These people REALLY reacted like this to their death! - r/AskReddit

serious doctors have rendered what was the worst reaction happy in a psychopathic way or sad that you have ever gotten from telling someone their loved one his slash will die told their elderly patient that his lung cancer had metastasized to his brain and we weren't going to pursue further treatment I asked if he wanted help telling his family and he said he's lived a good life and wanted to go on a fishing trip with just his son and he would tell him there had to hold back the tears on that one a father had just found out his son had died from an overdose Carly went and sat in one of our empty air rooms he told our end to admit him because if I go home tonight the family will have two funerals to plan after a mandatory 72-hour hold in sight he was released with a few new meds which he used to kill himself explained to her husband that after his wife was struck by a car crossing the street there was significant bleeding in her abdomen despite my operative attempt his wife died on the table I was very sorry for his loss he nodded and asked okay thanks when do you think she will be ready to go home he completely blocked out everything I said so many traumatic events it is hard to recall all the details not a big one but this one was different no trauma no emergency we told this friendly guy of his diagnosis that will kill him soon weeks two months then asked who we should talk to or who can be his guardian he only had his boss from his recent job no family no friends he was all alone his boss visited once early on I thought about that a lot still do so here's a weird one that stuck with me had a patient in his fifties died in a single room on the ward while surrounded by his Portuguese family mostly women wife sisters in-laws all in their forties at least we knew he was deteriorating and had no plans to resuscitate if and when he died a few days into his admission he passes away while the family were visiting I get called in by the nurse to confirm the death and everyone in the room is completely silent and watching me confirm what they already know and everyone just mods me hugging me kissing my hands kissing my cheeks and thanking me profusely for looking after their relative not what I was expecting at all it was like a sudden collective release of tension in the room somehow I think they were just relieved he wasn't suffering anymore a doc here told wife her husband had a huge hemorrhagic stroke unlikely to wake up screams sobs collapsing then crushing chest pains now she's my patient two plus t ro poni n echo cath showed she developed takotsubo cardiomyopathy I can broken heart syndrome right in front of me I was a corpsman working an EMT response to a car crash and a dude's twin brother was the one who was dying in a ditch after having the top of his head ripped in half by the top of the car the surviving twin looked like his soul was was gone like everything in his life was meaningless that's the best way I could put it the rest of the family and friends were all distraught and crying but he looked like he was going to drop dead from grief the patient was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of brain cancer he was attending college far from where he grew up and was accompanied by his best friend since his family was so far away while telling him the options for treatment and expected prognosis his buddy said so if you die can I have your stereo the patient laughed pretty hard and cursed him out had a patient who was flown in from far away with a non survivable accidental burn the only family member at the hospital was an adult child who had a very appropriate response when I told them shock disbelief sadness denial et Cie the patient's spouse was still at home boughs away I called the spouse and told them about the nature of the burn the need to get to the hospital as apt to say goodbyes etc the response was okay thank you doctor most people are frantic but this person was completely calm and more concerned about getting the house cleaned up the patient surprisingly made it through the night and family brought the spouse to the hospital the next morning I was able to talk to the spouse and realize that when the patient left the house with the paramedics the spouse knew that there was no way the patient would survive I was just confirming what they already knew that they were losing their partner of almost 40 years they seemed more concerned about the house because they just couldn't bear to look at the footprints burned into the carpet anymore wisten a student at the time on a rotation of the ico we were on morning rounds and had just finished discussing a patient that had passed away the night before and it turns out the family hadn't been informed yet so of course the family shows up to check on their loved one and has to be given the sad news in front of a large group of Oakland residents and students in my opinion they were also informed in quite a cold and clinical way the word expired being used in lieu of a softer descriptive and just an overall absence of compassion the son proceeded to lose his mind he started yelling threatening staff and eventually ended up punching and shattering a computer screen and had to be removed by security honestly I don't blame him best was talking with the family matriarch strong businesswoman whose children had taken over several businesses in the town very rich influential family we originally admitted her as a stroke but on further review found multiple brain metastases family wanted everything done this was a mentally alert woman who had 94 they wanted to have chimo and surgery I discussed her options with her including no aggressive treatment she elected for this she went into Hospice and died peacefully a few months later she asked what I would do having just gone through this with my grandmother and grandfather the year before I gave her both sides of the story doing everything and buying a few months her dealing with surgery and illness or just pursuing comfort measures I think she was