Medical Professionals Shared Their Disturbing Patient Stories, And They’ll Haunt You For Life

7.

“I was a Personal Support Worker, and visiting a lady in early winter of 2018. I had seen her maybe four or five times prior, and it was approaching her bedtime. She had dementia and would go over her nightly steps a couple of times, forgetting they were done already; otherwise, she was a very vibrant, chatty lady. She was very vocal about how she felt, from her lovely breakfast to her insufferable oxygen line. I began feeling uneasy when I got there and found she hadn’t left for her room from the TV lounge (easy one-way path, something she hadn’t forgotten prior). I asked her if she’d like to go to bed, and her first response was, ‘I don’t know, I don’t feel like it. Am I on my way out?’ At first, I didn’t know what she meant, so I helped her up and set her on her walker. She did not want to walk with it today and seemed labored when moving.”

“I called for a staff member of the building (I was a traveling Personal Support Worker) and noted her difference in demeanor, and the lady said she had just arrived an hour or so prior and had no notes of odd behavior. By the time we got her to her room, she had no energy to move from her walker to her bed, and she said, ‘Do I need an ambulance? Am I on my way out the door?’ Now I’m bugging out internally. ‘What do you mean? Would you like me to call an ambulance for you? How are you feeling?’

The remainder of my visit was sitting with her and comforting what I felt was a completely lucid woman, wondering if she was feeling her first instances of bodily shutdown. When the ambulance arrived, her heart rate was elevated, but she showed no other immediate symptoms. 

She gave the most heartfelt goodbye to another older woman in the lobby who had come to see who was getting hauled by the ambulance, and all that the other lady could say was, ‘Don’t be silly. You’ll come back, and I’ll be right here.’ She never came back and died three or four hours later that night.

I got a work email mentioning that her services were discontinued due to her passing. All through the hallway to the lobby, and then as they wheeled her out, ‘Am I a goner? Am I on my way out the door?’ She knew. Dementia or not, she still knew.”

—u/Phantasmai