A hospital is a place of two extremes: sometimes it's where miracles happen, and other times it's where lifelong traumas are triggered. The following stories are, unfortunately, of the latter case—the testimonials of these doctors, nurses, and surgeons prove that the hospital is not for the faint of heart:
1. A Series Of Unfortunate Events
When I was in high school, I took a CNA course and we did our clinical training at a state-run nursing home. There was one patient who was 89 years old—she had both stage 4 pancreatic cancer and dementia. She was married at one point, but her husband and kids had already passed. All of her siblings, friends, and close relatives were gone as well.
She first entered the home about four years prior when she realized she really couldn't care for herself anymore. Her old age, plus the other ailments she eventually developed, made it hard for her to get through her days without supervision. Most of the time, she didn't know where she was, but she would have some days where she was lucid and she'd remember that she was alone. Those days were the most heartbreaking—I just remember she would cry a lot.
As the lucid days got further and further apart, she got to a point where she would only eat if I was the one feeding her. I went in on weekends and after school to try and get her to eat and drink something. Watching that poor woman have to face the reality of her cancer over and over again, then realize she was alone in the world was horrible.
The day she passed, I walked by her room as they were cleaning out her things and saw a picture of her sister...We didn't look identical to one another, but I think she thought I was her sister. People imagine horrible ways to pass, but dementia is by far the worst way to go.
2. Cruel To Be Kind
One of my friends witnessed a horrific and fatal accident where a driver crashed his truck on the side of the road. My friend rushed to the driver’s aid after calling an ambulance, and he ended up spending this man’s last moments with him. As they were waiting for the ambulance, even hearing it, the man asked after his wife, where she was, and said that he wanted to see her.
My friend tried to comfort the man as best he could, saying she was on her way. The man passed almost as soon as the ambulance arrived. Sometime afterward, my friend looked up this man on a social network, and he found out the heartbreaking truth. He discovered that this man's wife was already passed. So he had said to the man that his late wife was on her way.
3. Let Me Go
I had a 94-year-old woman who had been beaten by her niece so horribly that she had to be intubated in the ICU. The woman was in pure agony and her family claimed they wanted to “do everything” for her. I later came to find out their horrible secret—they were keeping her alive to collect her social security check. One time, while I was cleaning her, she grabbed my arm and held it tight.
Huge tears welled up in her eyes and she mouthed over the ET tube: “I want to die...Please let me die.” That night, I sobbed the entire way home. Unfortunately, I don’t know what happened to this woman. That was one of my last days in the ICU—I was a young nurse and I could not emotionally handle working there. That, for me, was the last straw.
I started having nightmares about being at work and trying to take care of patients. I would wake up in a cold sweat and see my husband laying next to me, realizing the sounds I was hearing were him snoring and not a patient who was on a ventilator. It sounds silly, but it’s horrifying if you actually think you're in that situation. I wish as nurses we were able to talk about what we experience on a daily basis but, because of HIPPA, we aren’t allowed. Years later, I am now an ER nurse and I love it! I see awful things quite often, but I have a better way of coping with those experiences.
4. Hindsight Is 20/20
I was a hospice nurse. One of my elderly patients had skin cancer, a huge malignant melanoma on the side of his neck that was growing rapidly. He had been a farmer all his life and never married. One night we were talking and I asked him if there was anything he wished he had done differently in his life. He thought about it a minute and said he wished he had worn a hat when he was farming. I wish he did too.
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5. The Cleaner’s Empathy
I cleaned the rooms of the ER in my local hospital as a summer job. This woman in her 40s was dying from cancer and she had a room in the ER for a couple of days to wait for another room in a different service. She looked fine for someone who was dying—I mean, she was bald and looked ill, but she was still nice and lovely to be around; cheerful even.
One time, I was cleaning the corridor when I heard cries from her room. I opened the door and my jaw dropped—there she was on the floor, just laying there. She fell from her bed after trying to walk to the bathroom. I helped her to the bathroom as she was crying in fear because she realized she could not walk anymore and that her end was coming. She broke my heart. It was the first time I realized where I was really working.
6. Hand In Hand
It's very hard to watch someone pass, but it's also important to remember you're doing it for them. I've always resented my older brother's selfishness because his policy is essentially, "I don't go visit people in the hospital because I don't want to remember them that way." But life isn't just about YOU, now is it? It's not just about what YOU want.
What about what the person in the hospital wants? My grandmother became very sick late last year and even when she became delirious, she would calm down when either my mom or I said, "It's okay, we're here..." She would just calm right down. Mom stayed in the hospital with her from the crack of dawn until 8 pm, and I took the night shift from 8 pm to 5 am, stayed all night so she was never alone.
When she got better and left the hospital, she told us that words couldn't describe how much it meant to her that we did what we did; that we would never know just how much it meant to her. She said it saved her life. She said, "I would've been scared, but I wasn't scared because every time I woke up, you were right there." She said she knows she probably won't be able to and won't get the chance (due to her age), but she wishes more than anything that she could return the favor.
She said that if I were ever hospitalized, she would never leave my side. I tell you all this to say...I understand how hard it can be. I GET the temptation to be like my older brother and be like, "I don't want to see them like this, it's going to haunt me!" But when you understand how much it means to them, it'll give you the strength to power through.
7. Hospital Work Is Tough
I helped clean up a cancer patient’s room after an unfortunate bowel movement ended up all over her room and bathroom. I did my best to assure the patient that it was no big deal, but I could tell she was embarrassed and too tired to say much. She thanked me afterward when I was getting ready to leave her room. I could see in her eyes how much it meant to her that I’d been so caring and understanding.
I’m very empathetic, so feeling what she must have felt just about broke me. I left her room, took care of my cleaning supplies, and as soon as I was alone, I just busted out sobbing. I saw the courage in her eyes and knew she was a tough lady, but that in and of itself made me cry more for some reason. Then it came to me.
I’d seen that same tough courage in my mom’s eyes when she was battling cancer, so that's probably why it really hit home for me. I heard afterward that the patient whose room I’d cleaned up had passed. Working at a hospital is tough. People sometimes don’t understand the clinical detachment that providers can have, but if you don’t have it to some extent, then your emotions can break you. Provider burnout is a real thing.
8. A Dog’s Life
I had a patient who I was in the room with when her doctor explained she only had a few weeks to live. I knew her well, and spent quite a bit of time talking to her up to the news. In the days that followed, she seemed to have accepted she was dying. She lived this beautiful, independent, and successful life, maybe not money successful, but just plain happy.
Anyways, when I was helping her to the tub on day 10 since receiving the news, she just broke down crying and couldn't stop crying. What she told me made me nearly burst into tears on the spot. She talked about how much she wished she didn't put her dog down, since they could have passed together. I guess she put her elderly dog down a few days before going into the hospital.
She knew her life was over, so she put him down first. She hated herself for it and for the fact she blew the opportunity for them to spend their last moments together. Really heartbreaking to watch, to hear that unfold. She passed early in the morning two days later. I took a couple of mental health days off after she passed and spent some time looking up dogs to adopt and new jobs to apply for.
9. A Chilling Experience
There was this 40-year-old woman who was paralyzed from the chest down due to a car accident years prior. She was currently on a ventilator through a trach and had a permanent feeding tube inserted in her stomach. The moment I saw her, I had a hard time keeping it together—she had a bleed in her stomach that was seeping out through the tube and she kept pulling out her trach in an effort to end it all. They ended up having to sedate her pretty heavily to keep her from repeatedly pulling the tube out. Seeing her pulling the tube loose and actively begin to suffocate with a totally blank look in her eyes was chilling.
10. Guardian Angel
My mom did home health and hospice. My stepdad mistreated us both and my mom would take me to work with her to try and protect me. She didn’t want to leave him due to religious beliefs. That’s a different story. In any case, at the hospital, there was an old man, and I’d play cards with him. We’d talk about working on the farm he had, and he was a nice guy.
He figured out I was being physically harmed during some of these talks. Eventually, his health started declining and he couldn’t play cards or get out of bed. The last time I saw him, he said he was sorry he wasn’t younger and that he couldn’t help me protect myself against my stepfather. That was almost 25 years ago and I still remember him. Honestly, he still feels like my guardian angel.
11. A Frightful Car Wreck
I was in the hospital after a car wreck many years ago. It was a pretty bad one—the first few days, I wasn't expected to live. They later decided that I might make it, so they attempted to save my leg and put my face back together. They came in to transfer me to surgery and somehow, the absolute worst thing that could have happened, happened—they dropped me between the bed and gurney.
They scraped me up and took me down in the elevator to surgery. As we were leaving the elevator, they started pushing the gurney and left the stand with my catheter bag in the elevator! Luckily, someone had just got in the elevator and yelled HEY!!! I was hyperventilating badly after all this when I got into surgery, so they put me out right away. The doctor mentioned it later when he came in to talk to me. I told him about getting dropped and he said that I must have imagined it as they would have never let that happen. The patient in the next bed called BS and told him all about it. He stormed out and I think a couple of people may have gotten fired.
12. Too Young To Go
I worked as an oncology nurse right out of nursing school. I was barely 21 years old. I had a patient about my age who had terminal lung cancer. A few hours before he passed, I sat with him, and he was telling me how much he wished that he would have had more time to maybe fall in love, marry, have kids. He was so young. He asked me to call his parents and he passed shortly after they arrived.
It was awful. His regrets were more about the life not lived. Many older patients, meanwhile had some interesting life stories and most wanted to tell them before they passed. Most were at peace with the life they lived. Many regretted working so much and not spending enough time with family, but they also had other stories. He simply didn’t.
13. Volunteering Has Its Quirks
I'm a teenage volunteer at my local hospital. They were short on people in the psych ward, so I was put there for the day. Basically, all I had to do was to get water or snacks for patients who asked and watch movies with them in the movie room. Well, one of the nurses turned on The Wizard of Oz—and triggered an unexpected response from this one crazy little old woman. She walked up to me, held my hand, and said: "I love you."
I replied "Thank you!" and she sits back down. Then she got up again, sat beside me on the couch, and said "I'm in this movie." Since I was with a bunch of crazy people, I just went along with her, smiling and nodding. Later, when her family came to visit, the movie was still on and one of her family members asked her, "Did you tell them you were in this movie?" Turns out, she really was in the movie as a child.
