Interview 12- Intensive care: family experiences

Age at interview: 59

Brief Outline:

In 2005 her 21-year-old son sadly died in ICU. She focuses as much as she can on remembering the good memories they shared.

Background:

Housewife, married. Ethnic background/nationality: White British.

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She carefully considered the outcome of her son surviving intensive care and made choices guided...

 I would've wanted my son back in any state, after all what he'd done, whatever medically, but I'm then selfish, would my son wanted to come back not being able to speak, not being able to walk, not being able to see? And all this was told to us under the medical team, that this could happen to him. He's been unconscious for ten days and the brain is a complex piece of equipment, and at the time I said, “Anything, just I want him”. But you look at life so differently and that would've been very selfish because I don't think, in just me and our son, that my son would want to have lived that type of life. So you must not be selfish. 

 

You've gotta make the distinctiveness between that person has gone and yes you are very sad but to have them back on a condition that could leave them not the person that they actually were originally i.e. my son was completely normal other than having this dreadful, you know, his body functions everything was, you know, working. But after this happened, we were told that parts of the body weren't working, would he have wanted that? No. Not at all, not to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, not to be able to see, not to be, when he's done all those things before. That's not to say that I would, somebody having a child like that from birth, that's a totally different aspect, totally different.

 

So again it's the selfishness of what I want and what my son would've wanted.