happy with the decision I think the family was upset with me for giving her that option child with congenital lupus family had refused most treatments kid was on 24 / 7 dialysis and needed a kidney we told parents that without the kidney transplant their child would die they told us they had faith their child would live without the kidney parents were wrong nurse here I work iku so when I have to phone someone to tell them their loved ones status has changed or they have passed it's generally traumatic and unexpected as compared to say a palliative unit where families know it's coming I had a patient who was not intubated rare in iku and just a genuinely nice guy I talked to him most of my nightshift about his family life etc I came back from my break at 3 a.m. and I hear my break relief partly yelling get the crash cart I had a bad feeling about this guy so I kind of expected this but obviously the family did not calling his son to say you need to pick up your mother and get here as soon as possible was hard enough but calling him back to say I'm so sorry but despite our best efforts your father did not make it was awful this is a grown man I heard his phone dropped to the floor and he started sobbing to his wife and muttering incoherently between sobs I didn't know if he was going to pick up the phone again so I stayed on the line to listen for a little bit heartbreaking I work in iku so I often have to tell families bad news the most recent memory was the daughter telling me this must be the hardest part of your job I was taken back just because despite the tragedy she was enduring she still had the ability to empathize with what I also had to do your 95 year old and his dying of lung cancer there was a sudden emotional disproportionate amount of grief from her nephew whom from what I understood was not that attached to his and he was also her closest living relation it's just not fair I pause and let him continue speaking my CMT is frowning not really understanding where the conversation is now going bravely plowing on with the conversation my CMT continues the dialogue through its pre-planned route it could be days or weeks she's currently got a very good appetite her nephew isn't really listening he interjects she changed smokes you know funny isn't it how you can smoke 50 cigarettes a day and nothing happens until you're almost 100 my wife never smoked his voice trails off my stomach does an uncomfortable twist I look at my CMT who's looking at me like what on earth is he talking about I don't blame her you know she started smoking after husband died she was one of the factory workers in ww2 she was so close to her husband they never had any children but I asked her not to smoke around my wife why castle you know it killed him finally it's dawning on my CMT and myself sir did your wife die of lung cancer his eyes swell with tears and we are both trying to be as professional as possible to not also start crying it turned out the second-hand smoke exposure had caused his wife to pass away several years ago from lung cancer as they had allowed his arms to live with them after his uncle passed away his wife had never smoked in her life and we were totally unprepared for the roar angry grief he had so obviously pent up at his aunt for indirectly killing the love of his life that I think was the most difficult breaking bad news I've ever had to do slash helped to do mostly because it was completely unexpected and he was so raw angry inconsolable about his wife lesson learned smoking isn't worth it and it's not just about you I was a med student in a case where an 11 year old child suddenly died during a routine orthopaedic procedure for a broken arm there were about 20 family members there with balloons and staff when the surgeon told them the news they all started screaming and scattered running in different directions around the hospital one of them started clawing at me like a zombie definitely one of the most disturbing things I've ever witnessed diagnosed a patient with cancer loved one said that he was happy because he was always in the shadow of his brother and this would even out the playing field he even did a little dance worst part he was in the same room as his brother who heard everything being blamed this lady was visiting the area with her friends when she began having heavy vagal bleeding I told the patient that it is always concerning when a postmenopausal women has bleeding furthermore she had copious necrotic tumor falling out of her uterus as well I told her that until the pathologist looks at it under the microscope we won't know for sure but this is concerning for cancer long story short it takes days for the final read to come back but she stabilized and went home in the meantime unfortunately the pathology came back as a rare and aggressive form of cancer I was no longer involved in her care but was sorry to hear about the diagnosis as a courtesy I called her to make sure she had all the information and had what she needed before going to see the djinn oncologist she tells me oh I thought you were calling to apologize I'll never forget you telling me that you think I have cancer it's part of the stages of grief denial anger etc but still it hurt that I went out of my way to check in on her and she responded with so much anger and blame true until we have a diagnosis we can't say if it is X or Y which I told her but we owe it to the patients when we have a serious concern that we have to share that info with them anything less is unethical thankfully I wasn't the only one in the room but we spent three hours on and off explaining to a family that we couldn't transfer their deceased child to another hospital I think they believe the kid was in a vegetative state and that we just gave up on them instead of the reality that their kid was dead when I was a Pediatrics resident working in the neonatal intensive care unit a set of twins were delivered way too early the parents had already given names to twin a and twin B they both survived delivery but twin B died overnight when we broke the terrible news