Archie Battersebee case-thread 2

[whynotwhatknot]

ongoing from previous thread

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4573803-archie-battersbee-case?page=40

Can anyone say what it's likely to look like when they withdraw the life support? I have the perception that he'll just flat line and no breaths will be taken. I've googled it but don't really know the wording to use and not many relevant results come up.
I feel so sorry for this family and think it's abhorrent that his 'army' string him along and give them false and somewhat strange hope like smearing Nutella in his mouth etc to try and revive him.

If they lose this appeal, they can try to appeal to the Supreme Court, and to the Human Rights Court, but that's the end of it. Both of those courts can convene very quickly when needed.

The tragedy of this is, that should Archie survive, and breathe independently, he would have absolutely no quality of life. I have worked on a brain injury unit and believe me, there is such a thing as a fate worse than death.

I agree with you in as much as people are sometimes better off dead.
Hollie has said somewhere that they'd like him alive in any condition, vegetative state or none.

I think you'd have to be inhuman not to feel for Archie's parents.

But, their son is taking up an ITU bed and his care is costing hundreds of thousands of £s in both legal and medical costs for the NHS, using incredibly precious resources and with zero hope of any recovery.

I personally think that Hollie needs urgent help and support herself now, she's clearly incapable of accepting the inevitable and sadly the legal processes in this country are just enabling it. This could go on for another few weeks with the Supreme Court and ECHR which she'll no doubt do. And during that time, how many children will be denied that ITU bed.........

Ideally - everything will be taken off, monitors lines and then the tube.

He won’t gasp or gag or try to breathe (no brain stem) so his heart will beat for a while then stop. Hearts can beat for up to 30 min or so without breathing due to oxygen still in the body but I don’t think it’ll take that long because his body is so poorly.

It could all be very gentle if Hollie doesn’t try to stop it

That's good but then isn't there a chance he could pass without his family being there?

Least if taken off the ventilation and let go that way there is that chance and can say goodbye.

I thought he would have passed away before thread 2. 😔

I think his school pals will need counselling afterwards some of the photos can't be unseen especially when they know him personally.

Handled correctly, a few more days given and this might be over now

There will be a paediatric social worker dedicated to PiCU for grief support. Plus, the nurses are experienced and compassionate - PICU does this all the time

The go fund me was set up within days of their admission - the family didn’t seem to have any intention of letting Archie go within a reasonable time frame.

And - what’s come of it? archie hasn’t made any form of recovery, he is emaciated, pictures of his body in a nappy have been posted on social media.

Hollie is refusing to accept the medical facts and now accuses medical staff of trying to kill him. There’s another online site dedicated to unearthing her past name, convictions and previous line of work, as a result of her public appearances and social media activity her privacy has been severely compromised.

For 3 1/2 months a physical bed and nursing staff have been taken up nursing a dead body. Other children will have needed that bed and been turned away.

I reckon he would flat line very quickly in this scenario with no breaths taken once the ventilator is removed and all life sustaining medications removed

It would be quick and "peaceful". His brain is dead so nothing will be keeping him going for even a small amount of time I imagine.

My 62 yo dad suffered hypoxic brain injury from a cardiac arrest back in April and he wasn't brain stem dead in any sense, the doctors told me the patient in the bed didn't match the scans (which needed a neurologist to confirm any brain damage at all as the consultants couldn't see any). We waited for 2 weeks for my dad to see if he'd come around from being semi vegetative and he didn't. It was almost like locked in syndrome as he was opening his eyes spontaneously and was coughing with the ventilator bothering him. My dad was putting in a good amount of respiratory effort despite having phnumonia and being in the very end stages of heart failure so when they removed his ventilator and heart medicines it wasn't a quick decline. It took around 20 hours for him to take his last breath and although his breathing was very noisy and to some distressing (the nurses kept suctioning secretions and apologising for the noise but it just sounded like my dad was doing some really bad snoring) it wasn't "scary" to watch. It was really sad as he took his last few mins of breaths as the laboured breathing became more calm and effortless and I just knew he was going to go soon. I saw his blood pressure output on the screens suddenly tank and eventually flatline and his oxygen levels followed suit. It annoys me somewhat as I was paying so much attention to the oxygen levels over those 20 hours to try and work out when the end was coming but it was the BP that was the big sign.

My dad's brain looked OK to consultants but i trusted the neurologist that he would unlikely come out of his semi vegative state after 2 weeks of different tests and mri's. Even had he woken his heart failure was so severe he would have statistically only had a year maximum to live and I couldn't imagine how that would feel to know that. I found it so conflicting watching him die, he looked nothing like how poorly archie looks. But ultimately I knew there was no other option for him.

@Hamsternautss I am sorry for your loss.

