Hospital Workers Are Revealing The Heartbreaking Regrets Patients Had On Their Deathbeds, And Wow

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“I’m an ICU nurse, and I’ve been present for a lot of people’s end of life. People come into the 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 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, before 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 one, 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 drugs (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 drugs. Drugs that assist the machines. Drugs that push the body to do what it currently or 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 more time together in life. Sometimes we can’t. And if you’ve ever wanted to know about the regrets of dying patients, these are the regrets many people can never express.

The regret that they weren’t able to tell their loved ones and families that 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. The regret that those who understand that there are worse things than dying are those for whom those worse things present their current reality.

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 happens. Don’t put it off as having bad thoughts or ideas, or unpleasant, 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.”

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