A boy who can squeeze my hand is NOT brain dead. I defy any mother not to fight doctors like I’m doing
HOLLIE DANCE smiles as she summons a memory that captures the impish nature of her 12-year-old son, Archie. ‘He came into my bedroom offering me a bag of sweets — but I know how Archie loves his jokes so I told him I knew he had his pet rabbit, Simeon, in the bag,’ she recalls. ‘Then, with perfect comic timing, Simeon popped his head out right at that moment. We were both in fits of giggles.’
Yet, just a few minutes after that innocent exchange, Hollie, 46, emerged from her bedroom to find Archie unconscious.
He had a dressing gown cord wrapped around his neck — the result, Hollie is adamant, of a gruesome online choking challenge gone wrong.
Since then, Hollie has been plunged into a nightmare she is struggling to process.
A talented gymnast, Archie Battersbee has still not recovered consciousness ten weeks on.
Believing him ‘ highly likely’ to be brain dead, doctors at The Royal London Hospital — where Archie has been on a ventilator ever since arriving there in the small hours of April 8 — want to turn off his life support.
Hollie, and Archie’s father Paul Battersbee, 56, passionately disagree with their assessment, and their vehement opposition has taken them to court to plead for more time.
But a judge ruled in favour of the Barts Health NHS Trust, agreeing there was irreversible cessation of brain-stem function and giving permission for medics to cease life support.
In cases like these, the ethical considerations are inevitably highly emotive.
But it’s impossible not to feel sympathy for Hollie; her determination as a mother to fight for any glimmer of hope for her son. Who, in her situation, could say they wouldn’t do the same?
‘I was told my son would not last the night when he arrived in hospital. Yet here he is ten weeks later. He’s a fighter, and is fighting the battle of his life — how can I not fight every bit as hard?’ she says, speaking in her first full interview since the tragedy.
‘All we have ever asked for is time. People are in comas for months but the hospital wanted to pronounce my son dead after just three days when he was still under sedation.
‘Archie should be treated as a living patient until it can be proven that he’s not — and the MRI scan they have relied on is not proof.
‘ What I know is that a boy who can squeeze my hand is not brain dead. I defy any mother not to do the same if they were in my situation.’
Certainly, no parent ever wants to find themselves in a battle with doctors, who also believe they are doing the right thing by the patient under their care.
Hollie has barely left Archie’s bedside, sleeping on the sofa in his hospital room and scouring the internet for the tiniest sliver of information that might prove useful in her fight.
‘I’ve turned into Nurse Dance,’ she says.
The one thing she does not do when we meet is cry. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’ve shed plenty of tears,’ she says. ‘But I’ve had to detach myself emotionally in order to fight for Archie. It’s the only way I can cope. Otherwise I will let him down and I cannot do that.’
Hollie’s two older children, Tom, 22, and Lauren, 20, from her first marriage, are equally devoted to their younger brother. Meanwhile, Tom’s girlfriend, Ella Carter, a 20-year-old law student, has taken it upon herself to scrutinise every legal detail of the case.
‘ We call ourselves Archie’s Army,’ says Hollie, a former fitness trainer who is now studying for a psychology degree.
Archie is the product of Hollie’s ten- year marriage to second husband Paul Battersbee, and though the couple split up when Archie was six, they are also supporting each other through their current trauma.
‘ When something like this happens it puts things into perspective, doesn’t it?’ says Hollie, from Southend-on-Sea, Essex.
She smiles as she scrolls through pictures of Archie, marking his progress from cherubic baby to dedicated gymnast.
‘He was a lovely baby from day one,’ she recalls. ‘My older two just adored him. They had a lovely relationship from the start.’
Baby Archie revealed his agility early on. ‘I’ve got footage of him climbing over the stair gate when he was 11 months old and then trying to climb over next door’s fence when he was a toddler.’
Having discovered a love of gymnastics, Archie worked at it. Hollie recalls her son doing one back flip after another until he was sure he had perfected his technique.