14. Let It Go
Some people just want you to let them go. I had a man with terminal cancer break down crying after his daughters left the room because they wanted him to "keep fighting" and he just wanted to rest and pass peacefully. Learn when to let go.
15. A Mother’s Worst Nightmare
I lost my baby one week before the due date. I had a lot of complications after birth that assured, I’ll never have another. Thanks, universe! That being said, thinking back on that day, five years later, what sticks with me most is the amazing care I received from my doctor and the nurses who were on duty. One held my hand during emergency surgery (I was lucid and terrified) while another rubbed my back when I was throwing up from the painkillers. I don’t remember their names or faces, but I remember their compassion. I’m forever grateful that they made an awful situation as comfortable as they could.
16. Regrets, I’ve Had A Few
I was a new nurse, flying solo. We got a call for an incoming trauma; it was a woman in her 50s involved in a multi-car accident. We were all ready at the ambulance bay, unsure of the woman's complete condition. She rolled in breathing on her own, but very labored and with asymmetrical chest expansion. She was profusely bleeding, had multiple deep lacerations, pupils blown, debris covering most of her, etc.
Her vitals were unstable, she was circling the drain, and we knew she was on the verge of coding. I was standing near her head, ready to assist in supporting her airway but also providing comfort and doing my best to calm her. The woman looked me directly in the eyes and in a hoarse, labored voice stated, "I was angry, I told her I was disappointed in her."
She began to cry, her vitals plummeted. "I'm sorry," was the last thing she said before her heart stopped. We coded her, intubated her, performed round after round of ACLS, only to eventually have to call time. I still see her face at times, her eyes filled with more emotional pain than physical. It took much longer and was so much harder to write this than I thought it would be...
17. A Top-To-Bottom Tragedy
I got sent to the pediatric ICU to watch over a 16-year-old who tried to shoot himself in the head in a failed suicide attempt. He broke the bones that held his eyes in and lost his sight (for obvious reasons). He also shattered the part of his skull holding the brain out of his upper sinus. He was very confused and obviously terrified.
He had just learned he was going to be blind for the rest of his life and needed a new skull fragment put in to keep the brain in place. But that's not all—on top of everything, his divorced parents were fighting. The dad blamed the mom because he used her weapon, while the mom then refused to let the dad visit by not giving him the special access code ton the unit. It was the most messed up night I'd ever worked and I refuse to go to that unit ever again.
18. Be Grateful For What You Have
I’m a paramedic, and I made a run on a woman in her 30s for shortness of breath. Her and her boyfriend had just moved into an apartment together. They were fighting over something trivial, which room to unpack first or something. He thought she was just being dramatic when she suffered the attack. We transported her, but she never made it.
She went from awake and talking to unresponsive and asystolic (no cardiac activity) in a matter of seconds. They were so caught up in a little argument that they never said goodbye. They never told each other they loved each other. So, she didn’t have any last words. And honestly, that’s even worse.
19. A Frightful Pregnancy
We nearly lost our daughter twice before she was born. The first time was like 12 weeks in when my wife woke up bleeding pretty bad. We rushed to the hospital and they did an ultrasound. Afterward, they told us it was a low-lying placenta, and the doctor gave us about a 50/50 chance of the pregnancy sticking. We waited on pins and needles for two weeks before seeing her regular OB. Later on, he gave us the verdict—thankfully, he told us things were fine.
I haven’t told my wife, but I broke down bawling the moment I was alone. I was the rock, you know, so I couldn’t be weak. I’ve never told her that. The second pregnancy was much less severe. A few days before she was born, my wife had to do a non-stress test because of some irregularities. A few hours later, we were all clear, and soon after, my daughter was born. She’s almost two now, and although I wouldn’t have ever known her if she didn’t make it through, thinking about it now makes me so sad. I’m just so happy she’s healthy.
20. Burned Bridges
I work in long-term care, and a majority of my patients are men. A LOT of the men regret their marriage. Also, one patient had a psychotic breakdown in his 50s. He’s in his mid-70s and in hospice now, and says his entire family hasn’t talked to him since. All he knows is “words were said and I burned all my bridges.” He doesn’t even really know what happened.
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21. What Happened Next
The most awful story my paramedic friend told me was a teen suicide that was actually a cry for attention. This girl had had a huge fight with her dad and decided at the moment that she was going to"end it all" to "scare the heck out of them." She took a whole box of paracetamol. Nothing happened. Later that night, she started feeling really sick, so she told her parents what happened and they called the ambulance.
Unfortunately, paracetamol starts having negative effects when it has already been absorbed into the blood. If you don't catch it early, you can't minimize the effects. So, when they got to the hospital, the doctors gave them the tough-to-swallow truth—there was nothing they could do. They had to explain to the family that all they could do was wait for her to pass. The girl just kept apologizing to her parents over and over. She just wanted a trip to the hospital so they would listen to her. Paracetamol is incredibly dangerous and not enough people know about it.
22. Pay It Forward
I worked in a GI lab and we had a much older man, in his late 70s probably, maybe late 80s, in for gastrointestinal issues. While doing the procedure, we found cancer. But it was even worse than that. It was completely inoperable, just no chance of survival. Super bad, and I think he had refused to have a colonoscopy up until this point.
The doctor said it was so horrific that we couldn’t get even get past the cancer in our probe. He said the guy had maybe a few months. We finish up and I am at bedside with the patient and the doctor comes in to talk. Well, the family wouldn’t believe it. In fact, the guy wouldn’t even believe it. At that point, the doctor backed down…and omitted telling them how bad it really was.
I was pretty upset because the doctor basically lied to the family and gave them false hope because they wouldn’t stop arguing and he just didn’t care to tell them the truth. I still wonder often about what happened to him. If he spent his last days fighting it and wearing himself out or if he let himself enjoy his last few months. Colon cancer is horrific.
It looks exactly like the word cancer. It’s disgusting. It looks alien. Please, please, please people, get your colonoscopy when you are told. It’s not just you that you are saving, it’s your kids who will get their screenings earlier if they find something in you. But if you don’t, they’ll never know they are at risk. Also: Listen to and believe your doctors.
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23. A Clinical Rotation Turned Worse
I was in my second clinical rotation as a nursing student. The patient I was assigned to was a grumpy old guy who was 79. He had a good sense of humor, but you had to tread carefully around him. He had chronic pain and was diagnosed with colon cancer. His son would visit in the mornings just in time to talk to the doctors doing their morning rounds.
I was helping him get ready for breakfast when the doctor walked in. This was pretty typical, but he was anxious to see the doctor today as he just had a bunch of tests done and was hoping to hear some results so he could be discharged to go home. Usually, I would just finish up whatever I was doing and then leave so that the patient and doctor could talk privately.
That morning, his son was not able to make it in and my patient asked if I could stay in the room with him to hear everything. I said sure, no problem, as long as the doctor was okay with it as well (some doctors don’t like dealing with students). The doctor just got right to the point. Cancer had spread and there was nothing more they could do.
The palliative team would be coming to meet with him this afternoon to discuss where he could be transferred to during his final days. My patient thought the doctor was joking and started to laugh, and then he just sat there with a completely blank look. As a student, I was NOT prepared to know how to comfort someone in that situation as it was something I didn’t have experience with. I felt awful because 10 minutes before he got this news, he was telling me he couldn’t wait to see his cat once he got home. For the next week, he did not get out of bed, refused to eat and take medication or shower. And then I came in one day and he was transferred out.
24. Follow Your Heart
I used to be a nursing student, though I decided to drop out in my second year because it wasn’t where my heart was. During my placement at the city hospital, I got to talking to an older man—he must have been like 88 then. He was talking about how I look exotic and always complimented my long hair etc., etc. For what it’s worth, I was never threatened or put off by it.
One day, he told me I looked like the woman he wished he never let go. He said that he was completely happy about how his life turned out, loved his family and late wife, but he always thinks about this one woman he shouldn’t have let go by. He described this woman and his relationship with her as the perfect little blip in his life.
She was a petite Indian woman (I am a petite Pakistani woman) with long black hair and the most amazing smile. They met when he was 18 and she was 16. He was a jock at college and realized that her brother was taking the same classes as him, so he befriended the "dorky Indian guy" to get to his sister, who worked at the grocery store in town (that's how they met).
And it worked! They dated for six months before she randomly broke it off. It turned out, she was just uncertain about where their relationship would go and could go as an interfaith and interracial couple. The old man wished he fought harder, because her brother married a Chinese woman and if it weren't for his "jocky dumb attitude" he would have "gotten over" her decision to end things and fought harder for her to understand it would be all right.
Decades later, this petite, longhaired girl with an "amazing smile" (me) comes back into his life and he was flooded with the memories of the love of his life. He said the six months they were together were just the most deep and loving and peaceful months of his life. He should have been with her and she was the one who got away.
He said back then, you would fall in love in weeks and you loved hard, and that was simply that. Years later, I met a guy at work who ended up moving across the country for work. I remembered this old man and followed my heart. I never let my love get away, and I married him this summer. You should always at least try. Even if it doesn’t work out, go for it and find out so you never wonder.
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25. The Nursing Home Nightmare
This was the worst part of working in the nursing home. I had one lady named Max, and man was she just the sweetest...but her mind was going. She lived there with her husband and he passed first. Max was 96 and she was always asking where he was. She was happiest to be told that he was bringing flowers or candies or something and he’d see her soon.
We would sneak those items into her room at her meal times so she would think he came. She was happy and it was working well...until she got a new CNA, Heather. Heather deserves to die in a fiery agonizing pit. She got mad that Max asked about her husband, so Heather told Max that her husband passed 10 years ago and was never coming back.
She essentially told her to "get over it" and called her an "overgrown toddler". The sound that came out of max will haunt me for the rest of my life. Max was strangely lucid afterward. Even when she was out of it, she was sullen and depressed and would say she didn't understand why. After that day, Max stopped eating. Stopped drinking. Stopped playing Dominos.
She stopped walking around the halls. She never left her room to socialize. She stopped asking about her husband. She got very sickly and was declining fast. It was at that stage in her progress that I left that home. I filed a formal complaint against Heather and left for other reasons. I don't know if Max ever came out of it or if she wasted away in there. It was the most heartbreaking thing I've ever seen.
