"I don't know why she's here, she just had a sore throat," my patients son said to me.

We had just admitted his mother into our ICU, now so infectious it was putting her in septic shock and multi system organ failure.

This boy looked like my own son, a big stocky football player. Just old enough to be considered an adult but still so young to be making life or death decisions for his mother.

He was lost.

My heart was in pieces.

She was with us for weeks as we battled to sustain her life. It was a rollercoaster of emotion: one day able to talk and the next day would spiral and end up intubated, sedated and on multiple forms of life support.