Relative in ICU with heat stroke and is not going to make it

The COPD won’t have caused the heatstroke but it will have made her more susceptible to it.

This is the thing with underlying health conditions, people don’t always know they have them until it’s too late.

During COVID for instance there were reports of perfectly healthy people who had died from COVID, including one who was a 13 year old boy, which turned out had an underlying heart condition he didn’t know he had.

Anyone can get heatstroke, but one’s susseptability to it does change depending on your actual health at the time.

So although she believed she was healthy, she wasn’t, so it’s not the same as saying a perfectly healthy 50 something year old woman just collapsed from heatstroke so it could happen to anyone, it’s more the case that no-one knows they don’t have an underlying health condition, sometimes until something like this happens to them.

The current state of her health is because of the heatstroke, but the heatstroke may not have happened if she didn’t have the underlying health conditions that she does.

The undiagnosed underlying heart condition I had meant I was more likely to suffer significant consequences if I caught the flu. But when I caught the flu I didn’t know that. The flu damaged my heart valve and caused sepsis, but had I not had an underlying heart condition this likely wouldn’t have happened.

None of that is a criticism, and the tragedy of anyone dying from a serious condition is not reduced. But there were clearly contributing factors which, while they don’t need to be considered after the event because what’s happened has happened, but they do need to be considered when you’re putting out a message essentially saying we could any one of us just collapse in front of the television and have heatstroke with no other conditions. That’s just not accurate.

Clearly, you've not properly read the op's updates and I'm inclined to think the ICU consultants actually treating her are better placed than strangers on the Internet to determine what the chief causes of her condition are.

The COPD is a new, incidental finding and the not the cause of her condition which is heat stroke.

Update: It did indeed turn out there was more to this and the context was highly relevant.

My actual comment:

Kindly, there's a great deal of missing context here, medical conditions for one.
I'm sorry for your loss.

A little blunt maybe but I'm an ex-ICU nurse and needed to know more to give advice.

https://www.landlordtoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2026/06/legal-warning-over-tenants-and-high-temperaturesheatwave/

They’re not just dealing with brain injury though - there is multi organ failure and bilateral pneumonia that isn’t responding to treatment. There’s always hope until there isn’t but I think overall it’s a very challenging condition and OP is wise to prepare herself for the worst.

So did my relative. Bilateral pneumonia and on a ventilator for over three weeks (trachy for the latter bit). Told no prospect whatsoever of even a tiny bit of meaningful recovery. Still made an almost full recovery. Doctors can and do get it very wrong, especially when they're not brain specialists. It's a very complex organ.

With respect, OP’s relative now has bilateral pneumonia as a result of just being on the ventilator. That severely complicates things - she’s been on the ventilator six days and unfortunately the longer she is on it, the less chance there is of successfully weaning her off. It’s also very concerning that the infection isn’t responding to treatment - sepsis is a very real risk - so I think OP has to be guided by medical opinion. It’s a myth that family have the last word on removal of life support - if no consent is forthcoming the doctors can and do make best interest decisions.

I've read all the recent updates and I'm going to come off here now. I posted to get some support here, not to be called 'cruel' and 'outraged' when I've been nothing of the sort.
I do want to say thank you to everybody who has written kind words, stuck up for me and just been there to help. I really appreciate it. I may pop back in a few days to update. I'm aware it's very rare for this to happen to a lady in her 50s. But it's happened and I cannot change that, and I will not take medical advice or other differing opinions of those on here when 2 separate consultants have told me and my family the same conclusions. I am preparing to say goodbye to my auntie and going to spend some time with my family while we process everything.
Look after yourselves and please, please be careful in the upcoming heat. I'm going to be much more aware of this in the future. X

I'm.not

I'm saying illness is heat stroke, I'm also saying comorbidities make heat stroke more likely so the average 50 yr old doesn't need to panic

The heat is wild, it's the elderly. The very young and those with comorbidities it comes for same as viral illnesses.

It should be taken very seriously as should climate change and as an aside so should smoking and COPD which feels like a diagnosis designed to make emphysema less scary.

It's a terrible combination and it was a heat wave when my 56 yr old mum died of pneumonia, a heart defect and COPD. We've always said she'd have lived if the hospital had air con.

Hope that clarifies

I was pointing out to the quoted OP that their outrage was misplaced based on the subsequent posts.

What? How can you update on behalf of the op?

Update: It did indeed turn out there was more to this and the context was highly relevant.

My actual comment:

Kindly, there's a great deal of missing context here, medical conditions for one.
I'm sorry for your loss.

A little blunt maybe but I'm an ex-ICU nurse and needed to know more to give advice.

@Locutus2000 @pragmatismuniversalsentimentalist it's really distasteful and inappropriate that you make comments like the ones you have on a thread like this. This isn't a random news story you've read about, but a person going posting about an intensely personal and distressing thing to happen to a loved one. Your comments about 'how there must be more to this' and insensitive to the extreme.

As someone in there 50's this is heartbreaking 💔

Some are landlords desperate for it not to be an overheating flat that has caused it Hence the mental gymnastics and refusal to believe the consultants. Six years ago ppl would have had no trouble believing a consultant who said it was Covid.