Devastating Last Moments
Tragically, not everyone gets to leave this world peacefully. Buckle up, because these devastating last moments might have you reaching for the Kleenexes.
1. Regrets, She’s Had A Few…
I’m a paramedic and I was called to the casino for someone with chest pain. I got there to find a man in his 60s who was a very pale grey, pouring sweat, and in level 10 out of 10 pain.
I put him on the monitor and he had tombstone elevation in his septal leads—they call it tombstone elevation for a reason. He was having a massive heart attack.
His wife was there and she was getting ready to come along with us. I was helping her step into the ambulance and she realized that she didn’t get her cashout voucher from the slot machine.
I’m not a casino guy, but I guess they pay out in paper slips. Anyway, she says “I have to go back and get it”. I said, “We’re leaving now and you should REALLY come with us".
She didn’t seem to understand me. Finally, I said, “Your husband could pass tonight”. She replied, “Well, I’ll be right behind you in my car”. Biggest mistake of her life. You guessed it. Her husband perished on the way to the hospital and the last thing he said was, “Where’s Helen”?
2. Our Deepest Fear
As someone who works as a hospice caregiver and primarily deals with the terminally ill, I’ve seen and heard a lot of sad things. The most heartbreaking was a beautiful woman with no family and who'd lived a very cruel life. Her parents passed when she was very young, she grew up in poverty, and eventually, she left Korea to marry an American GI.
Her husband ended up mistreating her for years until she finally left him. She struggled to get by as a waitress, and for most of her life, she lived alone. She had no friends and no family. I sat there in the hospice holding her hand and crying as she suffered from the final stages of pancreatic cancer. I will never forget the last thing she said to me…
“Don’t cry. My next life will be a happy one”. It was the most heartbreaking statement I’ve ever heard from any of my patients.
3. Above And Waaaay Beyond
When I worked as a nurse in a pediatric ICU, we had an infant who had been dropped off by her parents and left there. There are some hospitals where you can do this and, yes, it’s legal.
The child, who had a non-operable brain tumor, cried and moaned all through the day and night. Everyone knew she wasn’t going to make it.
One day I was in her room and I decided to pick her up and start dancing around the room with her while trying to avoid getting caught in all the wires. I started singing a Beatles song (even though I can’t sing at all) and told her not to laugh at me. Her crying stopped and she let out a small giggle. From then on, I was the only one who could make her stop crying. Right then, I knew what I had to do.
I had all of the paperwork done to adopt her and she stayed with me until she slipped away. I feel some comfort in the fact that she didn’t spend the rest of her life in the hospital and I could sing her to sleep every night.
I left the pediatric ICU after that, but I still think about her all the time.
4. Brave ’Til The End
My sister, who's a nurse, had a male patient in his late 80s who only had a few days left to live. I don’t remember what he had, but it was a painful disease.
My sister said that he was always pleasant and would never show a sign of pain until someone left the room. She knew this because she once forgot something in his room and caught him suffering.
Anyway, this man had a very loving wife, and they had been together for over 60 years. My sister was in the room with both of them and they were all joking around. The man asked his wife to go fetch him a glass of water.
My sister offered to get it, but he refused. He said, “She needs to get out of here for a little bit. It’s stuffy”.
His wife agreed. He thanked her and told her how much he loved her. After she left the room, the man asked my sister if his wife was gone. When my sister confirmed that she was, he said the most heartbreaking words: “Let her know she was the best thing that ever happened to me". He closed his eyes, and within a minute, he was gone.
