Ever seen someone die? I did...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Years ago when I worked at the Best Western we had a guest come running up to say there were two people floating in the pool. It was an older couple; we think he had a heart attack or something and she tried to pull him out and went under herself.

I’d finished lifeguard training the year before, so I ran down, reluctantly… I gave mouth to mouth and CPR to the guy. He’d been in there long enough that he already had rigor mortis. I could hardly tilt his head back. But you still gotta try… ::sigh::

22

Didn’t see him die, but the stretcher went by. I was in shock, so I didn’t notice much, it was all surreal.

23

When I was 19 or 20, I was out in a bar and was dancing with a nice old man who apparently was the “grandpa” of the place. While we were dancing he had a heart attack or stroke and just collapsed and died right in front of me. I was in shock until I got home; my mother came in and noticed that something was wrong and when she asked what was up, I just lost it. I didn’t go out dancing for a long, long time after that.

24

This whole thread is really surreal to me. I just finished watching “Bringing Out The Dead,” and I nearly cried. In a way, this thread is beautiful, in another way, it’s horrible, but in either case it exists, and I think it needed to. We’re all bringing out our own dead.

A friend of mine recently tried to commit suicide, and the attempt was a failure (really bad failure, although I don’t mind) and it struck me. Does he really feel that bad? That day I sat down and told him “don’t be fucking stupid, you’ve got a lot to live for, because I know you, and I can see that potential in you.” My friend writes songs, and he’s really into music, and I see so much he could do. His life isn’t really that bad, but he tends to exaggerate, which led to this problem. I’m keeping a better eye on him now, making sure that he is really wanted around.

25

I was there with my mom when she died, and it was similar to what you describe, Stoidela. Maybe a lot of cancer patients have similar experiences? Exactly 2 weeks later I was with my gram as she died. It wasn’t what I expected in either case. For some reason, I expected something to happen at the moment of death, some sort of epiphany or soemthing. In the end, they each just… stopped. It was peaceful enough, but it left me wondering, “Is that it? Is that all that happens?” It seems like there should be more to dying than just winding down like a neglected clock. I am grateful that both deaths were peaceful and didn’t seem traumatic for either of them, and I’m glad that I was able to be there, but I was left feeling empty and let down, like I’d been promised something magical and it hadn’t materialized.

Thanks - it’s kinda cool to be able to talk about my mom with people who aren’t going to melt into a sobbing mess at the mention of her name. She would have turned 55 tomorrow. Happy Birthday, Momma.

26

Unfortunately, I saw a LOT of people die during Desert Storm. It’s not something I like to recall very often. I’m just thankful that I came home with only knee and neck injuries instead of coming home in a coffin.

Remember you Military.

27

I was with both my parents as they died. With my dad, I held his hand and talked to him until his last breath. His death was quite gruesome. With mom, I was holding her in my arms. She looked so peaceful and out of pain. If I had to go back and do it again, I would. It gave me a sense of strength and peace to know they didn’t die alone.

28

I’ve never seen anyone die but my husband has been involved in two car accidents where someone died. The first time was when he was 19 and he was driving down IH-35 in Austin and a girl jumped off the back of an El Camino. My husband’s car was the 7th to run over her. He ran over to the body. He said you couldn’t even tell that it was a person. Much later he found out we had gone to high school with her.

The second time happened a few months later on the same stretch of highway. He was behind a Surburban and someone committed suicide by jumping in front of traffic. The suburban swerved and narrowly missed the guy. Brian, who didn’t know why the truck swerved, hit the guy and killed him.

Ironically, the same policeman worked both accidents. He ended up taking Brian to the police station and filing out extra paperwork to make sure that it really was an accident.

29

Thanks bud . . .

I was too young for the Storm, but I have had to hold someone during a training incident. Not something I want to repeat. He was electocuted, and passed due to internal wounds. . .

It’s sorta made me bittersweet: I lost a favorite uncle last week. While I’m glad I wasn’t there to see the event, I’m saddened that I didn’t see him earlier. He was a tough old bastard, he wanted to die at his home. So, he literally broke out of his nursing home, got a taxi, went home, and laid down. My grandmother (his sister) found him the next day. Great man. . .

Tripler
FBT

30

These posts are very touching…I usually hate that word, touching, but this is one time it seems appropriate.

When I was about six years old, I was waiting at a bus stop, and one of the other kids was walking toward us on the opposite side of the road, when he was hit by a van, right in front of us. I remember every detail, even though it was 25 years ago. He got wound up in the rear wheel, then actually thrown forward and run over again by the front wheel. I remember how he got flung across the side of the van. Then he sort of shot out of the front wheel and landed (seems like 50 feet away, but couldn’t have been that far) on his face. He was totally conscious, yelling and screaming, and his parents came running out to him. But…he lived! Broken nose, two broken legs, broken arm, but he recovered in about six months. When the bus showed up, the bus driver actually flipped out so much they had to take her to the hospital, too. I remember one of his socks actually got pulled off during the accident, and it lay by the side of the road for a long time after. Now I get the creeps whenever I see an article of clothing by the side of the road.

