If your brain injury was very serious, the doctors in accident and emergency would have sent you to intensive care to be very well looked after.

If you went to intensive care, this would have meant that you were too sick to breathe for yourself because your brain was badly damaged. The doctors wanted to keep you unconscious in order to protect the brain and keep you from being awake and distressed.

You would have had a tube put into your nose or mouth called an ET tube that would have been connected to a special breathing machine called a ventilator. You would also have been sedated which means you would sleep and forget what was happening. You won’t remember much about this at all.

When you were in intensive care, you would have had your very own nurse looking after you. This is because you were so sick, you needed to be watched all the time.

Paediatric intensive care nurses are special nurses who have trained to look after critically ill children and teenagers. They watch you very closely for changes in you heart rate, blood pressure and the pressure inside your skull (called ICP) to check that you are OK.

A consultant intensivist is a doctor who has trained for many years and they know how to help you even when you are very sick. The doctors and the nurses all work together as one big team to make sure you have every chance of surviving your brain injury just like you did! 

Some people have a few memories of being in intensive care and this can be very frightening. They can sometimes remember lots of strange noises and having tubes and wires attached to them. Some people even have flashbacks and nightmares about being in intensive care.

Talk to your family, friends and nurses about this and they might be able to explain what was happening. Just remember that it was all there at the time to help you get over your brain injury.