of them they were appropriately devastated but the thing that always struck me as weird is what they did next they decided to switch names so that the twin that lived had the name they liked more I often think back on the twin that died and how sad that all was patient was told she had breast cancer happiest day of her life chronic HIPPA cond react in the air daily the smile on her face when she found out she was actually sick was horrifying Nursing Assistants so I am a bit down the chain of command but still relevant had this little onion couple come into the ED couldn't speak a word English they'd come on one last holiday before their baby came except they were rushed straight off a plane into an ambulance as the woman had severe a bloke ramps and heavy bleeding the doctor had to translate that the baby had died I will honestly never forget those screams for the rest of my career like blood-curdling peal heartbroken screams from both of them honestly the whole day every single staff member just was so shaken and upset and it's not like we've never had people die trick even kids die but I don't know just the sheer pure heartbreak they were destroyed was not really that bad but while I was talking a spouse through termination of resuscitation stopping CPR they kept trying to justify the termination by asking if they come back they would be brain dead right and they kept asking despite multiple polite redirects about how the patient was still in a systole despite our interventions and was most certainly not coming back eventually it got to the point where I'm gently but somewhat firmly had to say for us to worry about the part being brain dead they need to stop being dead dead and that's not going to happen fortunately a close friend was on scene and able help get that message through I was at a delivery where both mom and baby were having problems as we were saving baby the or team was trying to save long we did they didn't as we were leaving with baby to the NICU vo doc was telling dad and his family that his wife didn't make it he saw his baby and asked when mom could begin breastfeeding grandma fell to the floor crying but dad just had this look like he was just waking up and not hearing what was going on seeing him visit the NICU was just so sad you could see him trying to hold it all in while visiting his baby one of my patients had squamous cell carcinoma in situ on his lip that I caught early and was actually removed entirely and abaya see we still wanted him to get topical chemotherapy on the area to make extra sure we got everything for those unaware it's like a lotion and mostly only has local skin side-effects it was actually good news but I wanted to reinforce that he's at a higher risk of developing new cancers and it's possible that his children have the same genetic predisposition so he needs to make sure he and his kids need to be using sunscreen and lip balm with sunscreen eaten plus six months follow-up he was a native Spanish speaker but his English seemed above average so I didn't want to use a translator if I didn't have to well judging from the years and how upset he was I guess I misjudged his English skills he did a good job at picking up the buzz words he heard cancer more cancer chemotherapy and his children have a higher chance of getting cancer but he missed all the important context he thought was going to die and his kids were too I quickly got a translator and explained everything again he was still distraught over the emotional rollercoaster moments ago but he understood what was going on so my worst reaction was the wrong reaction because I fritter deputy here I've been to a quite a few deaths and I've only seen one that was happy the husband was a lifetime alcoholic and was on hospice for various related illnesses when we arrived he was dower she told us he went to go to the bathroom gasped and literally dropped dead she was at first sad the more she talked about him we could tell he was a real bastard she pretty much couldn't make a move without him he wouldn't let the grandkids come over and they live next door when the funeral home came to collect the body they had difficulty getting him loaded up the wife remark leave him dead he still finds a way to be a pain I couldn't help but grin when she said it previous nursing assistant on a respiratory ward elderly male patient decided to willingly opt out of respiratory support machine man his time inevitably came around six hours later early in the morning his granddaughter young girl around mid-twenties the only family member in the hospital at the time was so devastated she climbed into the bed with him and wouldn't leave the ward endless crying shrieking and asking for her granddad to wake up hard breaking stuff stuff and doctors tried to coerce her to take some time outside but she wouldn't leave the bed eventually the rest of the family arrived and talked her out but took a good few hours male patient mid to late twenties heavy drug user meningitis coded at about 3:00 a.m. his ex-wife recently so I think and mother were there the mother started crying but the ex-wife just freaking exploded her face just kind of broke she kept screaming and crying while rotating positions lying in the ground pushing against the nurse's station sitting while grabbing her head kneeling while grabbing me eventually the mom couldn't handle it had an hypertensive crisis and we sent her to the addition the ex-wife just got sort of catatonic and followed her there the worst thing is that if you weren't hearing her screams it would have looked kind of funny after that I never had trouble breaking the news to her family also don't try to take sir prophylaxis in without water I still remember the taste excuse the bad English told a husband that his wife suffering with severe aus hemas was unlikely to survive an episode of pneumonia but that we would be giving intravenous antibiotics and fluids he begged us not to saying that her quality of life was awful and that we don't make animals live through and stage disease and suffer the way she was suffering obviously