I was lucky that my father faded and died in August 2020 in his nursing home - it was between lock downs so we were able to sit with him for the 10 days or so as he went.

one of the comments outside of court from her was he'll have a heart attack either way so it will be traumatic for me whatever happens

shes not cinvinced or not convinced herself that will be in any way peaceful

Most of the time, the monitors in the patient bedspace would be turned off, so that there are no distressing alarms. ICUs have mirror monitors in the nurses' station, so it isn't necessary to have them displaying a patient's decline if it's expected.

Sometimes the decline in oxygen saturation, heart rate and blood pressure is very rapid. For other patients, there is a more gradual decline.

Nurses work very hard to make end of life care as gentle and peaceful as possible, for both the patient and the relatives.

It definitely won't be a heart attack. His heart will just go into arrest. I don't see how it can be any thing but peaceful. Yes, it's horribly sad to watch but there's not going to be a big jump in deterioration, his chest will cease to artificially rise and fall and that's it.

It's traumatic watching your son stop breathing but it won't be a frantic, messy experience like a regular cardiac arrest with CPR would be. I turned to mumsnet to find out what life support removal would be like as no doctors/nurses could really tell me the nitty gritty that I needed to know, maybe someone needs to explain to Hollie what it actually will be like.

I went home briefly to get some sleep and nurse my 2 year old, they kept the alarms on so they could call me should my dad's sats have suddenly dropped. A consultant came around after I got called back in a few hours later and told the nurse to turn off all the screens alarms etc but i asked to keep the screens on and to just silence the alarms.... I was there alone so I found it weirdly comforting to be able to see the decline myself and be able to prepare myself.

I cant fault the drs and nurses, I find it unbelievable anyone would treat or refer to someone in these positions like a corpse. I frequently got told not to be too distressed incase my dad could hear, they had the utmost respect for my dad.

It's an awful spectacle to witness.

I obviously feel very sorry for his parents but I really am struggling to fathom their thinking (especially Hollie).

I can only assume they are acting out of grief and/or wound up by the "support" they are getting from the army - or something else?

I feel so very sorry most of all for the medical team who are having to "maintain" a dead body, knowing this boy has long since died. Watching him deteriorate and knowing it's a bed that could be used to support a living child, plus having to consider every word spoken, every gesture knowing it could be used in court or plastered over the internet.

I also take issue with the idea the parents are fighting for him.

They are not. I don't (as above) know their motivation but they are not acting in his best interests. Why would you eschew a peaceful end in favour of a catastrophic event?

Brave parents, acting for their children are those that make the heartbreaking sacrifice to let them go peacefully, surrounded by love and not chaos.

Their narrative that a good parent would keep fighting is so twisted (and disrespectful to parents who have made a different choice) that I'm frankly finding it increasingly hard to hold on to my sympathy (though it's still there).

I won't say any more because I don't want to be disrespectful but I'm increasingly skeptical of the motivation here.

Such a sad case but this is absolutely why we need this legal system here that allows children to die with dignity when their parents refuse to let them go.

Agree in principal, but can we say it's worked in this case?

I'm absolutely in favour of all the facts being presented at Court but the level of appeals and challenges to such robust medical evidence is worrying.

Put bluntly, this child's brain is rotting in his skull. That has been known for some time now and even his mother acknowledges he will not recover.

The case seems now to be about how long it's acceptable to keep a dead person artificially functioning and to what degree.

@BreadInCaptivity yes, "The case seems now to be about how long it's acceptable to keep a dead person artificially functioning and to what degree."

It's gruesome.

That poor boy. He should have had some dignity.

The delay is not in the legal case, this has been heard relatively quickly. There has been the original case, an appeal, and an application to appeal in 4/5 weeks.

The delay has been in trying to work with the family to get them to agree, the medics allowed a couple of months before needing to take it to court.

What makes me so upset about this case is that Archie was apparently taking part in a YouTube experiment. Social media at its very worst.

There is no evidence that he was doing that @Purplepatsy whilst there is a 'black out challenge' and some children I believe have been hurt/killed, there is no evidence Archies death is in any way related, no evidence he had his phone on him or near him suggesting he was filming himself.

Other cases that have been related, have taken legal action against Tiktok.. but in this case, when the connection was made on tv, Tiktok were quick to get them to retract that!

I think he committed suicide and his mother has latched onto this tiktok challenge as a way to explain to herself what happened, and to absolve the guilt she will undoubtedly feel at the idea her son has ended his own life.

That's his mothers speculation.

There is no evidence of this or any similar social media type acts that reflect what her son did.

He was a troubled child.

I can understand reaching for understanding in such difficult circumstances but I think it's fair to say there is no evidence that this was a social media stunt that ended badly.

The problem is - what's the alternative? It would be dangerous to take away or limit all appeal rights because no judge is infallible.