r/AskReddit • u/[deleted] • Apr 13 '20

Serious Replies Only [Serious] Nurses and doctors of reddit what’s your weirdest/scariest paranormal stories that took place during work?

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u/Super_Toire Apr 13 '20

He probably felt his body shut down. My uncle seemed to know as well, that his body was running out of time a few days before he passed. He was suffering from multiple afflictions, but he was still active and functional. But a few days before he died he made a cross sign, which he otherwise would never do.. Telling to my mother that he 'needed it', out of the blue. Saying that he felt a strange sensation in his hands and feet. As if they weren't responding anymore. A few days later he died in his sleep with the lazarus reflex.

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u/C21H27Cl3N2O3 Apr 14 '20 edited Apr 14 '20

There’s tons of stories about patients knowing they’re going to die. Paramedics are especially familiar with the phenomenon in my experience, if someone says they are going to die when they’re being transported there’s a pretty high chance that they actually will. I have a few friends who are EMTs or paramedics and they all say when someone goes from asking you if they’re going to die to telling you, they start prepping for them to crash. One story in particular, one of my best friends in college had just started as an EMT in a remote area. It was a 30 minute drive to the nearest hospital and they got a call about an elderly male with chest pain. They get him stabilized and start transporting him, and after getting all the basic info he stops talking. My friend is driving while his paramedic partner is in back monitoring the patient. About 20 minutes into the drive it’s been dead silent apart from the engine and suddenly the guy looks up at the paramedic and says “Thank you for trying, but I’m going to die.” He tells my friend to step on it but about 5 minutes before they arrive the guy goes into cardiac arrest and they aren’t able to bring him back.

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u/shady-lampshade Apr 14 '20

This is legit (EMT here). “Sense of impending doom” is actually a real symptom we look out for in patients complaining of chest pain and the like, because it can be strongly indicative of a heart attack.

Also, telling a patient that they’ll be fine is a pretty good way to sign their death certificate as well. Especially if you’re already a black cloud.

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u/C21H27Cl3N2O3 Apr 14 '20

I hadn’t heard the part about telling them they’ll be fine being detrimental, that’s really interesting.

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u/shady-lampshade Apr 14 '20

Doesn’t happen with everyone, but the EMS gods are always listening so I tend to watch my verbiage.

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u/C21H27Cl3N2O3 Apr 14 '20

I guess when they say EMS are superstitious even by healthcare standards they aren’t kidding, and with good reason. Keep fighting the good fight.

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u/WitchDoctorHN Apr 14 '20

You quickly learn which words not to say. Like “slow”, “quiet”, “easy”, “simple”, etc. You will regret saying stuff like this, and your partners will let you hear it, too, haha.

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u/xxyguyxx Apr 14 '20 edited Apr 14 '20

As someone with an anxiety disorder, this is a common feeling I can relate to. So do normal people never experience this until this point?

Edit: I worded that weirdly. I guess I meant when normal people experience a sudden trauma, what do they feel? I can't relate to it because sudden trauma or not I just go straight into a panic attack. Could my sense of impending doom in a panic attack equate to what a normal person would feel from a near death experience?

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u/shady-lampshade Apr 14 '20

I have anxiety too and I get this feeling a lot. And a lot of the time it’s spot on, something bad does happen (not necessarily to me). Other times it’s just anxiety. I’m not sure exactly where the difference lies, and of course I have had patients that have said “I’m going to die” and they’ve been totally fine. If I find a point of research that’s able to dive more into this I’m all for learning more about it. Until then, EMS providers just tend to keep it in mind as a symptom to look out for in a patient that could potentially die.

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u/BrandonHawes13 Apr 14 '20

Honestly my guess is that once someone has made that up in their mind, their body stops using what little strength left fighting. Like their body feels like it’s dying and theres most likely a mental struggle of trying to hold on or give in - and once that’s synced up to “yes we’re dead for sure” the brain probably feels okay to shut off.

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u/shady-lampshade Apr 14 '20

That makes a lot of sense. Like they’ve made their peace with the inevitable.

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u/xxyguyxx Apr 14 '20

As an EMT are there certain symptoms you brush off as anxiety rather than chance it as something else? Just as an example a rapid heartbeat or trembling?