26. Young And In Love
I worked in long-term care for 12 years. I remember a married couple that shared a room; she had cancer and kidney failure. I was helping her eat lunch one day with her husband sitting there with us. She looked awful, but her husband looked at her, then at me, and said, “Have you ever seen a more beautiful woman?” I had to leave and go to the bathroom and cry.
I cried for days every time I thought of what he said. I thought I would never know what it was like to be loved like that. At the time, I had been divorced for years. I couldn’t even tell the story just now without tearing up. Side note: I was divorced for 23 years when I met Rod. We’ve been together for 11 years. I know that love now. It’s never too late.
27. A Famous Writer
I knew a girl in college whose grandma got dementia. The family visited her weekly and they were stressed out over the fact that she couldn't enjoy her own life. Anyway, one day they visited the grandma and she said, "Who are you?" to the granddaughter. The granddaughter remembered that the grandma always loved writing and books, so she said something that changed the whole tone of the visit: "I'm your granddaughter. Don't you remember me? I'm a famous writer!"
The grandma perked up and said, "You're a writer? Wow, my granddaughter is a writer!" They spent the rest of the visit talking about books, stories, and how the girl had won a Nobel Peace Prize award for one of her books. Now the family had a mission—to create stories and characters that the grandma loved. Most of the things revolved around things the grandma enjoyed (for instance once the daughter said she was the first female astronaut because the grandma liked space and astronomy).
The grandma was so proud to have family members so accomplished and doing amazing things, and the family was able to focus on more than just the illness. The girl said when her grandma passed, no one felt horribly sad because they knew she passed happy and was proud of what her legacy was.
28. You Can’t Save Them All
I had a teenage girl in my psych ward because she had tried to kill herself by overdosing with pills. It was touch and go, but she was revived and admitted. When her parents could come in and see her once she was awake, their reunion was heart-wrenching. She was ugly crying about how sorry she was for taking the pills and how she didn’t want to end things.
Her parents were sobbing and telling her it was okay and they loved her. And then later they all went home and we didn’t see them again…And that’s the way I need to tell that story to prevent myself from breaking down and not being able to work there anymore. Because later, I read the Coroner’s Report for her passing a few years later, from a later suicide attempt that was successful.
They concluded that “no combination of interventions or specialists could have prevented” it. It felt like I got physically punched reading that. Still hurts.
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29. The Eye-Opener
I volunteered in a children's hospital throughout high school. There was a sixteen-year-old patient there who had spina bifida and had no feeling beneath the waist. He had routine surgery and was expected to be in the hospital for about a week. The worst thing I've ever seen was the look on his face when he told me the doctors' horrible surprise diagnosis—they had found MRSA on both of his legs, and he wouldn't be leaving the hospital any time soon.
Hospital trips are kind of funny. The first week, everybody wants to visit you, but after that, guests seem to taper off dramatically. I remember him stating that the hardest thing for him was the lack of social support beyond his family (and to a much lesser extent myself), as this was the year before Facebook really took off. It was a happy ending though—he eventually did recover from MRSA after spending around six months in the hospital.
30. You Never Forget Your First
He was one of my first patients as a nursing student, named Frank. He was 92. After knowing him a few days, he disclosed to me his regret was outliving everyone he loved, that he and his wife hadn’t had kids, and he was “all that was left” and that he wanted to see his wife again. I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I just listened. It made me realize how living so long isn’t great if everyone you love is gone.
He passed later that week, and while I distinctly recall some of my classmates being upset, I felt relief for him. I knew he was where he wanted to be. I’ve had many patients since, but you tend to remember your first ones.
31. Horror In The ER
This occurred in an emergency room. An old lady came in—I don't know what for, but she told us she came from a nursing home. There is no way to describe accurately how horrific this woman’s condition was. Her hair...it was so matted and dirty...it seemed like the bugs that lived in it couldn't even get to the center of the dreadlock... They ended up cutting most of it off because it was so bad. But it gets worse.
Her skin was just straight up open, infected with oozing sores. It was like if you took someone’s skin off, laid it flat, then took a hole punch to the entire thing and put it back on...there were HUNDREDS of small, round, infected, smelly, gooey, painful sores on her entire back, rear, and legs. Her mouth was also decaying and missing teeth.
But there was one thing that baffled all of the doctors—the mold. Just straight-up mossy. MOLD. Originally, we thought she had a napkin in her mouth or was eating toilet paper...nope, it was just mold. I had to leave the room because I kept throwing up. This lady smelled worse than a dead body. Thank God for nurses because those people handled the situation like champs ...They cut her hair, patched her up, and cleaned her mouth. She looked like a new person by the time they were through with her.
32. A Soft Spot
I worked security in a hospital. In the ER, we had to sit with any 5150 patients so they wouldn't escape. In California, that's a threat to others, threat to self, and/or gravely disabled. It’s a legal hold that they can't leave. I had I think a 17-year-old girl who came in on a Tylenol overdose. I normally don't listen or really even get invested with patients because it's usually the same faces on a loop, but she kept trying to strike up a conversation.
Eventually, I relented and she told me how stupid she was. Apparently, it was over a boy and where she was going to go to college and what she wanted to do. Basically, her life story. Taking a break to cry for a second. I left and she was stable in the ER. The next day, I came in and asked if she went home or if she was in an inpatient unit. They told me she passed a few hours after my shift.
It's been like five years and thinking about it, I start crying like a baby. I don't cry. I think the last time I cried other than this was my grandpa passed, but even that I can discuss without crying now. Her story is the only thing that completely breaks me down.
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33. Food Trays And Hospital Rooms
I worked at the hospital in high school. I delivered food trays to hospital rooms, so it was a very easy job. We were encouraged to have brief conversations with the patients to try and cheer them up a bit. The hardest one to deal with was someone I never expected to see in the hospital—our high school principal. Our principal dealt with 2,700 students but was beloved by all. Not often you find a person like that.
Well, one day she got really sick and had to go to the hospital. I walked into her room and saw her there. Somehow, she remembered my name although I had only met her twice. I saw her every day I worked and saw her declining for months. All that time, people in school had spread rumors that she was getting better. Apparently, somebody’s mom saw her shopping, so people thought she was coming back next week. I couldn't say anything obviously, but it was very hard to deal with watching so many people have hope and knowing in my mind that it truly wasn't looking good. She passed about three months after being admitted to the hospital. The school was devastated.
34. Always More To See
"Not yet! I can't go yet. I still have so much growing to do. I want to see my children and grandchildren grow up..." I am a physician trainee who has done a decent amount of palliative care. I have been privileged to hear many stories and be part of many ends, but I still can't explain why it is that certain lines remain with me and hit me so much harder.
The gentleman who told me the line above was in his late 60s-early 70s. It made me reflect on how I view patients in this age group. Yes, much older than myself, but still with growing and living to do. I also think of a woman in her 50s I met early on in my training. She and her female partner had never married—partly due to laws, partly because it had never seemed important.
When she was diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer, they regretted never making that step. I attended their small wedding in the hospital. She passed a few days later.
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35. Horror Of The Third Degree
In the burn and trauma unit: a guy had third-degree burns on 80% of his body. He had very little skin left, I could actually see part of his tibia and his fingertips were necrotic...he was heavily medicated, but still, I can’t even fathom the pain. I don’t know if he made it because he was quite septic the last time I was there. I now work in the NICU.
Most of the babies end up doing pretty well and going home eventually, but some aren’t so lucky. I could go on about the medical stuff, but really the worst is when their parents don't care about them. Some parents live far away and have other kids to take care of, so it’s understandable if they aren’t there every day.
But then there are others who never call or visit, and no one can track them down, so the kid ends up being discharged to foster care. It just burns deep in my soul sometimes. One day, I might hand a perfectly nice couple their baby to hold one last time while we withdraw life support, and the next day I’ll be trying to soothe a baby withdrawing from the substances his MIA mom took. Despite the challenges, I still love my job, though.
36. The One That Got Away
I've been a nurse for 14 years, and the one thing that still hits me is a 14-year-old boy fighting cancer. We did the transplant but he eventually passed fighting the side effects of that transplant. Before that, I’d nursed him for almost a year and we had grown very close. The day he went away to his home country in the US, I told him I am his big momma and when he returned, we would be together seeing through many plans.
His dream was to be a doctor, so I told him I would quit my job and be his nurse the moment he becomes a doctor. On the night before he and his family left, my husband, who is a chef, cooked his favorite foods for the family and all the nurses. My husband taught my patient how to cook the recipes too, since my patient also loves to cook.
We had dinner together and I was crying my eyes out afterward. He was like a second son to me. His last words to me were, "I will make sure to meet you again." The day I found out from his mother he had passed, I was devastated.
37. Consequences
I have seen many people die, but the worst one BY FAR was a man with active bleeding, hemorrhaging from his esophagus due to long-term substance abuse. This was many years ago and there are better ways to treat it now, but at the time, the treatment for this kind of hemorrhaging was putting an inflatable tube down the throat into the stomach.
It was attached to some kind of helmet that you had to put on the patient afterward, which was tough. You would inflate the tube to stop the bleeding but also aspirate the blood out of the stomach with a huge syringe. Just putting it in was a nightmare—the patient was so scared and there was blood everywhere...he was vomiting so much blood he couldn’t talk.
This was in the ER. We got IVs in him and started transfusions pouring into him as fast as they'd go. We worked on him for a long, long time, but he didn't make it. What I remember is how hard he fought, how scared he was, and how much blood there was. And this was before rubber gloves were worn for everything. I just threw out my uniform. Everyone's shoes were soaked. I never saw anything like it, before or since.
Don't become involved with drinking to excess. Don't get cirrhosis or esophageal varices. It's a bad way to go.
38. You Are What You Eat
I work in a hospital delivering trays to patients. I've had multiple patients who have requested a final meal, only to be gone by the time I get it up to them. I haven't heard their last words, but I think seeing what their last meal would have been says a lot on its own.
39. A Tragedy At A Young Age
This is how my uncle went. He ruptured his esophagus and the physicians saved him. He had all kinds of other medical issues due to drinking too much, and after that, he was on dialysis. I still recall going to see him in what I now know was hospice care. It was weird—my previously handsome and fit uncle was skinny and had yellow eyes and long scraggly hair.
