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February 27, 2022, 9:48 am
Death can come at any time, but for those spending their final moments in a hospital or treatment center, it often comes with nurses by their side. So many final words have been spoken to these near-strangers who take on the emotional weight of caring for people at the end.
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Redditors are sharing in that recently, after a user asked nurses to share “the most haunting things someone said on their deathbed.”
What happens when we die, and even in the moments leading up to death, remains possibly the greatest mystery of life. People do what they can to try to make sense of it all, but we just won’t know until we know. Those final moments of others are all we have to observe.
1.
Had a patient screaming out, “They’re coming to get me!” and calling for help. He died shortly after.
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2.
I work in a nursing home and one stick out for me was “My kids left me here to die. May that not happen to you son.”
3.
Right before my grandma died, her heart rate shot up to the 220s. As the monitor started sounding all sorts of alarms, she yelled out “am I supposed to stop breathing now?!”
4.
I sat hospice with my best friend. She had breast cancer, and held it off for 8 years. At the very end, I was holding her hand for the last thing she said. “I don’t want to die.”
5.
My grandmother grasped the nurses hand and said “I think I’m going to die now”. The nurse was telling her no she was doing much better and would likely leave soon but my grandmother was gone before she could finish her sentence. She knew.
6.
“I’m only 18.” That shit never leaves you. She had skin cancer all over from a childhood event of her cousin pushing her into boiling water and eventually couldn’t even roll over without writhing in pain. It was the worst experience of my life. I shortly left inpatient nursing after that.
7.
Former CNA in the dementia unit of an assisted living facility. “My dad is on his way to pick me up now.” She said that every time I checked on her until she died about a week after it started. While she was still mobile she would tidy her room and sit on the edge of her bed and just wait most of the day.
8.
Many moons ago when I was a nursing student, a man in his 40s was lying on his deathbed from terminal cancer, his sobbing wife lying in bed next to him. He looked at his wife, using the last bit of energy he had to gently wipe away her tears and stroke her cheek. He took off his oxygen mask and said “don’t worry love, don’t be afraid. It’s just death” and passed shortly after.
9.
I had to tell my grandmother that dialysis would only give her another week or so to live and it was her choice to try or not. She was in and out of consciousness at that point and was in a clear state for the moment. She asked, “will I die?”I said, “yes.” She looked me in the eye and smiled just a little and said, “sometimes you gotta do what you don’t want to do.” She closed her eyes, squeezed my hand and slept until she passed a day later.
10.
I worked in a nursing home and a lot of the people who were dying saw their spouses who had passed before them. One lovely old lady said her husband was in the room and when I told her it was ok to go with him, she said “omg no, I hate him! I’m scared of him!” and started to cry. All I could do was hold her hand and tell her I would send him away. She passed very shortly after that with a smile on her face. I hope he wasn’t there for her.
11.
We were sending this middle-aged guy home after his ER visit. As soon as we moved him off the bed, he went unresponsive and had no heartbeat. We did a couple rounds of CPR, and he began to come to. He blinked a couple times and the doctor running the code jokingly said “Sir, you almost died on us!” The man said “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to” in a sad way. His heart then stopped again and we couldn’t get him back.
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12.
I’m an ER doctor, old lady big heart attack, refused treatment so we made her comfortable giving her morphine and benzos for her shortness of breath. While she was in the process of dying (I was with her and the family providing comfort) her daughter said to her ‘just let go mum’ to which old lady opened her eyes one last time, looked at her daughter and said ‘what do you think I’ve been trying to do?’ She passed away a short time later.
*First Published: February 27, 2022, 9:48 am
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