without an advanced care plan in place there was nothing we could do except continue to initially give maximum medical therapy it was pretty harrowing I don't want to say I've seen any which way someone can react because I'll see one in a month or a year I never thought I would see at a sixty plus y slash oh man a few weeks ago come to the ED for abdominal pain and court found a 10 centimeter mess in his pancreas always had a smile on his face joked with me while he was in the hospital thank myself and my resident team every time I was in the room all walked by and he called me in for our help it's amazing how some people feel a sense of calm when you try to hold back your own emotions when telling someone they likely have seen their last Christmas sore six seven family members in a room when grandpa / dad was coding take different routes one in the corner crying one in the corner just starring at compressions one trying to fight the chaplain and one refusing to leave the bedside while screaming at dad to live he didn't make it as a resident in the iQue we had a 30-something male code around zero five zero zero brought him back after about 30 minutes or so problem was he started to code after about 30 minutes compressions and another round of epi and he would come back just to do it all over again with each code overhead the family would just stand up walk outside and sit on chairs they brought outside the room no emotion no tears just had this look that he came back before and will again my attending in house was an old therefore screwed care doc and told the family after five cycles of this it was torture to continue they disagreed I signed out to the oncoming resident and her they finally let him die around 1100 in my state we have to wait 48 hours after deciding to withdraw care after a few days the patient's wife of 50-plus years decided to withdraw care she couldn't help but feel she was killing her husband he had a previous surgery to remove a lung and his one remaining lung had terrible pneumoniae that wasn't improving he went into touch and died two hours before we were to remove the tube I have never seen a weight lifted off a family member like this since when she told me he knew I couldn't do it so he did it himself the one I will never forget is the withdrawal of care of a 17 year old he was driving home from football practice with his little brother and flipped his car he had it be and never regained consciousness brother didn't have a scratch the dad was a mess but then thanked us for our care and respect after about four days I will never forget the hatred and look the mom gave any medical staff in that room I never heard her say one word we were the team who couldn't and wouldn't save her son she walked out when we brought up organ donation my second branch as a resident was on a brain-dead 17 year old so we could see how good his lungs were for donation the organ donation group sent me a letter a month later thanking me for my service it stated the approximate age of each organ recipient what organ they received and what their hobbies are I have that letter framed and hanging up in my house I was working the burn unit guy comes in MVC head-on collision the other driver was wasted and crossed lanes his wife was killed in the crash every time he woke up he asked where his wife was and he had to be told he would just start saying 42 years and sobbing I can't imagine what it was like for that guy having to remember every single time you wake up he was in a lot of pain Macca lots of dilaudid which contributed to his confusion slowly over time it sank in very heartbreaking to watch EMT here had a few of these but the worst was one I observed indirectly we had a young woman in her twenties killed instantly in a high-speed collision same old story car versus tree the tree one girl was alone in the car cold November night sad way to die the crash was so bad that we thought we should have the car towed back to the firehouse so the FT could do the extrication behind closed doors we figured she'd just come apart when the car was pulled away from her but she stayed together mostly and they loaded her into our ambulance to go to the hospital to pronounce her we were only basically empties and pronouncement wasn't in our protocols we get to the errand park up front outside of the base usually reserved for ambulances to back up into no need to take up space with an already obviously dead patient one of the ER Doc's came up to the ambulance and pronounced her there and told us to sit tight the family was coming apparently all they'd been told was that their daughter had been in an accident and that they needed to get to the hospital right away so we sat in the ambulance with a dead girl under a sheet she was only a few years older than me and I knew her vaguely from around town it was weird a pickup truck comes screaming into the air parking lot a few minutes later and a man and a woman about my parents age come tumbling out before it even stops and go running into the ER the parents a few minutes later the lights in the family waiting room which is right across the sidewalk from our ambulance come on and a nurse brings the parents in we can't hear anything but we can see the exchange have a seat please the doctor will be right with you she leaves and closes the door and we see the parents alone terrified at what's to come the mother is wringing her hands and pacing the father is standing stiff and stoic this is going to be bad we can see the doc who pronounced her coming down the hall with a nurse and a social worker in tow he gets to the door hesitates a second straightens his tie and turns to the women with him we can't hear him of course but we knew he said ready he opens the door and the parents whipped around we see him introduce himself and give the short speech I'm sorry to tell you this but your daughter died at the scene of the accident the mother melted I've never seen a human just dissolved like that like her bones had suddenly turned to jelly the father caught her before she hit the floor and he looked like