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Hi it’s Patrik Hutzel from INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME where we provide tailor made solutions for long-term ventilated Adults & Children with Tracheostomies and where we also provide tailor made solutions for hospitals and Intensive Care Units whilst providing quality services for long-term ventilated patients and medically complex patients at home.
In last week’s blog, I talked about,
You can check out last week’s blog by clicking on the link below this video:
In today’s blog post, I want to answer a question from one of our clients and the question today is
My Mom is in ICU on a Ventilator with a Tracheostomy For 2 Months Now and I Want Her to Recover & Come Home. What do I do? Please help!
Hi Patrik,
Thank you so much for the information that you have put on your website. It has helped me and my family out so much with my mom being in intensive care on a ventilator with a tracheostomy for two months now.
They wanted to help her wean off the ventilator, but I just feel helpless since they only allow three visits per week and that isn’t right. My mom needs a family to be there for support so she doesn’t feel suppressed, feel depressed or neglected or abandoned by us. If they would allow me to be by her side every day, I would but they don’t call.
And I asked to speak with the doctor so they can check her throat for any damage from the tube from the ventilator she had before the tracheostomy and the doctors and the nurses are not returning my calls. It’s been a week now I called and they take forever to get a nurse on the phone. And even then to answer the nurses station takes a long time.
I feel that they’re not doing too much. They should be working with her every day to help her get off the ventilator and breathe on her own. I asked them when will she get the therapy to get her off the ventilator and the nurse said on Monday, that it will be on Saturday and that’s what they promised me. But on those days she ain’t getting the therapy.
Every day is critical. The more time she will be on a ventilator, the less likely it is she will get off the ventilator. She has had open-heart surgery to replace her atrial valve. And she had a couple of minor strokes after the open-heart surgery.
She recovered from that, she’s diabetic, but when she was living with me, we had her sugar and her weight under control. So that helped her too overcome the surgery and the strokes.
Initially was a big shock, but again, she is improving and she’s following my commands, like squeezing my hands and she’s opening eyes. She is overweight, even though she now lost some weight since she’s been in ICU. Her insulin was reduced before she went into hospital because she had her sugar well under control. So that was a good thing.
But then her kidneys weren’t working well, but from many weeks now of antibiotics, it got better. She recuperated from that as well. And then she ended up with sepsis in the ICU, after she had open-heart surgery.
She got better from that as well when she was on antibiotics for almost six weeks. But it’s now been over two months since she’s in ICU. Then her lungs had fluids and they did a bronchoscopy. They helped to get the fluids off the lung. They gave her diuretics, but it was all part of her kidneys failing as well.
Then, after she couldn’t come off the ventilator when she had fluids in the lungs, after the open-heart surgery, she ended up with a tracheostomy and here we are two months later, we’re still not getting off the ventilator.
It feels like everything is on hold now. And I feel like my mom is really trying not to give up, but the doctors and the nurses are not really trying hard enough to get her off the ventilator and that keeps my mom’s recovery on hold and in danger.
I feel that if they would be putting in more effort in helping her every day and allowing me and my other family members to be there by her side, helping her, she would be off that ventilator a long time ago.
And I feel that she’s going to get depressed and give up. And I don’t want to see that happen because I know my mom is ready to wean off that ventilator. But she’s getting very impatient and she’s getting depressed and that’s not fair on her to have to wait. What do I do? I need answers to help my mom. I want her to recover and come home. I’m willing to do whatever it takes to help my mom. Please help me and tell me, what do I need to do next?
Thank you for all your time and your knowledge. You have already given me enough information on your websites to know that being stuck in ICU is not the best option and that going home is probably the right thing to do.
Thank you so much. You have been a big help in guiding me through this. We can’t stop here. My mom knows that I’m doing my research and she knows that I’m working hard on getting her home and helping her out of this very unfortunate situation.
We are in Brisbane, Australia, and we want to get help from the NDIS. My mom is only 60 years of age, and we want to get her home as quickly as possible. Please, please help.
Tanya
Hi Tanya,
Thank you Tanya for writing in and thank you Tanya for sharing your mom’s situation. Unfortunately, this is a very common situation when patients are in ICU, long-term ventilated. They can’t come off the ventilator after they had open-heart surgery with complications.
You’re saying your mom is diabetic. Her kidneys have been failing. She’s had sepsis. She had a failing atrial valve. So unfortunately these situations do happen. And now she’s stuck in ICU. She’s depressed. She’s showing all the signs and symptoms of someone that is a long-term patient in ICU.
And what you’re describing here, I’m not surprised by either that the intensive care team might not be giving their best efforts to your mom because any long-term patient in ICU can be seen as a burden. And that could be one of the reasons why the ICU team might have given up on your mom, which is a real shame, but in any case, let’s look at the next practical steps to get your mom home.
So, the next step is to get NDIS funding for your mom, and then get her home with 24-hour intensive home care nursing and continue what you’re doing with hospital at home. That is probably the next step. It’ll also help with your mom’s depression. Your mom shouldn’t give up and neither should you, of course.
Another thing you can do is you can also have a look at our sister website, intensivecarehotline.com, where we also provide consulting and advocacy for families in intensive care. I do believe you need both given that your mother is in such a difficult situation.
You need an outside expert. Look at the situation whilst you are preparing for home care, whilst you are preparing with the NDIS for funding, and again, you should contact us to take the next step, to get the funding through the NDIS. And also, so we can help you with the advocacy for the NDIS, but also help you with the advocacy as long as your mother is in ICU and so she can be prepared for home care.
Thank you so much.
Now, if you have a loved one in intensive care and you want to go home with our service intensive care at home and if you want to find out how to get funding for our service and how it all works, please contact us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, or send me an email to [email protected]. That’s Patrik, just with a K at the end.
Please also have a look at our case studies because there we highlight more about what we can do for clients, how clients can live at home with ventilation and tracheostomies and you can look at our case studies as well at our service section
Intensive care at home Case studies
And if you are at home already and you need support for your critically ill loved one at home, and you have insufficient support or insufficient funding, please contact us as well. We can help you with all of that.
And if you are an intensive care nurse or a pediatric intensive care nurse with a minimum of two years, ICU or pediatric ICU experience, and you ideally have a critical care certificate, please contact us as well. Check out our career section on our website. We are currently hiring ICU and pediatric ICU nurses for clients in the Melbourne metropolitan area, Northern suburbs, Mornington Peninsula, Frankston area, South Gippsland, as well as Wollongong in New South Wales.
www.intensivecareathome.com/careers
So we are also an NDIS, TAC (Victoria) and DVA (Department of Veteran affairs) approved community service provider in Australia. Also have a look at our range of full service provisions.
Also, we have been part of the Royal Melbourne health accelerator program in the past for innovative healthcare companies.
https://www.thermh.org.au/news/innovation-funding-announced-melbourne-health-accelerator
https://www.melbournehealthaccelerator.com/
Thank you for watching this video and thank you for tuning into this week’s blog.
This is Patrik from intensive care at home, and I’ll see you again next week in another update.