in your head for a minute if it was your child.

So anyway, here it gets better. So, then I asked this lady whether they have educated her on a tracheostomy and they said, well, they wouldn’t do a tracheostomy because once again, apparently, according to the intensive care team, it’s not “in the best interest” of this four-year-old girl to live. And I call it nonsense and all of that. Why would you kill a four-year-old child? Again, imagine if it was your child, you would be giving your everything for your child.

So where to from here? I have obviously advised this lady that it’s illegal for the intensive care team to kill her child and that she needs to put a stop to that. And if she doesn’t know how to, then we can help her, of course. We always put a stop to killings like that. We have always managed to put a stop to that. As long as families can take advice, of course, we can walk them through it step by step.

I’ve also made a podcast about this a few weeks ago with a client where we saved his life by advocating for his family successfully, of course. The client was actually on the podcast himself who survived the ICU stay.

Now on top of that, if she does need a tracheostomy and she can’t be weaned off the ventilator, coming back to this four-year-old girl, the service needed is like Intensive Care at Home, now where, for tracheostomy children and adults or for ventilated and tracheostomy kids and adults, they can go home. So go and have a look at intensivecareathome.com.

So that’s my quick tip for today.

If you are in a similar situation, we can help you turn the situation around. We’ve done it dozens of times, or we successfully saved lives. And don’t let the intensive care team tell you that they are operating in a vacuum when it comes to the end of life. They’re not operating in a vacuum.

If they are killing your child or your family member, whoever, might be in a situation like that, that is actually could be perceived as murder. They’re ending somebody’s life deliberately. While in this day and age, people can be kept alive, and this girl needs time to wake up and see what her neurological condition is.

Plenty of kids live in the community with some sort of neurological deficits, but they still want to live, and I can vouch for that firsthand. Many of our clients with Intensive Care at Home might have some form of brain damage and yet they want to live, and their families want them to live. They have a good quality of life. So, who is the ICU to determine what is a good quality of life? That’s not an objective measure. It’s a subjective measure. It’s up to the individual, up to the family, not up to ICU teams.

So that is my quick tip for today.

If you have a loved one in intensive care and you need help, contact us 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.

Also, if you have a loved one in intensive care with a tracheostomy or long-term ventilation, tracheostomy, can’t be weaned off a ventilator and a tracheostomy, please contact us at intensivecareathome.com.

Again, call us on one of the numbers on the top of the website or 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 and we answer all questions, intensive care and Intensive Care at Home related.

Also, if you need a medical record review for your loved one in real time and you want to get a second opinion, please contact us at intensivecarehotline.com as well. We review medical records in real time and give you a second opinion in real time. And if you need a medical record review after intensive care, if you have unanswered questions, if you need closure or if you are simply concerned about medical negligence, please contact us as well.

Now subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care. Share the video with your friends and families, give the video a like, give it a thumbs up, click the subscribe button, and comment below what comments and thoughts you have about this video or what you want to see next.

Thanks for watching.

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

Take care for now.