Rachel Browne was choking back tears as she remembered how her son’s life slipped away.
“He kept saying ‘Mum, I want to go home’,” she told the disability royal commission this week. “He wanted to go back to school. I wanted to get him home. But it became evident that if he did recover he would have no quality of life.”
On 10 December 2016, 16-year-old Finlay finally did leave Sydney’s Westmead hospital. “I said to Fin ‘I’m taking you home today’,” Browne said. “He said ‘yes Mum’. He died that day with his siblings, myself and my husband all there with him.”
Browne, who is a nurse, recounted the tragic lead-up to her son’s death at this week’s hearings, which are examining the experiences of people with cognitive disability in the healthcare system.
Read more (off-site)- Author:
- Luke Henriques-Gomes
- Source:
- Guardian
- Date published:
- Sat 22nd Feb, 2020