Boris..intensive care..

I absolutely wish him well, MissAdventure

(love your name)

Dnr orders are obviously appropriate in some cases. You don't want to wake up in a state worse than death - with catastrophic brain damage, for instance. However, it is a frightening prospect and should surely be done on an individual basis. According to the local paper The Argus, care homes in Brighton and Hove say they have been asked to get residents to sign "in industrial quantities." In other places, care homes report that they feel pushed into pressurising residents and families to sign. This sounds less like individual circumstances, and more like getting a lot of very old bed-blockers out of our hospitals.

I was interested to see that Harry's deceased brother had Down Syndrome. Mencap are unhappy about the suggestion that people with learning difficulties might be "too frail" to be ventilated and would, presumably, be excluded. They point out that many people with learning difficulties are physically robust.

In the USA, the national advice is that all lives are of equal value but some states - Alabama, for instance - included people with "severe mental retardation" on the list of those not to ventilate. I don't know if this has been put into practice or whether the relevant charities have been able to protest.

Personally, I can't imagine many UK doctors deciding that a person could not live based on his/her intelligence, but I bet Dominic Cummings would....

I think it’s perfectly possible to wish him (and everyone else with the virus) a speedy recovery whilst remaining disquieted (to say the least) by his much of his behaviour to date.

Emiliamaria,

There are people who dislike Boris.

They dislike his policies

Which is just fine

There are also people who like Boris

And that's just fine as well

They like his policies

Same with all political parties

So, to sum up then, do we not wish him well?

Sorry NanaPlenty but you are forgetting all the times he has misled and lied to us. He is not a 'friendly face' - he is someone who has only achieved his role through entitlement of the wealthier classes. He doesn't care about you or anyone who is not in his wealthy clique. Remember the Tories clapping and cheering when they voted down nurses and other frontline workers having a pay rise in 2017? He was one of them. And is he grateful for them now? You bet he is. But will he go ahead selling off the rest of NHS (a lot of it has already gone) to America when this is all over?

Amend 'Secretary' to 'Foreign Secretary'

Ive actually started to feel very fond of him. He’s a friendly face in this crisis, firm but positive.Whether you agree with his politics or not let‘s pray we get him back quickly to keep some continuity in this fight.

Cheers Jane I will join you in wishing Boris a speedy recovery. ?

I too have sympathy for Boris Johnson as a human being and as a father several times over and to be, yet again. He is, however, one of the worst possible choices of leader that we could have at the moment through his mendacity and wantonness. This is now exacerbated frighteningly by having one of the incompetent Johnson sycophants - Dominic Raab (was he made Secretary as a joke?) who didn't realise the importance of the Dover/Calais connection - heading up government in his absence. Do not forget that Boris Johnson boasted about shaking hands with corona virus patients only 2 weeks ago. Do not forget that he and his government were pushing for the 'herd immunity' solution about three weeks ago (i.e. that the eldest and the weakest die off). Please do not be overwhelmed by compassion. It has its place. But so, too, does the wellbeing of our entire nation; so far, this government has let us down and put our NHS workers at risk. Feel sorry for Boris Johnson the private individual. But be aware that he was a career politician who tossed a coin to decide whether to support 'Leave' or 'Remain', has misled and lied to millions of people (including the Queen) and didn't bargain for actually having to lead the country through a crisis. We are in serious trouble.

Labour Councillor Sheila Oakes, who is currently mayor of Heanor in Derbyshire, who says he'completely deserves' his battle against coronavirus in intensive care. How disgusting.

She went on to say more

But she's been expelled from the Labour Party

Quite rightly too

Drinking, on a weekday? Shocking Jane...slippery slopes and all that.

Dream on Chestnut of course the right wing would lay into him. Most people on either side of the political fence will be sympathetic and understanding, but you will always find instances of abuse from certain personality types whatever political persuasions,

Everyone who is losing people right now is being kept at arms length. It'll feel inhumane. Its the opposite of how the doctors and nurses WANT to care. They are having to give people less contact/humanity when they want to give them more. It goes against all of the instincts of loved ones to submit their brother/mother/son to the strange isolated world that hospitals have become.

Many people will be traumatised by NOT being there, by NOT feeling involved

Including Carrie Simmons.

We'll be raising a glass to Boris tonight to wish him well and in gratitude to the NHS.

To return to Boris being in intensive care, the left wing trolls have targeted him with abuse on social media including Labour Councillor Sheila Oakes, who is currently mayor of Heanor in Derbyshire, who says he'completely deserves' his battle against coronavirus in intensive care. How disgusting.
I honestly don't think Jeremy Corbyn would get those kind of comments from the right, I really don't.

I will not clap for Boris Johnson

Excellent post, MawB. When I saw mention of the brother having Downs Syndrome I immediately thought there’s much more to this than meets the eye.

Bringing Boris into what must be a very painful situation for the brother’s family is a straw man argument, really.

Perhaps NOW people will start treating this virus with the seriousness it deserves. No one is safe and I sincerely hope those flouting the government’s rules will now start to behave. I think Boris is wonderful and hope to god he recovers soon.

Look, it will have been AWFUL for the author. No chance to have multiple family members invited in for multi disciplinary meetings. Limited phone calls. VERY limited visiting. Its horrific

The authors anger is absolutely understandable but he CANNOT be considered a "journalist" when it comes to this piece. Its too close to home.
He may have needed to write it for cathartic reasons but it is a heart not a head piece and shouldnt be shared as if it is an "information" source IYKWIM

I am not clapping for Boris Johnson!

Good Lord trisher is that what is being suggested? The man was no saint and being ill has not made him one. Please don't let the clapping for the NHS be mixed up with a politician doing his job and then becoming ill.

In this situation yes

Along with the decision to slap a DNR on him without any discussion, much less agreement, with anyone. A cynic might wonder if that was the case because he had Downs Syndrome and was ‘economically inactive
Like so many stories, the amount of detail we are given seems to change as we go along.
1) the brother did not die because there were too few ventilators
2) if the brother was never going to be ventilated, this was a medical decision, nothing to do with politics
3) the author of the article suggests this was because, having Downs Syndrome, the brother was not regarded as “economically inactive”

This is a whole new area- if a hospital department has decided to place a DNR notice on a patient because of Downs, we are looking at something else.
A DNR is a hard thing for the rest of us to stomach. But when Paw signed his it was clear to both of us that medical intervention in the event of e.g.cardiac arrest would be more than he could survive . That did not preclude an induced coma when the time came to enable further surgical intervention to investigate or repair the source of a massive internal bleeding.
He was on life support for 24 hours to enable an accurate assessment of multiple organ failure , to allow us to be with him at the end and the breathing tube was the last thing to be removed when his heart finally failed in order to save him distress.

Being ventilated can gain time for the organs to fight back but it is not a cure.
If a patient will not benefit from intubation, there is no point in using resources which could benefit another patient.
As this is a major decision, it is not left up to nurses as somebody somewhere suggested, but by senior doctors at least 2, it used to be referred to as the Three Wise Men protocol.
So this is a much more complex issue than first presented, but the bottom line is that it has nothing whatsoever to do with Boris Johnson or politics and as such does not belong in this context.

MissA certainly many deaths in Care Homes. Don’t understand your second sentence.

Agree, very silly to clap

Organ failure sadly happens when anyone is admitted into ICU so naturally decisions about DNR are dependent on age.