I was about nine, and to me, he looked like Jesus because of his long hair. I was so scared of him. I remember hugging him and for some reason—my hearing was muffled and I got dizzy. The rest of the visit I sat in my grandpa's car eating candies he had in the glove box. That was the last time I saw my uncle. Shortly after that, he ruptured his esophagus again and passed. But here's the kicker—he was still drinking in hospice. He was only 34. I really loved him, still do.
40. Born This Way
I’m an ex-ICU nurse. I had a patient in his 40s once pass from AIDS-related complications. At the end, he developed an acute lung infection, and the time that my colleagues and I looked after him was during the span while he was rapidly failing. We had to intubate, but he quickly became comatose and passed within a couple of days despite all the treatment.
He came from a religious family, but was estranged due to his homosexuality. He found religion again when he realized he didn’t have long to live, and it breaks my heart that he had convinced himself God was punishing him for being gay. Me and my colleagues tried our best, but his belief and his regret was a lifetime-deep, and our time with him was so short.
I will never forget being at his bedside, he’s gasping for air, with him telling me desperately between breaths how this is his punishment from God and he DESERVED it. He passed before we had a chance to even help him, I feel.
41. A Nurse’s Empathy
I work in an OR and had a teenage patient who weighed was a clinical psychotic. He was known to be violent on waking up from anesthesia, so we were prepared with four burly guys surrounding the OR table at the end of the case. When he opened his eyes, they got really wide, and then...He started crying.
Not just whimpering, but full-on lip quivering and tears. It broke my heart. So, As I was standing near the head of the table, I leaned down (probably not the smartest thing) and asked him, "Dude, what do you need?" to which he responded through those shudders you get when you cry-talk, "I JUST WANT A HUUUUUUUG!" I reached down, gave him a big bear hug, and he quieted right down and relaxed. It got a bunch of giddy responses from all the nurses in the room too.
42. Tough Talks
This is difficult for me to talk about. I’m an ICU nurse and I’ve been present for a lot of people’s end of life. The reason it is so difficult to discuss is surprisingly simple: People come into ICU, they get put on a ventilator (which involves a tube in the trachea, through the vocal cords), and then they can’t speak. Depending on the medications they require, they aren’t commonly conscious, either.
So the communication happens before the ventilator, and either a) they didn’t have time to express ideas about regrets due to the urgency at the time or b) they didn’t think it was time to express those ideas...they thought there would be more life, more opportunities. The problem is that they didn’t tell any family members or loved ones, either, prior to coming in.
So I come on to a shift several days later. I don’t actually know this person. I haven’t heard their voice, or their ideas. What I have heard about my patient is from their visitors, the loved ones and the family. But what I’m doing with my day is trying to remind those same people that under the tubing, behind the equipment and the medication (that are the bread and butter of my job), under the blanket and on the bed is their loved one.
The person is the point. But we also tend the machines. Machines for breathing, machines for making the heart keep pace, machines helping to reduce the effort a tired heart needs to pump, machines to do the work of the failing kidney, machines to remove the need for the tiny spaces left in diseased lungs to push more gas than they can ever hope to move.
And we tend to use meds. Meds that assist the machines. Meds that push the body to do what it no longer can. And the patient moves from day to night and back to day. And the family wants us to do one more thing. And another. Because they want their person back. Sometimes we can do that. We can give you your person for more time together at life.
Sometimes we can’t. And if you’ve ever wanted to know about the regrets of terminal patients, these are the regrets many people can never express. The regret that they weren’t able to tell their loved ones and families they didn’t want all the things. Maybe some of the things, for a while. But not all of them, until the end. The regret that the loved ones and families want to help, but as the patient, they physically could not tell them no, don’t do that, it’s not helping.
So I guess the point is this: Don’t wait until you are there. Have a conversation with your significant others about what you want to happen if the worst happened. Don’t put it off as having bad thoughts or ideas or even that it’ll invoke some sort of fate that wasn’t otherwise going to happen. Discuss organ donation as if you really had the chance to do it.
Let your loved ones know what you think, and leave your actual end of life regrets for stuff like not going to Disneyland that time, or spending too much time driving to work.
43. An Angel Of A Nurse
I recently lost my mother to cancer. Oncology nurses are a different breed. I’ve met some awful nurses in my time spent in hospitals and doctors’ offices, but none of them were ever in oncology. One nurse will forever be an angel in my eyes. I went for a run in the afternoon and left my mom in the room by herself...or so I thought.
In an hour or so I was gone, this nurse never left my mother’s side. She sat with her and they cried together. She even prayed with my mother, who was deeply religious and always said that God had a plan for her. When I got back, the nurse left to sit with her other patients. I left my mom’s room to go brush my teeth a while later, and she stopped me in the hall crying, asking about my mom and all that our family had been through.
She told me about how much of an inspiration my mother was to her. This was within a few months of mom's passing, She constantly felt like she couldn’t breathe and would wake up with panic attacks as a result. This nurse would literally RUN when my mom pressed the call button. She stayed with her for probably eight hours of a 12-hour shift. She was the best nurse I have ever met and I fully believe that if angels do exist, she was one.
44. Just Say No
I use to work in the respiratory ward of a hospital almost a decade ago. I was young and everything and occasionally took a puff of smoke from my friends when we were out drinking. Only a few times, to be honest. One of my terminal patients held my hand one day, she was out of breath and I was trying to just be there to calm her down and give some reassurance.
She told me to never, ever smoke. She regretted doing it when she was young, as now she is dying because of it. She hated it because of all the damage. She described it as drowning, and said that when you are being choked, that sensation that you are losing your breath is just absolutely terrifying and the worst. Her words stuck with me, and in her final days, we kept her as comfortable as we could as she struggled to breathe.
She passed not too long after. Never forgot her advice. Never took another puff.
45. Lightening The Mood
The nurse that worked in the hospital said that this is one of the funniest things she’s seen. I had brain surgery and a huge wound (about 10 inches) across my skull. It wasn’t stitched, it was stapled. I hadn’t had a dump for about three days after the surgery and the nurses gave me some tablets to soften my stool up. They often coaxed me out of bed to try and go to the bathroom.
I sat there and strained and strained, but nothing. Then, slowly but surely, it inched its way out; but the problem was it was like concrete. After straining for so long, my worst fear happened—I fainted and fell forwards onto the bathroom floor. The nurses came in and found me face down and a big pile of waste protruding from me that was sticking out of me like the Tower of Pisa. I now know that anesthetic can back you up a bit! The nurse put a glove on and literally pulled the iron bog out of my backside before they cleaned me up. She said it was one of the most satisfying things she has done and even better than picking at her boyfriend’s blackheads. Legend.
46. Love And Time
I was diagnosed with T-cell lymphoma on my birthday in 2016, and I was told if my chemotherapy didn't work, I had just weeks to live in 2017. Up until that point, I didn't think I wasn't going to beat it, even though by then I'd gone through 14 + rounds of different types and brutal chemotherapy. It seems stupid now, thinking back, but until the doctor uttered those words I hadn't even done my will yet.
None of us were expecting it, and being honest I was in shock. I was 34 or 35, and this wasn't how my story was meant to end. The doctor promised he would help as much as he could to transition me to palliative care and get the ball rolling. This bowled me over. I mean, one moment I'm preparing for another "ran some tests, here's what we found, here's what were going to do" doctor’s meeting, a meeting I have almost every day...the next I'm just...silent.
Anger was my first stage. I was bitter. "Why me? What did I ever do to deserve such a poor hand? Screw the world and its happy existence..." This quickly left. It was, honestly, one minute of pure "Why me?" After looking at everyone's faces, however, this quickly left me. I simply watched everyone deal with the news around me. In the room was my favorite nurse, my mom, wife, and obviously the doctor.
I never saw my mom look so helpless. I could almost see the hope drain from her as she leaned into the wall, hoping for support. She was just told her baby was going to go and this time she couldn't fix it. I could see the whirlwind inside her as she tried to not cry. The nurse who was there was only there to give me more chemotherapy. At this point in my care, I'd been in hospital for months.
I'd see her almost every day, and you bond. She didn't take the news well (I heard later on). At the time, I was told she had a reaction to the chemotherapy she was administering. In reality, she broke down and had to leave work early. My darling wife, who I had put through so much, was clearly trying to hold it together...she was in the anger and bargaining stage, too.
This was the first time seeing my wife not taking “no” as an answer, and I didn't have the energy or the motivation to calm her down. She was asking for second opinions, researching other hospitals, calling/emailing them, scanning reports, test results for her emails, etc. She just refused to accept it and went to work. I just sat there with what felt like billions of thoughts, watching it all go on around me.
When you're told you're going to die, eventually you get to acceptance. Once I accepted there was nothing more to do, all the little things in life that annoy, stress, or anger you go away. EVERYTHING is beautiful...and I noticed everything. My perspective had completely changed. My time was running out and I just wanted to be surrounded by love. That's it.
My only regret was time. I didn't do enough with it. I didn't have more time to see my beautiful baby niece grow up. I wondered if she would take after her mother, my lovely sister, who never got to enjoy her pregnancy due to her brother getting cancer months before she was due to give birth. Why did I waste so much time being angry at my father?
We wasted so much time ignoring each other over petty family stuff. Why the heck didn't I travel more? Why didn't I take more photos of us when traveling? I had tons of travel pictures over the years, but hardly any of me and my wife or my family enjoying the holiday...just holiday-like pictures of museums, buildings, and food. Now I'm on heavy meds scrambling my brain for memories of my wife's face when she saw the view from our hotel in Croatia.
Going through cancer robbed us of joy, and I just wanted to see the twinkle of happiness in the eyes of my loved ones one more time. Love and time, that's it. When it boils down to it, that's all that's left. Love and time.
47. Resilience Of A Different Kind
I wasn’t employed by the hospital, but I worked as an interfacility transport EMT at the time. I had one patient who had terminal bone cancer and was morbidly obese. I was transporting her from the hospital to a radiation appointment. I developed a rapport with her, so she was comfortable opening up to me. The most jarring thing she told me was that she was just buying maybe six months by treating her cancer...otherwise, she would have passed already.
Well, as some of you may know, bone cancer is one of the most painful and terrible ways to die, so for her to extend that misery for a little longer just so she could experience life and see her family more was very inspirational. We got to the facility to do the radiation treatment and we were told it should only take about 45 minutes.
