A bit of history first... my mum has always had repeated chest infections and as long as I can remember she’s always choked on her food. About 3 years ago, she finally had scans done and they discovered a shadow on her right lung. They gave different antibiotics to try and clear up the infection she also had but it comes back always. They were in talks about going in and removing the bad part of the lung. Then the following happened...
on 2nd March my mum was taken by ambulance to hospital, she’d collapsed at home. They discovered she had low sodium levels but she was also quite short on breathe. They kept her in on the ward as they were various tests and decided to try a peg where they feed her directly into her stomach as they believe when she chokes on food she is taking it into her lung and that’s what’s causing the repeated infections. On the morning of the 8th March, I had a call to get to the hospital straightaway, mum had gone into cardiac arrest, they had managed to resuscitate her but they couldn’t figure out what it happened. It took them around 3 hours to stabilise her and put her in an induced coma, they woke her up the next day on 9th March, took the tube out on the 10th March and replaced it with a tight fitting mask that helps to expel the CO2, she was rather confused all of that day along with the next day but by 12th March she seemed to be returning to normal and talking about normal things etc, I went home and about 11pm the hospital phoned to say to get to the hospital straightaway. I got there and she had gone into cardiac arrest again. This time her heart had stopped for 16 minutes! They had again resuscitated her, they kept her in a coma all of the 13th and woke her up on the 14th, she became agitated and angry, hitting the nurse and telling her to F off, trying to pull her catheter and breathing tube out! They did about 10 tests on the ventilator to see if they could take her off of it but she failed all of them. They have kept her slightly sedated ever since until yesterday when they did a tracheotomy. As soon as she woke from the tracheotomy she tried pulling it out so again they had to sedate her. They’ve said all along that she’s not breathing on her own at all and is very dependent on the oxygen. They think the reason she went into cardiac arrest the second time was that there was a tiny leak on her mask but have also said it shocked them because they didn’t realise quite how dependent she was on it.
They’ve now said they’re going to try and wean her off of the ventilator very slowly but I’m struggling to see how they’re going to do this when she is so dependant on it! My question is... what happens if she can’t come off of it? She hasn’t got obvious brain damage. Can someone live there life on a ventilator with a Tracheotomy or is there a different option? Will she be able to go home or will she have to go to a care home? Or will the NHS eventually turn the machine off? The doctors don’t seem to be telling us all that much other than that she’s really very poorly.
I’d rather you be honest with your answers as I hate being unprepared! Thank you so much for reading!
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