The living end

  • Ken Hillman

05 April 2011Hospitals, as much as relatives and friends, can find it very hard to let go, writes intensive care specialist Ken Hillman in Inside Story

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ABOUT six months ago, June Henley was admitted to the emergency ward at the hospital where I work in intensive care. By the time I was asked to see her she was suffering from all the features of a very serious infection, in this case an infected bladder. She was barely conscious, her blood pressure was low, she had a high fever and her kidney and liver functions were impaired. Like many older people – she is seventy-six – June’s first reaction to the illness, weeks earlier, had been stoic. She was feeling out of sorts but hadn’t wanted to bother the staff at the nursing home where she lives. By the time her GP saw her, a major counter-offensive was under way in her body and she was rushed to hospital…

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Photo: Andrei Malov/ iStockphoto

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