Latterly, he had been training at the gym frequented by Olympic champion Max Whitlock, and Hollie proudly shows me footage of her son performing a mesmerising sequence of somersaults.
‘He makes it look so easy, doesn’t he?’ she says, steadfastly talking about her son in the present tense. ‘He wants to join the Olympic team one day.’
We return to the dreadful events of Thursday, April 7.
It was the Easter holidays, and Hollie had taken Archie out for lunch before returning home at 3pm; that evening they planned to see the new Batman film together.
Hollie spent some time doing chores before taking a phone call in her bedroom at around 4pm, at the end of which Archie came into the room with his rabbit.
‘I told him to make sure the rabbit went back downstairs,’ Hollie recalls.
A minute or two later Hollie called out to check on Archie. On getting
‘I was told my son would not last the night’
no response she emerged to a scene of almost unimaginable horror, her beloved son unconscious.
While the cause of the accident is yet to be officially determined, Hollie believes that Archie was trying out a social media craze called ‘blackout’, in which participants choke themselves until they pass out due to lack of oxygen.
‘Lauren told me she had found Archie messing about with the same dressing gown belt the night before,’ says Hollie. ‘He had tied it around his head — not his neck — and looped it around the doorknob to pull it shut.’ Other parents have also contacted her to share their concerns about the craze.
Nonetheless, perhaps inevitably given the dramatic nature of the incident, Hollie has also had to field speculation that Archie had darker intentions.
‘I know people have speculated that he was trying to take his own life but I can categorically say I know that’s not the case,’ she says. ‘He was happy, he was working towards his gymnastics goals and making plans. Earlier that afternoon he had asked me to order him a new coat to arrive the following week.’
In those first few desperate moments, however, Hollie tried to do whatever she could to save her son.
After releasing him from the dressing gown belt, in desperation she ran into the street screaming for help before returning with a neighbour who, after calling an ambulance, performed CPR. ‘I was hysterical,’ she recalls.
She emphasises that it was less than 15 minutes between finding Archie’s body and the arrival of an
ambulance, with CPR performed in the interim.
‘ The hospital said that his brain was deprived of oxygen for 40 minutes, but my records show my phone call ended at 4.04pm and the ambulance arrived at 4.17pm. I can only take it to mean that 40 minutes was the time taken for his heart rhythm to stabilise.’
Archie was taken by ambulance to Southend Hospital, where Hollie says the outlook initially seemed promising. ‘His pupils were responsive, and he had blood flow to the posterior and anterior of his brain. He was also making efforts to breathe on his own,’ she says.
After discussion with neurological specialists, however, consultants agreed to send him to The Royal London Hospital for a procedure called a decompressive craniectomy, in which a section of skull is removed to help release pressure on the brain.
Archie was placed in an induced coma and transported to The Royal London Hospital that night by ambulance.
Yet, on arrival, Hollie was told that the craniectomy would not be carried out as consultants had decided that it would be better to wait before performing any interventions.
‘One doctor told me that Archie would not make it through the night,’ says Hollie. ‘ I couldn’t believe how cold she was.’
She can barely recall the ensuing 48 hours. ‘I feel like I was in a trance,’ she says. Three days after Archie’s arrival, she was asked to attend a meeting, during which she was told that the hospital believed Archie was brain dead.
‘They asked for permission to perform a brain- stem test,’ she recalls. ‘My mind was all over the place, but I knew enough to refuse because it would be a pathway to turning off his life support.
‘It didn’t make sense. My son was holding my hand. I knew he was in there.’
Pleading for another chance, Hollie asked if her son could be allowed to recuperate for a month before a brain- stem assessment took place.
‘The consultant I spoke to said she believed this lacked dignity for Archie,’ says Hollie. ‘But if she believed that he was brain dead, then what did it matter? She then said she would consult with her legal team. I didn’t know this meant the start of formal proceedings to remove life support.’
