I am an absolute mess that this has happened again.
This is how my first husband died.
He had been at Chelsea for a wheel chair football tournament, which he knew would be a long day, too long for the battery life on his portable ventilator. So he had the adaptor to run it off the car on the way back.
The battery went flat and the alarm sounded. The carer pulled over to sort him out. He should have been able to breathe unaided for approximately ten minutes, and also explain what to do, so I don't know what happened. I do however know that my husband would have been absolutely terrified.
I get a phone call from the carer.
Carer : I've got a bit of a problem with the 'Breas'. It's making a beeping noise.
(Various alarms for many problems)
I make him check all switches, tube connections, wires.
Me : Is the machine actually functioning?
Carer : Um, no I don't think so.
Rising panic in me
Me : How is he?
Carer : He looks a bit out of it.
Me : Is he talking?
Carer : No
Me : AMBULANCE NOW!!
He had been very calmly talking to me about tubes etc for ten minutes, giving me no indication of the seriousness of the problem. I thought he was just trying to find where the noise was coming from.
I tried to get straight out of the house with 2 dcs but in my hurry to pick up dd I dropped my car keys down the back of the piano.
Ds (9) realises what's going on and starts screaming that his Dad's dying and we can't even find the car keys.
Find them then hurtle up the road and get there before the ambulance. The machine is now functioning from my phone instructions but he's unconscious and you can see all the air escaping around the edge of the face mask. I press it to his face more firmly(the carer has not tried this) and I see his chest inflate. It is however too late and he has already had a heart attack due to hypoxia.
I don't want to be a fraud and come across as the grieving widow, because we were actually getting divorced. However, we had been together 10 years and it absolutely kills me to think of his terror that night. Our children had been told 3 weeks previously about the divorce and were trying to come to terms with it, and then this happened.
The carer was not found liable in the end because there was apparently also a minor fault with the machine and it hadn't been serviced recently enough. However I sorted it out over the phone.