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Deborah D.

When Mrs. Deborah D. learned that her mother had been admitted to the intensive care unit as an emergency case after resuscitation, she was shocked. She and her brother knew that their mother did not want to be intubated and kept artificially in a vegetative state. They were unsure if they had made the right decision. Mrs. D also wondered what her mother might be feeling. Her mother then explained that she had never said that she did not want to be resuscitated, but only that she did not want to be kept alive artificially in case of a vegetative state.

AUDIO

Using a tablet

Mrs. Deborah D. explains how she and her brother used to communicate with their critically ill mother via a tablet, and how this created a good atmosphere.

Video Interview

TRANSCRIPT

E : ‘Oh well,’ they said, but then they explained to you what had happened, and I just thought to myself, ’Oh dear, poor thing!’. She has that, plus this // then actually no, she has // she was asking. Then with my brother, we said: ‘Wait, she wants to say something’. So we gave her the tablet to... Sometimes, we would start off in a humorous way, we would say to my mother ‘My goodness, you must have hated us laughing’, and she would say: ‘No, it made me feel good to see you laughing’. But we don't know // it's funny sometimes. We were like, ‘but wait, I think she wants to tell us something, where's the tablet?’ We were looking for the tablet, we didn't know where it was..We were looking for the tablet, we didn't know where it was. Then she said, um, that I should be strapped in. And it was she who asked to be attached, in fact. And that's when I thought to myself, well, she's not (-) and in fact when we swapped, it was only normal for her, she was even afraid of herself to pull it in her subconscious as she slept. And then the nurse, the young guy who was so nice: ‘we tell him and then he just goes along with it, oh my goodness, she even asks for more, she asks for more. No she's great, we don't even need to do our job, she tells us what we have to do (-) because of her job I guess.’ And then how gentle she was, she followed everything we said.

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