he'd been hit with a sack of cement in the gut he doubled over but held on to her got her to the couch and we just sat there watching this horrible silent movie playing out in front of us it felt crappy to intrude on their pride moment and we talked about it in the cab of the ambulance in a way we felt like part of that family at least for the short time that we took care of their daughter we treated her body with as much respect as we could we carefully transported her to the hospital so there would be no further damage and we kept her safe while they were in route and we made sure she was never alone that was nearly 40 years ago and that girl has been dead twice as long as she was alive I think about her and that night every once in a while and now that I'm a father of kids about that age it's too painful to bear that was only one of hundreds of accidents I responded to over Mayans in firefighting career and it wasn't even the worst one but it was the one that had the most impact on me and I often wonder how that poor family coped with it the ones that really stick out are the people who take the news with quiet dignity had one patient presents with dermatomyositis 20% of people with this have an underlying malignancy I told the patient and family this and asked if they wanted to look they said yes to the court scan showed multifocal tumor burden in the liver bias II showed pancreatic adenocarcinoma unfortunately so Mets to the liver equal Stage four broke the news to the patient and her family and her response was thank you for telling me that must have been really hard for you to do pancreatic adenocarcinoma seems to always take the most gentle people I'm pretty late to the party but my sister is an RN who used to work in a nursing home she told me a story of how an elderly woman and her husband lived in the nursing home together and had been married for 50-plus years they were practically attached at the hip he was in poor health and she was a nurse for a long time before retiring one day in the cafeteria he had a massive heart attack while they were eating and she was begging the nurses to help her save him but the guy had a DNR and there was nothing the nurses could do but let him pass the worst part was that she being a former nurse tried her best to give him CPR but she was far too weak to help anything were oh oh oh oh oh boy this is one of my favorite stories to tell my trainees TL DR I saw pretty much all the emotions and stages of grief in one 15-minute session I was a second-year resident in family medicine doing an IQ rotation and a pretty big city's downtown major hospital one night we admitted a guy with sickle-cell who developed acute chest syndrome and decompensated quickly that night we work to stabilize him and he held on okay I told the family if his lungs hold up there's a chance he could do okay I went home post colon came back to him in multi-system failure lungs giving out with essentially nothing left to do the attendings love to have us Navy family med Doc's do the talk with families we must have been good at it since I knew the family already they were ecstatic to have me back and said Europe I took a second year medicine resident with me to get a feel for the process and the attending took us to the family room to talk there was about 20 30 family members there all ages and types the Perot was his daughter who didn't know him too well but was the closest relative as parents and wife had already passed I started to tell them the news that thing I had mentioned about the lungs holding out well unfortunately they aren't anymore and nothing else is either the four medicines to keep his heart pumping won't work much longer we need to talk about what to do they said pull the plug and I said yes maybe the handful of young girls that weren't the power all started crying one actually took off running and screaming down the hall the men in their teens and twenties started swearing under their breath and congregated in the corner staring daggers at me and I'm sure planning on how to make sure the same thing happened to me as their family member I'm guessing around then the other residents and attending sunk into the room kind of like Homer through the shrub because I was by myself for the rest of the event I tried getting the daughter to make a decision reasonably she couldn't so she kicked me over to one of his cousins the middle-aged folk were arguing each with their own opinion and knowing everyone else was wrong no one could agree except that I was wrong and I didn't know what I was talking about and I lied to them the other night they eventually punted to the next generation his aunt was there with a few older folks sitting in a corner she was far more reserved and realized the situation and came to terms with it pretty quickly she thought it was best not to let him suffer so tried convincing the daughter to sign the paper but the daughter couldn't bring herself to do it and started crying after a few minutes more chatting crying and arguing another guy I had not seen yet started proselytizing I just had a talk with brother Ben the other day about this exact thing he knew he was in bad shape and soon he would get to go back to Jesus it was apparently the family's pastor and he started preaching with each sentence another person joined this circle around me the power and the preacher until everyone was back with each mention of Ben and Jesus there was another are men or hallelujah until everyone was yelling the joys of God finally the daughter said yes let's do it to a resounding praise Jesus we signed the papers after about 15 minutes of all this I found the other two docs in the corner the other resident bug-eyed and quiet in the hall the intensive care attending of over 12 years said well that's the craziest thing I've ever seen and I know he had seen a lot already that IQ was crazy and I have quite a few other stories from just a month there

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Id: I9kM4XwKm7I

Length: 32min 32sec (1952 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 30 2020