We got to the room and we immediately saw a problem—the table she was supposed to lay down on was the same size a small adult would use. They had no modified version for morbidly obese adults, and the only way to keep her on was to use extra straps to tie her down to the table. They constantly had to stop the procedure to adjust her for comfort.
What was even worse was that the fentanyl dose that she was given at the hospital had completely worn off and the facility wasn’t authorized to administer meds like that... Her appointment ended up taking about four hours longer than it should have and she was just miserable, but still so sweet and apologetic the whole time. I felt awful for her and after it was done, there was a huge sense of relief in her voice. I told her how inspirational she was to me to see how resilient she was being.
48. Don’t Go It Alone
I’ll never forget my time working as an ER EMT when I helped a woman get on a commode. I told her I’d give her some privacy and she grabbed my hand and murmured out a “please stay.” I asked her what was wrong and if she was okay. While she was sobbing, she was able to break out, “I’m so scared. They just told me I’m dying and don’t have a chance anymore.”
It broke my heart. I stayed and talked with her for a little and comforted her as best I could.
49. Instability In The ICU
I'd been a nurse for a few years and thought I was pretty awesome. A patient in the ICU was unstable with a heart problem, but she was pretty stable when my shift started because she had already been put on meds. On her chart, it said she was a DNR with heart failure. The family had been there for days: the husband, her adult sons, and her daughter-in-law. They were the nicest folks. They were contemplating going home for a few hours to shower, eat, and rest.
I told them her heart rhythm looked good, so they could go home and get some rest if they wanted. I took their cell phone numbers and told them if anything changed I would call right away. Well, that didn't turn out as well as I thought. They traveled at least an hour through a dead zone because as soon as they walked out the door, I was struggling to keep her alive. Her heart was all over the place.
Her blood pressure kept dropping and dropping. I got them on the phone an hour later and told them to come back. I spent two hours desperately trying to keep her alive, and they ran back through the door five minutes after she was gone. I couldn't stop crying. I felt so bad. There was no professional boundary there at all. We all knew a young stupid nurse took their last moments with their mother.
The mom passed alone, with a few scattered staff doing what they could, but without her family by her side. That family comforted me more than I comforted them. I was beside myself. They told me I did my best, and it was OK. The grace and kindness they showed me were incredible and it affects the way I treat every family now.
50. You Can’t Take It With You
As a medical student at Stanford, I got to see some "VIP" patients. One, in particular, was a middle-aged, high-ranking executive at an iconic company. This person was terminally ill and I was tasked with the initial interview. During my history-taking, they spoke about the ride up the corporate ladder. It all seemed worthwhile at the time—chasing wealth and prestige.
In the end, however, their regret was walking away from opportunities to build a family and invest in meaningful relationships. They poured their soul into the company, and yet not a single soul could spare the time to visit them in the hospital. I still remember them in the hospital bed, staring out the window with a blank expression. It haunted me for a while but helped me change my focus, especially in an area and field full of high-achievers.
51. Things Get Messy
I had a patient who was an escaped slave. It was a younger individual in their 30s who was dragged into their situation through an addiction. She was sick, but she ended up finding a way out somehow and landed herself in a local psych ward. Because of her physical health, she was sent to the hospital where she passed away not long after (I forgot the exact reason why).
As I was helping to clean up the patient for family viewing, I saw something incredibly peculiar—her certain body parts were stretched to a point I've never actually seen before or after. It was awful, especially with this person being so young. She was swollen all over and bruised before they even passed. When the family showed up they just talked over their body like it was a Sunday dinner. No tears or anything. The whole thing was a mess.
52. Not In His Right Mind
I had an accident and ended up with a concussion and emergency spinal surgery. Once I got to the hospital, the surgeon quickly went through all the things that could go wrong so I was aware. He said something like, "And with every surgery, there's a very small chance of death.” All my brain heard was, "You're 100% gonna bleed out.” After that, I just had this very clear realization through the confusion of the concussion that I didn't tell my brother that I loved him enough.
So I called him with, like, 2% battery on my phone and told him to move on without me and live his life to the fullest, and I'll always be proud of him. Yeah, surgery went absolutely fine and when I came round, he just joked, "Even though you survived, I can still live my life to the fullest, right? It wasn't an either/or situation?" I obviously told him he couldn't.
53. Most Have It Lucky
I’m a children’s nurse, and I once worked on a ward that specializes in brain and spinal tumors in children, amongst other specialties. The worst thing I can think of was a little boy; I think he was three or four years old. He’d been in a different hospital the two weeks prior with a weakness to his legs that was sweeping up his body, eventually causing incontinence.
The other hospital hadn’t scanned him, which was the first thing we did, and we found out a shocking underlying condition—his brain and spine were covered in tumors. There was literally nothing we could do. He had weeks if not days left. On my shift, I was trying to push for him to get moved to the ICU. He was barely conscious and there were a few times whilst I was waiting for the medical team I actually thought he’d passed in front of me. Being with his poor parents as they went through this, watching their typical, previously healthy child fade away with no information, was the worst. The mom was asking, "Will he live? Please save my baby." It was truly awful.
54. A Laughing Matter
The one I remember most is a sweet elderly lady who I'd been caring for. She'd been through so much in her life and spent so much of it worrying about everything. The night before she passed, we sat and talked for a while about anything and everything. I asked her if she could do it all again, would she do anything different? Straight away she told me she wished she had laughed more.
Such simple words, but they had a big impact on my life.
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55. Abdominal Toughness
In residency, I took care of a young boy with E. coli 0157:H7. No one knew where he got it and it wasn't part of a bigger outbreak. I'll never forget the screams of pain from the severe abdominal pain and bloody diarrhea, but then I'd go in the room to check on him and when I asked him how he was, he'd just say in a weak little voice "I'm okay" even when doubled over. Such a tough kid.
There's no treatment besides supportive treatments (fluids, pain relief) because antibiotics make renal failure more likely. Unfortunately, he did go into renal failure anyway and he passed before dialysis could be started. In medical school, I took care of a middle-aged woman with advanced uterine cancer. She was extremely obese (>400 lbs) so it was too difficult to do her hysterectomy without first doing a panniculectomy (basically removing her pannus, which is excess abdominal fat). It was risky, but we had no idea what we were getting ourselves into.
This involved an incision in a circle around her entire abdomen, which is extremely painful during the healing process since the whole abdomen is involved. Because she was bed-ridden, she developed terrible pressure ulcers in her back, a couple of which ulcerated all the way to her bone. She had a ton of fat on her back too, so these ulcers were deep—I could get my whole arm up to the elbow inside of them when changing her dressings. She'd scream and sob anytime we moved her. I don't remember anyone ever coming to visit her and I'm pretty sure she eventually passed alone.
56. The Big Sleep
I’ve been in medicine for 13 years now. I was working in a progressive care unit taking care of a young guy who was about 22 at the time, when I was also 22. I thought he looked like one of my buddies from back home. He was jaundiced, in liver failure from alcoholism, and going downstairs for a CT scan. Total care. My age, expiring from alcoholism.
He looked at me in the eyes and said, “I’m tired of this." There was an exhausted sincerity in his voice. I think I just nodded and said, "I know, man." He coded on the CT scanner when he went down. I'll never forget the look in his eyes, and his voice when he told me he was tired of it all. It was like he gave up. It was a resignation to his life, and all the regrets of drinking and destroying himself all in that brief last statement.
Those few words said a lot. I've been around a lot of terminally ill people. I'm a paramedic working full time in a busy ER the last few years. I've worked in oncology, a level 1 trauma ICU, a burn unit—but I just remember that kid for some reason, and those last words. I never had an issue with drinking, and thanks to him I don’t think I ever will.
57. Even Limbs Can Rot
A friend’s stepdad was training to be a nurse so he got all the gross stuff that came in because of being a newbie. A homeless man came in complaining of stomach pains. When he told the guy to undress, he didn't want to take off his jeans. When asked about it, he said, "I can't take them off, my leg will fall off." Sure enough his leg was rotting and had maggots crawling in and out of it.
58. Everybody’s Got A Story
A 27-year-old man tried to end his life and passed from his injuries. I still remember it clearly; he told me his entire life story. I didn't sleep for a few days after hearing it and sometimes it still haunts me to this day. He was brutally teased in middle school straight until the end of high school. He had mild Aspergers and was quite intelligent but because of his looks and weird mannerisms, he was picked on. Then it got worse.
The girls would make him drink out of the toilet, the guys would chokehold him until he passed out or tie him up inside the gym so he woke up alone after school ended, only to go home and get beaten by his parents for being late. The girls would often make up fake accusations and he'd be suspended, only to be beaten up by his parents once more.
The guys would take his clothes and toss them in the dumpster, only for him to go crawling in it while naked. The girls would replace his lunch with rotten food, the guys would pelt him with rocks. It was just unbelievable. He finished high school but just barely, dropped out of college, and left home to go into the service industry. But it only got worse for him there as he couldn't do well with the stress.
He had his own issues. He said he was one of those incels and his only reason for living was so that others could hurt him to make themselves feel better. He told me he tried to end it because he was tired of living and also financially broken by then. He said he wished he stood up for himself from the start, and perhaps things would have turned out differently for him.
He passed a few days later while I was off shift. We all knew inside that he wasn't going to make it from the start given his injuries, but I still listened to the story. I hope he's at peace now.
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59. Elsa
I'm a dentist. During my study a couple of years ago, a friend and I were placed at a nursing home. This was to educate us about the challenges of oral care in an aged care facility. The home was divided into three sections: low care, high care, and terminal. On the first day there, a lot of the residents would approach us and keep doing so throughout the day to become friends with us as they kept forgetting they had met us only hours before.
It was very sweet and I became attached to many of them. It's surprising how they will forget you in an hour but will never forget "growing up on a farm with a sheep called Gilbert." I became closest to a woman called Elsa (who had dementia and another fatal disorder that I cannot recall) in the terminal section. She was named so due to her long white hair, similar to the Frozen character.
Every day, I'd feed her, brush her hair, and wash her dentures; yet she only ever spoke two words; Jessica and Joel. She would repeat both names every day and point to their pictures in her room. They were her children. Speaking to the nurses, I found out a despicable truth: they dropped her off seven years ago and never came and visited again.
