A BARROW family whose daughter spent nearly four years in a vegetative state have bravely spoken live on TV in a bid to highlight the difficulties in allowing someone to die in peace.

In August 2012 Jodie Simpson, 38, took an overdose at home in Barrow. Her brother Michael Devlin found her, and called an ambulance.

Although she was taken to an intensive care unit, Michael thought his older sister would recover.

"She was tough, she was strong," he said today on the BBC's Victoria Derbyshire show.

"I thought after they've done what they needed to she'll just have had the scare of her life and she'll be out."

An article published by the BBC revealed that Jodie had taken tablets belonging to her ex-partner. Her mother Jean, a recently retired nurse, knew they could cause severe, irreversible brain damage. That proved to be the case. Jodie came out of the intensive care unit, stayed in a general ward for 10 weeks, and was then moved to a nursing home.

She could breathe without assistance, but was fed and given liquid through a stomach tube. Her physical condition was stable: doctors said there was no sign of consciousness. She suffered seizures though, and would grimace.

"We were tormented," Jean says. "They say she wasn't. But she looked it."

Jodie couldn't eat or drink - she couldn't swallow. Staff couldn't brush her teeth, and they began to rot. For her family it was distressing to see.

They agreed that Jodie would not want to live like that. But as she was relatively young, her body healthy, she could have stayed alive for years. In such cases, doctors can withhold food and liquid - if they consider there's no likelihood of improvement, and if the family agree.

But to do that, they need to wait - six months in cases like Jodie's, a year in cases of traumatic injury. Then the patient has to be assessed by a specialist unit, before being diagnosed as being in a permanent vegetative state.

Then, the procedure is to seek permission from the Court of Protection to take out their feeding tube.

In April 2013, Jean wrote to the doctors, asking if her daughter could be allowed to die. The applications are made by the local Clinical Commissioning Group and usually cost around £50,000.

Only about 100 such applications have been made in more than 20 years.

It's estimated between 4,000-16,000 patients in a permanent vegetative state are in NHS care in England, with thousands more who are minimally conscious.

It took two years before Jodie was assessed by a specialist centre, 180 miles away in Newcastle. The delay was down to the doctors' decision, according to the local Clinical Commissioning group.

In September 2014, Jodie was diagnosed as PVS. The CCG agreed to apply to the Court of Protection - but they didn't put in an application for over a year.

For the family, the delay was excruciating. Jean Simpson says she just wanted her daughter to be at peace. Cumbria CCG were asked to explain why they didn't apply sooner.

"During this period the patient became very unwell. The nurses caring for her used the time when they would have been preparing statements in this case to provide care. At that point the outcome for her was unclear."

They also said it was very challenging to co-ordinate the information from all of the organisations and clinicians concerned.

Once the case got to the Court of Protection, in October 2015, one expert raised a question about the effect of Jodie's medication - could it be having a sedative effect? It was decided to withdraw the medication and assess her again. The second assessment confirmed the first.

For the family, this extra delay was difficult, but they took some consolation from Mr Justice Hayden's sympathetic approach towards them, and the concluding paragraph of his judgement.

As he ruled that doctors could withhold nutrition and hydration, he wrote: "I have found it difficult to understand entirely why this process has taken quite as long as it has. Given that, ultimately, all the parties have been able to agree on the way forward, I have not been required to investigate the reasons.

"It needs to be stated that the avoidance of delay in medical treatment cases is an important imperative, as I have now said in a number of judgements."

That was published in May 2016.

Jodie was moved to a hospice and died - peacefully her mother says - three weeks later.

Her family decided to speak out because they don't want other families to go through the same drawn out, painful process.

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