Interview 05- Intensive care: patients' experiences

Age at interview: 40

Brief Outline:

Had pneumonia and severe sepsis. Was in intensive care for 22 days, the High Dependency Unit for 10 days and just over a week on a general ward.

Background:

Occupation: housing officer. Marital status: married. Number of children: 2. Ethnic background: White British.

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While in intensive care, he had trouble making a decision about potentially risky medication for his wife.

 So they were just like God no, and he [the consultant] said, "The only thing we could really do now is there's a drug called Xigris, now we hadn't got it in the hospital and we've never used it before, but we can order it in, but you've got to understand that it, it is new and one of the side-effects of it could cause an internal bleed, either in the brain or internally, in which case that's really all there is to it then."

 

So [my husband] was like really upset and he was saying to my sister, "I don't know what to do now because they're asking me to make a life choice for her, do I just like let her like try and fight now, she's not responding." They've given me three lots of antibiotics, they kept on saying, "She's not responding." And then he said, "Before they said about the Sepsis." They said, "She's not responded to three lots of antibiotics. We think the pneumonia might be secondary, there might be something else and we're going to give her a cat scan."

 

So my sister and [my husband] were like, "Do that." So they come back and said, "We can't find anything else, she's showing signs of Severe Sepsis". So [my husband] was like, I could say yes to this and she could be dead, 'cause it could cause a haemorrhage or something." So [my sister] said, "You've gotta give her a chance now because she's damned if you do and damned if you don't, so you've gotta give her that chance now." So [my husband] was like really upset and couldn't cope with it all and he signed the consent form, he said, "Yeah, give her the Xigris." So that went on for a few days, but I just didn't like really do much, I mean I didn't have an internal bleed or anything but it did stop it like spreading a bit.