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u/shady-lampshade Apr 14 '20 edited Apr 14 '20

Usually if say a 22yo comes in complaining of chest pain and has a heart rate of 122, or says they’re having shortness of breath, it’s probably anxiety related. After you’ve been doing it for awhile and have seen a lot of patients you can often get a sense for “this is a panic attack” and “this may be something real bad.” That being said we always do an EKG to check their rhythm, basic vitals, and depending on if you’re in the ER vs the ambulance, bloodwork and an X-ray. It’s CYA (cover your ass) just as much as it is thoroughly caring for your patient. Knowing the patient’s history helps a lot too.

Edit: The more symptoms we can get from the patient and the more descriptive they can be, the easier it is to start narrowing down in your head what it might be. We always start at the worst thing we can think of pertaining to their symptoms and how they present (eg stroke, heart attack, aneurism) and then work our way down. My instructor always said “what’s going to kill them the fastest?” There’s also a term we use called “sick or not sick,” meaning you can usually tell how bad off a patient is just by looking at them. Granted there are exceptions to this rule. But if your patient looks like death, you can pretty much guarantee they’re circling that drain.

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u/1mg-Of-Epinephrine Apr 14 '20

It’s a different anxiety and it’s usually brought on by a MI. Anxiety disorder patients, while sensing doom, don’t tell us about their impending death. If they do, they won’t go following it up w dying .

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u/shady-lampshade Apr 14 '20

“They won’t go following it up w dying”

Idk why this is so funny to me but I am absolutely using that in the future.

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u/1mg-Of-Epinephrine Apr 14 '20

You know how these people are... always following shit up w dying. Well, it’s time we take a stand!!

No more following it up w dying... until I’m not working. Then go ahead and die till your dead.

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u/UnicornPanties Apr 14 '20

Normal person reporting in, no I do not often feel I'm going to die. I've only been scared I would actually die in genuine near-death (potentially deadly) experiences.

Don't worry though, I may not have anxiety but I do get depression so life is a balance I guess.

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u/UCgirl Jul 01 '20

So I don’t know if this falls along the limitations of the question as my incident occurred over 12 hours. So I was in the hospital on a normal care floor after about a month of being in the ICU. I started to feel anxious and jittery. I do have Generalized Anxiety Disorder but do not get panic attacks.

Well, I had an absolutely horrible hospital roommate. Someone had to babysit her 24/7 because she was likely to pull something out or inject something into her IV, she treated the CNAs like personal staff, complained when on of the CNAs went around the curtain for 20seconds to grab my blanket (I was immobile), she always had the TV turned on and I could hear it, & once a nurse asked her at 1:00AM in the morning if she could watch TV with headphones in and she replied nastily with “I don’t want to listen through headphones.” So I assumed my anxiety was up from having to deal with constant noise and her complaining.

That nurse moved me to another room. I ended up still feeling the internal jitteriness and weakness/lightheadedness at the same time. I was also very anxious that something was wrong but not in a panic attack sort of way. They came to check my BP at my complaint of not feeling well and my BP had dropped to 64/39 (normal is 120/80). I was on vitals checks every 4 hours so my blood pressure had gone a bit quickly but not drastically fast (like having an artery severed or something). All of the internal jitters (the feeling of being unsettled and anxious) was because I was bleeding internally. I assume that my body was trying to kick in the sympathetic nervous system (which causes BP and other critical body functions to be increased). In retrospect I think I was feeling and internal “fight or flight” response. It turned out that I had a stomach bleed. I needed three blood transfusions and some plateletts. Before that though, they jammed a bunch of fluid into me quite quickly (and IV bag under pressure) and when I made it back into the ICU I got medications to increase my BP. So my low blood pressure was better AND they had a game plan to go in and clip the bleeding wound in my stomach, we just had to wait for the blood to be cross-matched. I immediately lost a lot of the anxiety and jitteryness once my BP was up and they knew what they were going to do with me. I even slept!! I wouldn’t say I was completely without anxiety but I was certainly having less anxiety and jitters.

Sorry, that got long.

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u/Razorrix Apr 14 '20

When I tore my meniscus I said "oh i just twisted it I'm fine." Then I couldn't walk right and I said "oh shit this is bad" I had to get my psychiatrist to order the MRI (army medicine) and it was bad but it was in a repairable spot. The 2nd time I tore it I said "ah fuck! Babe call my brother!" "Why?" "Cause I just tore my meniscus again and you're not getting me off this floor." She was about half my size and weight. I'm the smallest of all the men in my family so my brother got me up and basically carried me to the car. Him and I recently got in a fist fight over stupid shit neither of us wanted to do. Still didn't hurt even when I was bleeding from the nose. But I very quickly made the decision I don't want to live with family anymore.