Hollie says the first the family knew of any legal proceedings was in an email they received late in the evening of April 26 informing them a hearing would take place the following morning.
‘It was an application by Barts Health NHS Trust for permission to perform a brain-stem scan and they were also seeking a judicial review into Archie’s best interest in receiving mechanical ventilation regardless of the results of the test,’ says Hollie. ‘It seemed they were determined to turn off the machines whatever the scan results. It was devastating to see that in black and white.’
With solicitors’ offices closed by then, Hollie arrived at the High Court the following morning without legal representation.
‘I was barely in a fit state to speak. I was extremely upset that I had to leave my son’s bedside, especially since the hospital had made clear that if he went into cardiac arrest, they would not resuscitate him. I was hugely anxious being away from him.’
The family were granted two days to get formal representation before the next hearing. They were put in touch with the charity Christian Concern, who helped Hollie and Paul find a solicitor and barrister. More legal hearings followed, in which one specialist gave evidence that he thought scans showed that damage done to the boy’s brain was ‘irretrievable’.
Two other specialists said that scans also show that Archie was ‘brain-stem dead’.
‘The bottom line is that none of the clinicians called to give evidence was able to say for certain that Archie was brain dead, only that it was highly likely,’ says Hollie.
By contrast, she points out that when asked if a reliable diagnosis of death can be made based on CT and MRI scans, world-respected paediatric neurologist Dr Daniel Shewmon replied ‘absolutely not’.
All the while, Hollie says her son’s physical condition was deteriorating. ‘He’s lost two stone since he’s been in hospital. Yet he’s fought off sepsis, which is pretty remarkable.’
Finally, last week, after nearly two months of legal wrangling, Mrs Justice Arbuthnot gave her ruling in favour of the hospital.
It was a bitter blow for Hollie. ‘It feels like from the beginning the odds were stacked against us. We have not been allowed to have Archie independently assessed.’
A spokesman for Barts Health NHS Trust said: ‘This is a sad and difficult time for Archie’s family and our thoughts and sympathies are with them as they come to terms with what has happened.
‘In line with the guidance issued by the court, our expert clinicians will provide the best possible care whilst life support is withdrawn. We are also ensuring that there is time for the family to decide whether they wish to appeal before any changes to care are made.’
Now, supported by her exhusband, Hollie is continuing to fight, lodging a stay that stops the judge’s order being put into
effect pending an appeal to overturn the ruling. A permission to appeal hearing is to take place on Monday.
She has also launched a fundraising drive to pay further legal fees and medical treatment if she is able to successfully move her son to another hospital.
‘At the moment I can’t move him as he is under the legal protection of the Royal London, but that is my hope,’ she says.
She cites the case of 19-year-old Lewis Roberts, who was struck by a van in the Staffordshire town of Leek in March last year.
At one point the family was told that he had suffered a brain-stem death — but hours before surgery to donate his organs, he began to breathe on his own.
‘Lewis is out of hospital now and playing basketball,’ says Hollie. ‘We want Archie to be given the same chance.’
Archie’s plight has touched people worldwide, and his family
‘He is fighting the battle of his life . . . I cannot let him down’
‘All we want is time. It’s not too much to ask’
have been comforted by countless messages urging them to fight on.
Sports stars, too, have sent messages of support, among them Max Whitlock, who encouraged Archie to keep fighting and invited him to join him in the gym when he recovers.
‘We’ve also had messages from professional boxers including David Hayes and Ricky Hatton,’ says Hollie. ‘The support has been amazing.’
With that, it is time to return to her son’s bedside.
‘Some people have said I’ve got to let him go,’ she says. ‘To that I say that if Archie dies of natural causes in the next few days or weeks then, while it would be devastating, we can accept it.
‘But to switch off the machine now means we will be destined to spend our lives wondering what might have happened if we were given more time. I don’t think it is too much to ask.’