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YOUR INTENSIVE CARE HOTLINE - Quick Tip for Families in Intensive Care: My 88-year-old Husband’s Been in ICU for 15 Days After a Car Accident, I Want Him to Survive, Help!

/ Patrik Hutzel - Critical Care Nurse Consultant / No Comments

Quick Tip for Families in Intensive Care: My 88-year-old Husband’s Been in ICU for 15 Days After a Car Accident, I Want Him to Survive, Help!

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Quick Tip for Families in Intensive Care: My 88-year-old Husband’s Been in ICU for 15 Days After a Car Accident, I Want Him to Survive, Help!

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

So today, I was talking to a client who has her 88-year-old husband in intensive care. Now, her 88-year-old husband has been in a car accident on the 15th of September. Now, the time of me recording this video, today is the first of October. So, it’s been 15 days, and her husband has been in intensive care with multiple fractures, and he’s intubated with a breathing tube. He’s had CPR but he survived the car crash.

Her husband has been working as an electrician until the day before he had the accident. He was living a very good life up until the day of the accident, a very active life as a matter of fact. He always said to his wife that if he ever ends up in ICU or if he’s in accident he always wanted to have everything done. He even said that he could live with a disability, as long as he could live.

Cutting a long story short, this lady, our client told us that the intensive care team wants to withdraw treatment even though he’s now awake and he can answer with yes and no questions. So, the intensive care team is now pressuring our client and the patient’s wife to end his life, saying, “Well, it’s time to say goodbye.” In the meantime, she’s asking her husband who can yes, who cannot yes or shake his head to no questions, whether he wants to continue treatment and he says, absolutely yes.

Now, here’s the interesting part. I said to our client, “Have they said anything about a tracheostomy, putting a tracheostomy?” She said, “Well, what’s a tracheostomy?” So, she had no idea that if someone can’t come off the ventilator, that tracheostomy can be inserted, and it buys people time to wean off the ventilator. Even if they can’t wean off the ventilator and they want to live, there are services now like Intensive Care at Home and I encourage you to go and have a look at intensivecareathome.com for more information there.

But the bottom line is this, I keep saying over and over again, the biggest challenge for families in intensive care is simply 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. That is exactly what this lady is dealing with here, but we are in the process of working with her so she can make informed decisions, have peace of mind, control, power, and influence.

So, that is my quick tip for today.

If you have a loved one in intensive care and you need help, 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] with your questions.

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

I also offer one-on-one consulting and Adequacy over the phone, via Skype, via Zoom WhatsApp, whichever medium works best for you. I talk to doctors and nurses directly. I represent you in family meetings with intensive care teams and I ask all the questions you haven’t considered asking but must be asked so that you can make informed decisions have peace of mind, control, power, and influence.

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

Thank you so much for watching.

If you like my videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care and Intensive Care at Home like the video, click the notification bell, and 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 intensivecareathome.com and I will talk to you in a few days.

Take care for now.

 

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