What I saw with my ex husband James Cracknell showed how doctors can get it wrong….Archie deserves a chance to carry on fighting.

ARCHIE Battersby’s mother must be listened to as time runs out for her son, GB News presenter Bev Turner has said.

The 48-year-old broadcaster said the recovery her ex-husband James Cracknell made from a horrific accident in 2010 proved “doctors didn’t always get things right”.

Speaking on GB News today, she said: “In 2010, I got the phone call that everyone dreads to say that someone that I loved had been injured. My then husband, Olympian James Cracknell, had been hit by a truck while cycling across America and he was in a coma.

“He sustained a very serious brain injury and I didn’t know as I boarded the plane whether he would be alive or dead when I got off. I know what it’s like to be met by a team of white coats and name badges, to start a steep learning curve of medical language and to have difficult conversations when I could see that James’s care was not optimum.

“But the comparison with Archie and Holly ends there. We were lucky James survived albeit with challenges and I was caring for my husband, not my child.

“I don’t know how I would have gotten out of bed in the morning had it been my son. But what I learned during that nightmare and in the preceding eight years that we remained married, was that doctors do not always get it right, particularly when it comes to the area of neurology, of which we know surprisingly little.

“It seems that neurologists are a uniquely negative type of doctor. I was warned that James would never be able to look after the children on his own.

“He’d never drive, he’d suffer regular seizures. He would make no improvement whatsoever, they said.

“After three year’s all of that was proven wrong.

Paying tribute to Archie’s mum, Hollie Dance, she continued: “We’ve all watched Hollie appearing on media outlets including GB News. Since her fight went public she defies all assumptions about a mum facing her worst fear.

“She is calm. She is rational, articulate, and full of common sense. She’s tapping into reserves of strength and dignity that frightened mothers fighting for their child do not know what they have until they need them.

“We’ve watched Hollie argue that all she’s asking for is time to see if it improves, especially as the worst case chronological scenarios that the family were given have not materialised – her son is fighting on and she can see that.

“Asking for time does not seem unreasonable. Archie was injured less than four months ago and in brain injury terms that is nothing.

“Surely the hospital could have agreed to a few more months. I do wonder: what is their rush?

“Hollie now says that with all legal routes exhausted she wants Archie transferred to a hospice to pass away, she must be granted this request.

“In his book Being Mortal, surgeon Atul Gawande concludes that, contrary to much Western thought, there is such a thing as a good death. He argues that our lives have narrative.

“We all want to be the authors of our own stories, that is natural, and in stories, endings matter.

“I remember hearing a mother speak at a conference once she learns later on in her pregnancy that her baby had died in utero, she had planned a home birth and she was advised by doctors that this was now a bad idea.

“Why she asked – my baby has already died. She said she hired a private midwife and gave birth to her deceased baby in a pool at home and told the story to a room of damp eyes as a really positive experience.”

“Hollie Dance has been trying to create the best possible last chapter for her son. She must now be allowed to transfer Archie to a hospice away from the negativity and acrimony of that hospital setting.

“This story and that family need to move away from turmoil and conflict to a space of compassion and love.

“Hollie has already admitted that she will need some serious therapy, as she said at some stage the dam of emotion that she’s kept at bay will burst, but that will be made less painful, if she can be given some agency at this stage of the process.

“For Hollie, Archie’s siblings, and even their own children one day, the routes to healing can be helped even at this late stage.

“The doctors and lawyers must do the right thing and listen to the instincts of the mother.”