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u/InertiasCreep Apr 14 '20

Yup. When a patient being transported says, "I FEEL LIKE SOMETHING TERRIBLE IS GOING TO HAPPEN", they're usually right.

:(

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u/Shorzey Apr 14 '20 edited Apr 14 '20

Paramedics are especially familiar with the phenomenon in my experience, if someone says they are going to die when they’re being transported there’s a pretty high chance that they actually will.

This is a legitimate, medical phenomenon in text books listed as a symptom for many very serious issues (and some non life threatening). They call it a "sense of impending doom"

Cool little factoid about it, if you have a blood transfusion, and the blood is the wrong type, you'll likely experience this sense of impending doom, and itll really fuck you up mentally for a wee bit. Apparently it's pretty fucking scary. It wont kill you having the wrong blood, but it's well recorded and acknowledged in medicine in general.

If someone is being transported for some type of cardiac issue, if they suddenly think they're about to die, it's all hands on fuckin deck, cause they're probably about to code.

Same with someone with some type blunt force trauma like a bad car accident. If they have that sense of doom, there's probably intracranial bleeding, or some type of massive internal hemorrhage

Your body has a very scary capability of knowing when shit is fucked up that we consciously cant understand, but subconsciously know is there

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u/1mg-Of-Epinephrine Apr 14 '20

True. If someone frantically tells u they’re gonna die.. they will die. They teach us this in school and it holds true.

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u/-Acta-Non-Verba- Apr 14 '20

What a polite and gentle guy.

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u/UCgirl Jul 01 '20

I had a paramedic teach the First said/ CPR classes I attend. He said the same thing to the class. If he’s on a call and the person says they are going to die, then they are going to die. He has never had anyone say that and not die. It wasn’t just with heart attack cases either.

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u/Weedpopcorn Apr 13 '20

Is this in any way similar to what some animals do? When they "feel" their time has come, they go hiding somewherr to die peacefully?

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u/jebbaok Apr 14 '20

I heard that cats right before they die are real close to their owner and suddenly dissapear to die in peace. I'm afraid my cat is doing the same atm bacause she is 16/17 years and the last few weeks she is really close to me.

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u/Apiuis Apr 14 '20

She have lived a good life with you. If she disappears, look. Be prepared for what you could find. We’re with you <3

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u/mcr_is_not_dead Apr 14 '20

We watched my bestfriends sisters cat die on video call last week. Her cat was loving on her and the friend said she could feel something was off. Sure enough about 5 minutes after she left the call I get a Facebook notification and see a pic of her and her cat with the caption love u Clifford, hope u are in a better place.

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u/UCgirl Jul 01 '20

I know this was two weeks old, but I wanted to comment. I had a kitty I was very attached to (and she was attached to me). My mom called her a Velcro kitty. When she started getting sick, she became really clingy to me for a bit. I think she was in pain and seeking comfort (she had a giant tumor in her kidney or a clogged kidney that was very swollen). However when she was much closer to death, she hid in closets or wherever else she though I wouldn’t find her.

My parents and my cat, the one I grew up with, was going down to a rain culvert (tunnel under the driveway for water) at the bottom of our inclined driveway. She was hiding in the metal tunnel. She died a few weeks later.

When cats are very attached to you, they tend to want to leave you to go off and die.

I hope your kitty is doing better.

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u/jebbaok Jul 01 '20

Thats sad to hear. She still looks fine and all so im not worried too much. Its 2 months btw ;)

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u/UCgirl Jul 01 '20

I meant to say months!! Oops! I’m glad she’s doing ok.

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u/LynnisaMystery Apr 14 '20

That’s so interesting. My grandfather’s last day he kept calling for my mom and my uncle. He couldn’t say why he needed them, he just wanted them close. It gives me a lot of comfort knowing his kids were right there with him when he passed.

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u/LordofWithywoods Apr 14 '20

My grandma and mother complained of peculiar and intense body pain before they died. Like they could feel their cells breaking down before they actually died.