Every day, she would get better at remembering me, but never said my name once, always just Jessica and Joel. I would check up on her during the day and every time, I would see her crying in bed and I would offer to bring her some water, she would reply with Jessica and Joel. One morning after a month of first meeting Elsa, I walked into her room and she wasn't in there.
She wasn't the kind to walk around, so I knew something was wrong and I was fearing the worst. After asking one of the nurses that I hadn't ever met, she told me she crossed over the rainbow bridge the night before after gesturing for water and saying the names Jessica, Joel, and Joseph. My name is Joseph. I cried just writing you this story.
60. Go For It
One that always stuck hard with me was my preceptor when I first became a nurse telling me she was going to travel the world as soon as she retired. She was about four years away at that point, and she had spent her whole life devoted to being the nice Church lady/nurse after her husband passed in their 20s. She just never put herself first.
My second year into nursing, she fainted in the parking lot on her way into work and soon after got diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. She recently passed and never had the strength to travel. I remember telling my introverted self at that point that I didn’t want to just work and pass away and have regrets. I wanted to live my life to the fullest.
Here I am now working as a travel nurse in Curacao and living a life I never dreamed of.
61. Toughness In The ER
This little girl, probably six or seven years old, had some form of spinal cancer. My mother had talked to her a couple of times. On this particular day, she was excited because her dad was coming home from a business trip to Bali. This little girl was so happy because he was bringing her back a toy. The next day, the Bali disasters occurred, which caused her father to pass.
She was distraught and spent the next four days just crying with little bits of sleep in between. Her mother spent most of that time with her daughter. Then, about two months later, fate decided she would suffer even more—her mother passed in a car accident while driving to the hospital to visit her daughter.
So her grandparents got the duty of care for her, but she passed two weeks afterward from cancer. The poor girl suffered worse than I could even fathom in her last two months of life; losing most of what was important to her before dying herself. I hope no one goes through anything like that again. My mother thinks she just gave up after her mother passed, but this little girl lost everything just by some form of poor luck. My mother does leave flowers on her grave every year on the anniversary. Sometimes, I really do not understand how my mother deals with being in the ER. She is quite possibly the strongest person I know just because of that.
62. For God And Country
I’m a chaplain in hospitals and hospices. Doing everything we can to reconcile people before they pass is a large portion of my work. I have a lot of stories. Regrets naturally are expressed at end of life because people want to close their narratives and they are reflecting on everything they’ve lived. This doesn’t have to be scary or heartbreaking; it’s often natural and a way to end things with beauty.
However, the worst confessions and regrets I’ve heard came from veterans. Some never regret actions done in conflict and have a chain of command. This was the “I was following orders” mentality that can go all the way up to how they perceive God. One man was recruited to the CIA and asked them, “So I guess you’ll have me killing people.” He tells me they responded: “We call it ‘target acquisition’ now.”
The man never had a family because the CIA warned him to keep away from relational ties. He didn’t have any regrets as he was going about any of this. The one that sticks out to me the most, though, is a man who was an American soldier who became a German POW, and was eventually liberated by the Russians. He said the Russians freed them, but did little else and they were left to fend for themselves until US could extract them.
His biggest regret? That he took things from the corpses so he could have clothes and money to buy food. He bartered for food with valuables he retrieved from his late brothers in arms. He knows it was for survival, but he couldn’t come to forgive himself, which led to his second regret—he wished he died instead of his brother who was slain in action, also during WWII.
The important lesson isn’t to focus on the regrets, it’s to live a life now of love, acceptance, and mending bridges because you don’t know when it’ll be your time to tie loose ends.
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63. Epinephrine Overdrive
Recently, we coded a baby eight times in one night. We should have let go after the first code, but unfortunately, the epinephrine kicked in...after 40 minutes of CPR. Really, this was an attack on the baby. The parents were unrealistic about the baby's chances of survival, and they wanted everything done to try and save it. At some point, the attending on the case finally told the parents that we could do this all night, but in the end, there was nothing that could be done for the infant's survival.
64. He’s A Riot
I had a patient tell me that if he could go back for just one more day, he’d sleep with his wife even just one more time. I admit, I laughed when he said this, but he went on to tell me about their relationship and how beautiful she was. He was a sailor and admitted that he spent many nights with many different women around the world, but something about her made him settle down and get serious.
When they were first married, he'd come home from work and would find her naked in the kitchen and they would just go at it like rabbits. He told me to go home and surprise my husband by doing the same and to name our firstborn after him, ha. My last day working with him, he looked me in the eye and said: "Money is nothing, it's all about the poon. Pardon my French, young lady."
65. Real-Life Zombie
In 2009 I worked as a transport EMT. Essentially, my partner and I transported people out of hospitals to specialty care facilities (mostly nursing homes). However, one day in early April we got a call to transport a young kid, 16 maybe 17, to a more advanced hospital. I can't remember NYU or LIJ or something like that.
Just another day on the job...or so I thought. We arrived at the young man sitting on the bed, feet on the floor, and the mother crying by his side. The nurse informed us he was going to the advanced care hospital for monitoring and more tests. During spring break, this kid and four of his friends went to the Dominican republic unsupervised, and when they returned, the mother had to physically get the kid off the plane as his brain was literally fried.
His friends said nothing happened and he "was normal the whole time" and they promised they "didn't do substances." Sure enough, he tested positive for nothing, and the hospital suspected, by way of MRI and EEG, it was most likely mushrooms The crazy part that made it one of the things that stick with me, is this kid had almost no executive functions.
And the MRI showed big black spots on his brain. He was incontinent, he couldn't talk, and he couldn't eat anything...BUT he would follow every command he was given with a shuffling stumble. He walked to the stretcher and sat down on command. He waved when he was told to wave bye to his mom, and he even blinked when the nurse told him to. He was a real-life zombie, almost like he was trapped in his own mind, or parts of it were missing. Seeing the mother so sad and having no idea what happened was the most tragic part of the whole ordeal.
66. Family Reunion
When my grandmother was on her deathbed, she gave a shocking confession. She told her oldest son that he actually had an older sister somewhere back in their home country. She gave birth out of wedlock (not sure with my grandfather or not) and gave her away. My grandmother said she regretted not telling her kids and keeping a family relationship away from them.
My family ended up finding the girl a year or so after my grandmother passed. Some of my aunts and uncles even went to go visit her back home.
67. The Experience On The Cardiac Ward
I was a patient in a hospital for a heart issue when I was 22. They kept me for three days in the cardiac ward and I shared a room with an older gentleman who I believe was around 80 based on his visitors. I never saw him behind the privacy curtain. I was completely okay and sitting up in bed working on schoolwork for most of my visit.
When his family came in, I could tell the situation was bad. His whole extended family came. Everyone from his wife to his grandchildren. He was also on a ventilator that was keeping his breathing up. On the same night, after they all visited he tried to pull everything off and it set off an alarm, causing a nurse to rush in. All I could hear from a very muffled voice as the nurse tried to tell him he needed this equipment to live was: “What kind of life is this...” It made me question my own issues and cry in the dark next to him.
68. There But For The Grace Of God Go I
One that stuck with me: I was young, 21 maybe, and I had a nice old man in my ambulance. He had his hair slicked back and he was wearing a nice shirt. I honestly don't remember what was wrong with him, or the other stuff that we talked about, but he stopped abruptly at one point and told me, almost kind of sternly: "Hey kid, stay out of the slammer, trust me."
Now, I wasn't really in danger of going behind bars the time, although I wasn't that far out of danger either, but it stuck with me. Here was this guy who realized he could be a perfectly decent human being. He could be of value to people. But he could only do that if he wasn't stuck rotting away in a cell. He must have wasted years of his good, precious, life in there and he didn't want to see me do the same.
I realized I'd be an old man too someday, and I didn't want to risk time just to make a few extra bucks as a starving college kid.
69. Esophageal Cancer At 24
Seeing a 24-year-old (the same age as me at the time) come in with difficulty swallowing, then being told he had end-stage esophageal cancer and only weeks to live, whilst his wife was about to give birth, was eye-opening, to say the least. I was there when he was told, and to this day I still don’t know how I turned up for work the next day.
Having worked there for five years already, I’d never experienced anything so awful. He managed a few months, met his son, then passed away at home. It's something that will stick with me forever I think.
70. A Promise Is A Promise
I can tell you what I regret from my first experience with a patient who later passed. I'm a nurse, was working ICU at the time, and was freshly coming off orientation with about 1.5 years total nursing experience at the time, so not quite a rookie. Anyway, I had a patient one hour after my shift have severe difficulty breathing. After consulting the doctor, we decided to intubate and were getting ready to start the procedure.
The woman had widened panic in her eyes, and before we gave her a sedative for when she went out, I told her, "Don’t worry dear you can relax. We can do the breathing for you." This seemed to calm her some, and then we sedated her and did the procedure. It started going south. Her pressure started dropping, even after we put her on a cocktail of medications. I sat in her room the entire time and did any charting I could at her bedside, since alarms would constantly be going off.
This went on until 2 pm, when the family came and decided to take her off the ventilator as she had a poor prognosis. She passed a little bit later. I will always regret telling her not to worry, that we would do the breathing for her. Because in the end, we couldn't. I just regret that I couldn't fulfill my promise to her. So my advice to any of the younger ones in health care, don't make a promise you don’t know for certain you can keep.
71. TBI - Traumatic Brain Injury
I currently work on an intensive unit. I’ve seen so much...and I don't believe anything has hit me as hard as this. I was working at a mental health facility after graduating. This facility was interesting—it was in a modest, ranch-style house that was made specifically for this population (open layout for easy supervision, panic buttons, etc), but mostly, it was just a house and the staff were the outliers.
There were eight clients at a time, and they would either get rehospitalized or go on to independent living, which was a step above being hospitalized. I got extremely close to these clients and got to know them very well. I have many stories of their antics, but I recall a certain individual whose situation really hurt.
I was specifically hired for a man in his 60s, M, who had suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). M was a successful toy marketer in his "past life" (as his family called it). One day, twenty-something years earlier, M got into a horrific car accident. He survived, but was cursed forever from the incident—he became afflicted with poor memory and severe PTSD. Many psychological issues and physical concerns manifested as well.
M would scream every two minutes (on the dot), begging staff to not bring him to the hospital. He would then ask if he were OK. It was difficult for him to communicate, but he would sometimes get moments of clarity. He was a big man who seemed intimidating when he had these bouts, but it made a lot more sense when he had come to us with the diagnosis of bipolar with a history of other things.