31

{{{{{everyone}}}}}

The only time I’ve seen someone die was when a complete stranger was run over in a crosswalk. I was sitting in a bus, stopped at a red light; the light turned green and a sports car went flying by in the neighboring lane, plowing over a guy who was trying to beat the “don’t walk” sign. He was, I read later, killed instantly.

32

I was a week and a half into my clinical rotations when my first patient died.

He was in with an exacerbation of congestive heart failure, and could barely breathe due to the fluid in his lungs. I went to weigh him one morning (to see how his diuresis was coming), and he slipped from my grasp and pulled out his IV. I just told the nurses about it and went back to the office.

About half an hour later the office phone rang. My intern just got up and started walking toward the patient’s room, and I followed along. I thought we were going to put the IV back in; instead, he was coding.

Watching a code go off for the first time is a weird experience. Certain members of the staff (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, etc.) are on that day’s “Code Team”, and thus wear the “code pagers”. When a patient arrests, someone “calls the code” and all of the code pagers start going off at once. Standing there in the room, I heard the pagers come into earshot one by one and then get louder as the team members ran down the hall. One nurse (who obviously really knew what he was doing) had already started chest compressions, and the first resident to arrive started coordinating the efforts. There were probably two dozen people in the room, between our team, the code team, and the other medical students who had wandered in.

They went on for about 25 minutes. The oddest thing about the end, to me, was that it wasn’t an event so much as a judgement call. Nothing happened at 11:47 to make him suddenly “dead”; the doctors just chose that moment to decide that it was over. He wasn’t any less “dead” at 11:46, or arguably even 11:30.

My first thought, of course, was that this was all my fault. If I had been more careful when I weighed him, I wouldn’t have pulled out his IV, and he might not have died. The team assured me that I had nothing to do with it–after all, one of the residents told me, I didn’t give him an ejection fraction of 15%, nor did I make him smoke two packs a day for 50 years. Even as I understood that, it didn’t make me feel any better.

He had spoken to me directly for the first time that morning. (I had mostly just hung in the background during rounds up until then, and he wasn’t very talkative anyway.) I had examined him by myself before rounds that morning, and he gasped out, “Doc, what are they saying about me?” I didn’t know what to say, really; my limited understanding was only that his prognosis was grim. I could tell by the way he looked at me that he understood that as well. I told him, “I’m just the medical student. The doctors will be in after while.” I don’t think any of the doctors actually went to see him until the code. I wish I could have explained things a little better, or at all, but there really wasn’t a lot to say. He was in bad shape, but no one could have known that he would die later that morning.

I’ve seen a few more deaths since then, but none that affected me quite so much.

Dr. J

33

I didn’t actually see the death, but this probably still falls under this category.

I dated a girl my first year in college named Anna. When we were starting out she told me that she was suffering from depressions, and that her father had the same problem. We only dated for a few weeks – she got pretty bad and was pushing me away very hard, so we broke up a few days before the end of the year.

I didn’t talk to her over the summer.

In the fall I moved into a new dorm. A few days into the semester, there was a message on my message board on my door that said, “Stopped by to see you, you weren’t in. Love Anne.” Anne (not Anna) was a friend of mine. I called her but she wasn’t in.

A few days later my res. head called my in to tell my my ex-girlfriend had killed herself. He didn’t know how, just that someone found her in her room after she hadn’t been seen for a while. I had no idea she might do that.

That night I was talking to my friend Anne on the phone. I asked her when she had stopped by to see me, and she said that she had not been by my dorm. I didn’t put two and two together until a few hours later when I was walking into my room. The message on my board was from Anna, not Anne and I had misread her name.

The school newspaper reported that “a female student” had committed suicide. I never found out how she killed herself. I couldn’t work up the ability to attend her funeral. What would I say to her parents? “I’m the guy who broke up with Anna a few months ago. We only dated for a few weeks, and she never let me get very close to her. Anna tried to contact me just before she killed herself and I misread her name on a dry-erase message board.”

34

I forgot this one (wonder why…)

When I was a teacher (a few years ago), I was in my room during my planning period when the classes were interrupted by the PA system asking for two specific teachers to come to the main office immediately. I knew that they were both health teachers (and PE) and were on the CPR list. Also, to interrupt class and call them (instead of sending an aide to fetch them) meant it was important.

I have advanced CPR training from scuba diving training so I went to see if I could help in any way.

A new student (9th grade, 2nd week of school) was feeling dizzy in gym and went to the health room. While the nurse was calling mom, the girl passed out. When she got to the girl, she had stopped breathing.

We took turns performing CPR on the girl until the EMTs showed up, to no avail. They used paddles and everything. She died in that room.

** Usually, when performing multi-person CPR, each person has a specific job and they switch. At one point, I was checking for neck pulse. During compression, one can usually feel a weak pulse there. There was none. CPR was not moving blood to her brain. Found out later she had a congenital heart problem and cholesterol through the roof **

Now why would I forget this story?

35

For the record…I meant to type YOUR Military. Sorry about your friend that was electrocuted. Unfortunately, I had the misfortune to see that happen TWICE while in Germany.
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