Exculansic reports a very odd and tragic case.

[Seriestwo]

Has anyone seen this? 17 year old TiM found by hikers with a TBI from a gunshot wound. His mother is unable to visit him because her behaviour is so odd - she says they both have DNRs and the hospital should stop feeding and treating this dreadfully injured child.

im trying to be polite, this woman’s child has life changing injuries and I’m sure I’d behave in an odd way in her situation - but there is “odd” and there is “odd”

https://x.com/ttexulansic/status/1974743860925645299?s=46

link didn’t link

Yes, that keeps coming up on my X timeline.

It seems to be a very grim case of what is usually described as "transhausen" 😔

So is it just a case of the mum not wanting her brain injured kid to have massive interventions to save their life?

Thats a position held by a lot of people. I'm not sure why you'd feel differently if your child was trans. It's about your perception of the sanctity and quality of life.

No - the DNR thing is a bit of a red herring. The child isn't dying.

Can you send a link where we have some accurate information about the child's condition?

People have different ideas about what constitutes a good quality of life. There are families who disagree over this all the time.

@LoftyRobin does it really not make you even a little bit uncomfortable for an otherwise healthy child signing a DNR?

It’s remarkably unusual for a young healthy person to sign one. Even more so a child. Even more oddly, as some kind of joint pact with a parent. The whole thing just seems so off.

Some people fele strongly about not having heroic measures to save their life. A DNR will often state that they will have x and y, but not a and b. So for instance, mine says something like that I'll have whatever treatment necessary to save my life until I can be assessed for brain injury. If I am severely brain injured, then I do not want life saving measures and would prefer palliative care.

I don't want to be like my cousin who had a heart attack aged 23 and died in a nursing home 13 years later after having very poor quality of life, mostly bedridden, but a strong heartbeat and working lungs.

But it doesn’t appear that was the reasoning for this child. Apparently he was struggling with his mental health and that’s why they signed one.

Don't you feel even the slightest bit concerned for the child involved here?

I don’t think that an DNR is enforceable in those circumstances, though. You can’t tell what function a person will have when they are admitted with eg a stoke. They might recover and live insependtly, they might not. Plus, a DNR would apply to someone having a cardiac arrest - which it doesn’t look like this youngster has had.

He seems to have been admitted alone, after being helicoptered out of where he was found, so he was in A&E as a John Doe. Mum said he was speaking when he was admitted, but in not sure how she knew that if she wasn’t there.

it is very odd to have a DNR pact with your mother when you are a not physically ill teenager.

what she wanted was for the hospital to withdraw treatment - which is odd. He has improved, and she is being prevented from visiting - perhaps she is difficult on the ward, distressed relatives can be disruptive, or perhaps they think she will harm him as she seems determined to remove him from treatment.

poor kid is now disabled, blind, and has a long road ahead.

This is why i asked for a link to something that explains the case in full. I don't have an X account so I cant see any of this

Oh so he has suffered a monumental loss of quality of life?

Life-changing injuries are not sufficient cause to justify allowing a traumatised adolescent to starve themselves to death.

And they're definitely not sufficient cause for the official withdrawing of fluids and nutrition.

Honestly. This poor child is not the first adolescent to sustain life-changing injuries. It's not normally considered acceptable for parents to starve their children to death after any accident that results in disability.

What is about this child that means it's okay to starve them to death, then? Why is anyone on this mother's side?

Horrific case and very strange

It depends on how bad the injuries are and their quality of life. Read some cases in the court of protection.

Lofty, if you can’t see the case on Twitter that Exculansic is reporting (a bit sensationally which makes me uncomfortable, but she’s not a journalist and will want clicks) then it might be worth finding her substack. We are talking at cross purposes - this child’s situation is unusually, well, odd. Have a look at it, it’s not even remotely typical.

Okay I've done some research and honestly, Im more concerned about the mental health and capacity of this person harassing the family than I am anyone else involved.

I do suggest people read some of the cases from the court of protection to see the complexity of palliative care for people with severe mental health issues. It isn't always clear cut.

I think I’m missing something - why do you think it’s palliative care? The kid was found injured (assume his mother was elsewhere) and treated in emergency care, now on a rehab ward and seems to be making progress. He’s not dying.

I agree, though, the online stuff is a lot from both his mother and the twitterati. I’m not sure that winding up the mother is helpful, she might be behaving wildly because of distress.

A teenager with a Do Not Resuscitate card or whatever? Vegan cat material isn't it really. Palliative care is end of life care , @LoftyRobin . If he is going to die they will try to ensure he is not in too much pain. I hope that doesn't violate the tenets of whatever cult his mother signed him up to.