M was never violent towards our staff, and we knew that he was pawned off to us because his insurance was no longer covering the hospitalization. His family also did not want to take care of him. He was a lot to handle, but he quickly took a place in my heart. He remembered my name because his sister’s name was the same, but other than that, he did not recognize any other staff members and did not remember his day-to-day living.
He needed help showering and would often be embarrassed to have a 20-something-year-old woman helping him. He would cry, whispering, "Not fair." We watched Titanic every single shift together. He liked Rose in particular and seeing her on-screen would calm him down. M loved diet soft drinks and would smile every so often when I brought one to him.
He would be still until his next outburst. I would be able to successfully de-escalate the situation once I showed him his diet soft drink and helped him drink it. I bought 300 movies on VHS for us to watch together because it was the only thing that calmed him down. M was much more than his impairment. He was still a human—one who I grew fond of because I could not grasp the immeasurable pain he was in.
His wife abandoned him after it was deemed he would not sign the divorce papers. She wanted him to die so that she could take his money. I never met her. He had sons, and he pleaded for them to come, but I only saw one, once. He only stayed for a half-hour. I think M saw me as his form of family (telling me that I was his daughter when he never had one). The other staff did not like M as much as I did. They petitioned for him to be sent to a nursing home because his care was too much. I would miss M but hoped for him a better life—mostly for him to have staff trained in adults with memory issues. I never got to say goodbye as he got transported by medical staff to his new nursing home.
72. Together Again
I've worked in both long-term care and oncology/palliative care. The biggest lesson I learned from someone was to love your loved ones as long as you can and as hard as you can. This resident's wife had passed years ago, but he still wrote her love letters every day. When he was about to pass, the environmental services team put a picture of her on his ceiling so he could look at her all day long.
I fed him his last meal (a few bites of soup), about six hours before he passed on my second last day of work there. That was a tough one. Other lessons: Stay single for as long as you can, travel as much as you can, and don't get old.
73. Wailing Of A Different Nature
I was doing a clinical rotation in the emergency room when the ambulance called. They revealed the details of an urgent case that made the hairs on my back stand up. They said they were about ten minutes out with a 19-year-old male who had a close-range wound to his upper left chest area (that is, the front of your shoulder, just below the collarbone). He came home early and some guys were robbing his house, so they shot him and took off. His parents had to wait in the lobby for the authorities to finish up with him before they could see him. The angry look on his father’s face and the wailing sound that his mother was making are not things I will soon forget. The kid made a full recovery, by the way. He’s got a small scar and story to tell.
74. When It’s Time, It’s Time
The passings with a bed full of family and an alert, fighting patient are the hard ones. The hardest one, emotionally, I've been graced to be a part of was a 50ish-year-old man with very bad pulmonary fibrosis. He had a “Do Not Intubate” order, so we weren’t supposed to ventilate him. It's near impossible to ventilate with severe pulmonary fibrosis anyway, and the patient was well educated on his sickness and the severity of it.
The kids were all in their mid-20s, so around my age at the time. They were begging me and the doctor to do more, all while their dad basically suffocated without a ventilator. The dad was alert, showering his kids with love and calmness, and it was hard not to put myself in their shoes. Same age as me, and he was the same age as my dad.
This stuff sticks with you. Emotionally, that is a top three for me.
75. Crossing The Rainbow Bridge Together
Two of them, both senior citizens. They both haunt me, years later, because I don't know what happened to either of them. The first came in as a homeless woman in the winter. She was fine medically but homeless because her husband passed, and her demonic children took the family home out from under her, leaving her on the street. Somehow, she ended up in my city.
They put her on a psych hold, just so she had somewhere to sleep while they figured out where she could go. She was in her 80s. Her entire life was in a grocery bag. The other was transferred to our ER after being medically cleared elsewhere (because ours has a psych ER, and the other main hospital in the area does not).
She was also in her 80s, I believe. She was the sole caretaker of her very ill husband and she reached a point where she felt it was impossible. Just everything. Life. She was so tired. Ultimately, she medicated her husband and herself so that they could die together. He passed. She lived. The doctors sent her for a psych eval and I assume there was a discussion about the law as well. I wish I had remembered her name, just so I could try to find the outcome.
76. Can Nothing More Be Done?
In the experiences I have had, the patient is usually too preoccupied with his own pain or suffering to actually say a regret. However, there have been plenty of experiences where I've had a lot of regret and which sometimes still wake me up from sleep even though they are 10-year-old stories. The regrets are not related to a mistake I made, but rather about “maybe I could have done more.”
10 years back, I lost an 18-year-old female patient who had come into the hospital in a critical state. I was working in a very busy, overburdened hospital in a developing country. She was an only daughter and I still remember her parents. The father had told me something along the lines of, “She's our only daughter, please do whatever is possible to save her.”
She had a sudden collapse and went. I've asked numerous colleagues and seniors since then about what more I could have done to save her, and they've all said that nothing more could have been done. But I still feel that I should have left everything and just sat with the patient the whole night, watching for any catastrophe to hit. It is my one huge regret of my life.
I blame myself even though I can't fathom what more I could have done. It took me four years to tell this story to my wife. And this is probably only the third or fourth occasion in the last 10 years that I'm mentioning this. But it stays with me.
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77. The Transportation Tragedy
I don't work for a hospital exactly, I do medical transports between hospitals. I had a patient that was suicidal and took, among other things, half a bottle of Tylenol. She went to sleep expecting she would never wake up, but when she did, she changed her mind and called the authorities. She was rushed to the hospital and treated. I encountered her several months later—and her situation was heartbreaking.
Thanks to Tylenol, her liver was failing. She was jaundiced a lot and in constant abdominal pain. I was taking them to another hospital for a last-ditch liver consult. One of the nurses told me that the patient was on the transplant list, but since she had a history of suicide, she was bumped by anyone without such a history. Essentially, she had no real chance of getting one. It was sad to see someone slowly passing because of one decision they made and almost immediately regretted. They were in their 40s if I recall, so still would have had plenty of time otherwise.
78. Bedside Manner
A huge learning experience came while I was a student and was treating a patient with advanced breast cancer. She was extremely cheerful and lit up the whole ward. I had a good connection with her as well. One day during the rounds, she pulled me aside and asked me a question that has haunted me since. She asked, "Do you think it will be cured?"
The doctors senior to me had already done her counseling, and as far as I knew she already knew her terminal prognosis. So I said the honest thing: “No, you cannot be cured.” She suddenly pulled back, smiled, and told me, “Never, ever say that to a patient, doctor. Never tell them it won't be cured.” It was a learning experience for me. It's not so much about not telling people the truth, but rather never taking hope from them.
Always give hope. Yes, tell them the chances and truth and whatever, but always give them hope. That statement has redefined how I talk to my patients.
79. A Heartbreaking Tragedy
A four-month-old passed from pneumonia. The mother was out of town for the week for a bachelorette party, so the dad was taking care of the baby. The only thing is, he really shouldn't have been the one looking after it—he had a pretty bad cough, which should have been a red flag. He went to check on her around 3 am to find her blue and not breathing. By the time she arrived in the ED, it was too late. Hearing the mother scream via phone after being told that her infant was dead still gives me chills.
Another one—I saw the same guy come four times in four months from an overdose. Every time, his parents would pay for him to go to rehab, and four times he relapsed and overdosed within a week of sobriety. The fourth time, his parents didn’t find him in time, and it was too late. They were able to revitalize him, but he was down for so long that he was brain dead. Seeing his parents, who gave him every opportunity to help himself, have to make the decision to pull him off life support was heartbreaking.
80. Seeking Absolution
When I was in nursing school, there was a patient I had who was a Jewish man from Ukraine. He was sent to a concentration camp by the Germans where he had to take food from a child so that he and his family could survive. He was 15. It has haunted him his whole life, and as he was about to pass, he started to hallucinate that I was the boy and begged me for forgiveness.
I said, “I forgive you,” and he just went. There were a few people in the room, but I was the only Russian speaker and for whatever reason, that made it extra intense.
81. Amputation From Flesh-Eating Bacteria
A woman got flesh-eating bacteria on her C-section wound. All of her limbs had to be amputated and her kidneys failed. Our staff rarely get upset, but our nurses would cry after caring for her since it was so heartbreaking.
82. Motherly Love
I'm a nurse in the elderly ward. When a patient had recently passed, she kept calling for her son. But there was one tragic problem. Her son had been there, but the first thing he asked me was “When can I get a death certificate?” I couldn't believe it. I was like, “Well, she isn't gone yet, for starters, and that isn't the top priority.” I explained how we've kept her comfortable and told him the staff was looking after her.
About five minutes after this conversation he left. I was fuming. Me and one of the doctors spent the day in the room with her, making sure someone was with her at all times even though she cried for her son. She passed as we were handing her over to the new shift. No word of a lie it was a two-minute changeover, and she went. It was like she knew she was alone and her son wasn't there, so she passed alone. That breaks my heart.
83. From Normal To Aggressive
I wouldn't say this is the worst, but the story still makes me upset. A young lady who just finished chemo for breast cancer came in with behavioral changes. She would scratch the staff and pull out her IV lines. At one point, it got so bad that we had to restrain her. Whenever we gave her an antipsychotic, she calmed down and became lucid; but when it wore off, she'd get very aggressive. She's still in the hospital, but it's very sad because she's so young and was normal before the chemo.
84. Old Married Couple
I’ve been a nurse for 12 years in the ICU and PACU. The PACU is where you go after surgery to recover from anesthesia before going home or being moved to an inpatient room. What’s stuck with me most is how older married people act when they wake up. So many older women wake up from anesthesia after major surgery and ask me how their husband is doing, explain that he can’t drive well in the dark, and are worried that he didn’t eat.
They tell me to send them home so they can stop worrying about them. But so many older men wake up and cry for their wife, wanting her to be there with them. A few times, outright sobbing about how they’ve treated their wife in the past.
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85. Ice Packs At 106
I had an experience with a patient with a blood born yeast infection. His temperature stayed above 106, even when covered in ice packs, and this pretty much fried his brain...but it got even worse than that. His tiny blood vessels started to clog, so he went blind and we also had to cut off his toes, fingers, and limbs. By the time he passed, he was a blind torso vegetable.
