Calling all NHS workers!!

[Nc4post99]

I apologise that this isn’t an aibu.

but I really need some clarity from some ITU workers preferably consultants or anyone who has experience there.

its nearly a year since my dad died in ITU. It was harrowing. A rollercoaster of hope and despair. I’m struggling. This has been made worse by the fact my mother is insistent that they (drs)killed him, and did all in their power to make sure he died. She says they put that line into your arm and after that you’re a goner, apparently they did it to my grandmother too. I’ve told her this is nonsense. But it’s clearly psychologically impacting me as I’m having regular nightmares.

please, is this a thing? Do you have any clue what she’s talking about? I can go into detail with what happened, it’s massively outing but I don’t care, if that helps.

(im On a wait list for grief counselling btw)

Your mum sounds like she is causing all this anguish for you.

We had similar during covid.
We had a very critically unwell younger (ish) patient with covid.
There were no visitors allowed at the time.
The patients mum used to phone every 5 minutes and scream abuse at the staff, saying we were killing her relative and they didn't need ventilating. She demanded cctv.
We understood it was difficult as she couldn't see the patient deteriorating first hand.
In the end she used to wait in the staff car parks at the end of our shifts to verbally abuse us and threaten us.

She recognised some of the staff from facetime.
It was horrendous.
But I think deep down she needed someone to blame, this is what your mum sounds like she is doing.

I'm sorry for your loss.

If that bank nurse hadn't picked that shift up, there would have been no one to give your dad one to one care.

I regularly get begging texts and emails from work asking if I can pick up a bank shift at the last minute. The NHS is short staffed of nurses because they haven't trained enough of us to keep up with aging population. Poor working conditions such as relentless switching between day and night shifts, and abuse from relatives, mean that some people do leave to work solely on the bank. Most of the nurses on the bank at my hospital either work part time or full time and do bank as overtime.

I bet that lovely bank nurse just thought "at least I don't have to come back and have this abuse tomorrow, I just won't book a shift on here for a while".

You don’t need to explain it to me, I get it and I know it’s a really f’ing shitty way to think from her and worse still To articulate. I’m sad though that I never got to meet that man and say thanks, for holding his hand when we couldn’t ,
talking to him, encouraging him when we couldn’t

I think your Mother's reaction to the death is having a really detrimental affect on your thinking.

My suggestion is think about your Dad's route out of ITU. He had chronic kidney disease that had deteriorated to the point he was needing renal replacement therapy and he didn't tolerate it being stopped.

He had a stent in and had had infection in his kidney that was bad enough to affect his BP (sepsis) or alternatively he had some degree of heart failure that was unmasked by the fluid shifts caused by his kidney disease which caused the low blood pressure. Regardless for periods of time he wasn't maintaining his own blood pressure.

This was all on a background of COPD which presumably affected his quality of life / ability to exercise if he had an NHS provided home nebuliser (or was it home oxygen? )

If he had survived the acute ITU admission his kidneys might never have recovered - would he have wanted to go on lifelong dialysis? How would he (and your Mum) have felt if he had survived this admission but never made it home (the "average" older patient admitted to ITU drops a dependency level so - living indepently becomes living with carers, living with a lot of help at home (I've assumed your Mum was helping with household chores etc) becomes residential care.

Was your Mum being realistic about all she/ they were told prior to this admission? I've seen my own non medical family members (I'm a doctor) get horribly confused. Hearing them describe what was said at appointments that I've also been present for has been illuminating. Their account doesn't often bear much resemblance to what was actually said. Sometimes it is because they don't understand and sometimes it's because they can't face understanding... I wonder if your Mum was in a bit of denial about his health prior to his final illness?

Has her denial/ grief been channeled into distrust at the professionals who didn't save her husband?

I’m a doctor . It sounds like he was very frail and was already on life support ( dialysis) with very bad COPD .He had a really high chance on non surviving a severe illness . Many ITUs would not have admitted so they definitely tried really hard for him.

I wanted to explain the death certificate. It isn’t just a list.
The positions have meanings
1a
1b
1c
2

So 1c caused/ contributed to 1b which in turn caused/ contributed to 1a which is the actual thing that caused his death.
Anything in position 2 didn’t cause the death but were significant health conditions that may have added to I’ll health.

In your fathers case, the cancer caused the kidney failure due to a kidney being removed and the scarring to the ureter which contributed to Multiorgan failure. That is why the past history of cancer needs to be on the form even if in remission.

Osteoporosis ( or could it be osteoarthritis??) was written in position 2 ie it was chronic condition that added to his frailty but didn’t directly cause his death.

I hope this helps your understanding that the certificate is correct.

That really helps, thank you!

it was definitely osteoporosis but that added to his frailty just like you said

I feel for you. Not only are you grieving the traumatic loss of your dad but you have to deal with your mum dripping her poison in your ears. I really hope you can find a way to heal. I hope the posts from the medics on here have helped. 💐