86. Unlucky Larry
I had a co-worker named "Larry" who was in a job-site accident. Basically, he was underneath some scaffolding when a vehicle backed into it, and it collapsed on top of him. He was pinned down, couldn't feel his legs, and was bleeding from a head wound. Larry was 100% convinced that this was the end. We were trying to pull the scaffold off and render first aid and all that, and he kept asking to use a phone to call his wife "Suzie."
Our supervisor gave him a phone, and Larry called Suzie and confessed to having multiple affairs, taking money from Suzie's parents, creeping on their neighbor's teenage daughter, and partying with Suzie's sister. Larry was crying, telling her he was so sorry, begging for forgiveness. And then the other shoe dropped. Turns out Larry was just pinned down by a couple of tubes and bracers that fell together just right, and it was tight enough to pinch a nerve and slow his circulation a bit.
He got six stitches on his head and some bruises, and that was the extent of his physical injuries. He survived and made a full recovery. However, he did lose his house, his pickup truck, custody of his kids, and half his paycheck to child support and alimony in the divorce. Plus, he got written up for not wearing a hard hat under scaffolding.
87. Point Blank
He had a point-blank wound to the face. Not the slug-type, but the pellets-type. The dude was obviously more dead than alive, but he held on to dear life. He made a HORRIFIC “snorting” sound when breathing. He was airlifted to a bigger city where they could actually do something about it.
Being totally honest, I hope he passed in peace. I never knew what happened to him after the helicopter took off.
88. The Silver Lining
I’m a hospice social worker, so I have the honor of getting to listen to peoples’ life stories, including favorite memories and regrets. Most regrets center around what they didn’t get to do, like never traveling to Italy when their family was originally from Naples. Some regret not getting specific education—wanting to go to college but never doing it.
Some regret their choice in partner, especially when mistreatment was involved, or cheating. Many express a sadness that looks a lot like regret if they are estranged from family, and some have anticipatory grief from knowing they will miss a milestone, like the birth of a grandchild. Some regret not taking better care of their health. In general, though, life is long and time smoothes some of the rough edges, so people tend to focus on the good.
89. The Sixth Floor
We have what we call "the sixth floor" in our psychiatric unit. It's usually voluntary for patients to admit themselves because they want the help, which is why it was so unnerving to find out what I did. A girl my age had gone away with herself with her pajamas about a month ago up there. Nobody expected her to get through it as she was put on a ventilator and had brain damage. But thankfully she's woken up—she's been talking, writing, and doing all sorts of things. So far, that's the worst. For a hospital, I know that's not much, but I just started in November so we'll see.
90. Dog Eat Dog
I worked in hospice. The top regret from patients was not spending time with family and/or lost time due to a family feud. Probably number two was wasting their life with their spouse (for various reasons) when they could have possibly been with someone they loved or met a soul mate. Number three was usually not accomplishing a bucket list item such as living in a foreign country.
We were not supposed to let people bring their pets in to say goodbye, since other people could have allergies or an untrained pet could poop somewhere. Still, I always told family members to smuggle in Fluffy in an oversized purse, Paris Hilton style. Large dogs were harder, but since they were literally emotional support animals at the time, I never told them to leave.
91. A Fatal Mistake
We had a patient that needed a central line. For those not in the medical field, this is where they insert basically a large IV into the jugular (a much larger vein than those in your arms). We only do this for critically ill patients who need specific medications for blood pressure. The resident performing this procedure was attempting to place the line, and instead of inserting the line in the jugular, he placed it into the aorta
The aorta is the huge artery that pumps blood away from your heart. This is a potentially fatal mistake. The patient could have passed. I still don't know what happened to her, but she was also taking blood thinners, meaning that her ability to clot (and heal) from such a procedure was severely compromised. Everyone makes mistakes, but that was a bad one.
92. If I Could Turn Back Time
He wished he had been a better father to his daughter. He wished they had reconnected. But there was an even more tragic side to this confession. His dementia prevented him from remembering they had reconnected years before and that she visited often. I wish I could have made him aware that he had accomplished his last wish. But he passed not really understanding that.
93. The Trampoline Tragedy
A dude in his thirties was playing with his kid on a trampoline when the worst happened. He fell off, broke his neck, got confined to a wheelchair, became a tetraplegic, and had minimal use of his hands. From fitness, independence, career, etc. to complete, permanent disability in one second. Bang. Just, you know, what do you say to that guy? It won’t get better. It’s not like he’s 80 and nearing the end anyway. And it’s not even like he was driving under the influence or tombstoning or whatever. He was just really, really, really unlucky.
94. Gone But Not Forgotten
I remember this 40-year-old patient who I had was perishing from breast cancer that spread throughout her body. She was diagnosed with breast cancer 10 years earlier and had a mastectomy. The doctor recommended for her to have a bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction due to the high risk of recurrence of cancer. She said that she wanted to keep her breast (a real breast rather than an implant) in case she remarries so she will be somewhat “whole.”
She very much regretted not getting the bilateral mastectomy. If she did, she would not have gotten cancer in her remaining breast and be facing mortality at such a young age. Also, the patient never ended up marrying after all. Then, a week later, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I instantly told the doctor that I want a bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction.
I also had an aggressive form of cancer. My doctor kept pushing a lumpectomy, which I probably wouldn’t have gotten before I heard how much she regretted her decision. I feel that she actually saved my life sharing and opening up with her biggest regret of all time. I was 48 years old at the time of my diagnosis and have been cancer-free for 10 years now.
I think of that lady often. She was a mother of five. She was a true blessing to me. She was my last patient on my last shift prior to getting my results and starting chemo. If it wasn't for her, I know I would not be here.
95. Nurse Horror Story
I don't work in a hospital, but my mom does. She worked in long-term care and she said there is so much that goes on in the hospitals. She's had to report several coworkers for overmedicating patients with their heart and seizure meds, to the point of harming the patient. She once found out a patient passed away when she came in the next morning—but the reason was so much worse than overmedicating.
Apparently, the nurses were beating the patients if they did something they didn’t like. It was all captured on the security footage. But the one I personally saw was when my great-grandma had hip replacement surgery—she was having trouble using the bathroom, so they gave her an enema. It still didn’t help. So they gave her another, and another, and another, but all too close together because they weren’t keeping records. It basically caused her bowels to burst.
96. Pet The Squirrel
I’m an EMT. Most patients that I see in my ambulance are too sick to talk in these cases, but one sticks with me. He was a male in his mid-40s, and he called us for chest pain. Turns out, he was in the middle of a massive heart attack. The saddest part of all of it was that the patient had medical training, so he knew that it wasn’t good.
We were screaming to the hospital, just speeding down the road, and he looked me right in the eyes and goes, “I should have eaten that freaking cake.” When I asked what he meant, he told me, “Screw what others think. If it makes you happy do it, eat the cake, pet a squirrel, take a nap. Screw anyone else, it doesn’t matter.” He crashed shortly after we got to the ER and didn’t come back.
Now at least if I want to do something purely for the fun of it and my wife asks why I want to, all I have to say is, “I want to pet the squirrel.”
97. Fit As A Fiddle
I went to see a patient during clinical rounds a few years back when I was a med student. I think it was for dermatology. The guy was just a year older than I was. Remarkably fit, fairly good-looking, and from what little I got to see of him, he was also pretty mild-mannered. Well, so his story was that he loves to play basketball, and that's what he did on that fateful day.
After a quick shower and a wipe down, he came across a disturbing sight—he found blood on his towel. The blood came from his scalp, from some weird scab-like growth. No prior symptoms. He freaked out, then went to a neighborhood dermatologist to get it checked out. The doctor ended up telling him to go to a bigger hospital, which is where I ended up meeting him. He took some tests, and my prof and I went over to the station to check out the EMR. He grilled me a bit on what exams I would have ordered, knowing what I did.
I said I would suggest a PET-CT, and so we checked that out first. For those who don't know, a PET-CT will check the uptake of radioactive glucose that has been injected for the test. The more active metabolism an organ has, the more radioactivity it shows, meaning it shows up black. Cancer has a lot higher metabolism than normal tissue, so it's a pretty neat way to check the entire body for metastasis.
When we loaded this guy's PET-CT, we were both struck momentarily speechless. His whole spine and both hips were fully covered in black. Bones...should not be black. Cancer (which the prof later told me was melanoma, a particularly aggressive type of skin cancer) had spread across his whole body.
The prof gave him about three months to live, at best. The guy was just one year older than I was, and a heck of a lot fitter. It was really eye-opening to see that my young age didn't mean I was immortal or invincible. Since then, I’ve adopted the motto of Memento Mori. I still think about him every once in a while.
98. If Not Now, When?
This was a weird one for me and actually apropos for my current life. I still think about her. This happened maybe six or seven years ago. She was an older female in her 70s with a history of breast cancer. At that point, she was in the ICU for sepsis, I believe. I talked to her and she mentioned she was widowed. I gave my condolences and stated “That’s hard, I’m sorry about your loss. I imagine you miss him.” Her response shocked me.
To my surprise, she told me, “No, actually I don’t. I was relieved when he went. I was never happy with him. I didn’t leave him because that’s not what we did back in the day. So here I wasted many years with a man who didn’t treat me well, and now I have cancer.” Oof. Life lesson folks.
99. A Woman, The ER, And Her Husband
One of my nursing lecturers had a peculiar story. The mother was only a few weeks off giving birth and had suddenly become unconscious. She was immediately rushed to the ER by her husband. Apparently, she and the other nurse on duty were on the mother's bed taking turns giving her CPR as she was being rushed to surgery.
They explained to the father the horrible prognosis: either both of them would die, or only one of them would. This was their first child together, so I can't imagine how the father felt—just the day before, he was excited to have a family with the love of his life, and the next day, he was going to be all alone. They finished the surgery and the mother had unfortunately passed, but the baby was alive and well. I can't imagine the pain the father went through, but I'm so happy his baby was okay. He apparently named the baby after the mother.
100. I Think We’re Alone Now
Nearly all the patients I’ve had in ICU didn’t really have to ability to speak by the time they were my patient. I did have one lady who was going out relatively slowly, and I do remember her saying to me that she regretted how boring her life was and how she wasted it doing nothing but being a housewife. But there was a huge twist.
She said this all in front of her adult kids while they sat there, mortified and hurt.
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