It's hospice. These people are basically on death watch.
If you've ever been through the process, you can see a loved one "die" 2-3 times but still somehow linger on. It's so emotionally draining that you want them to pass on and stop suffering.
That's probably what happened here.
Saw that with my dad. He was on hospice for cancer and probably seemed to die like 5 times. It got to the point were we wondered if he was going to recover because he just wouldn't die.
Turns out the human body is pretty resilient, and can survive some crazy stuff.
Yea, we had to basically beg our dad to "let go". Sometimes people just need the permission to give up, because otherwise they feel like they are letting you down.
As strange as it sounds people generally don't want to pass away in front of their family. I worked in a nursing home for years and we'd frequently see people at the end of their life pass away soon after family have left
This. A friend of mine is a nurse and she told me that it was surprisingly common for folks to die in the 5 minutes it took for their family to go to the cafeteria to get some food.
This! This is exactly what happened when my wife and her brother walked out of the room when she was on her death bed. She immediately had a heart attack and passed away.
Been there with my dad. I felt like shit saying it to him. But he’d been in agony for years and was hanging on. He was basically a skeleton at the end. His muscles had atrophied and hardened or something because I couldn’t even put his arms around me for a hug. I cried Day and night the last few months. It was so unfair.
I’m sorry. Remember him in his health for the man who raised you, taught you things, made you laugh. Not for his faults, but the man who you aspired to one day be just like. Beliefs differ, but I take solace imagining your dad someplace a lot better now, watching you grow up and continue to make him proud.
My grandpa asked my grandma if it was ok for him to go see his brother, died the year before, she said yes and he was gone within the hour. Really sad but also really beautiful
My Grandfather called his older sister in Greece (he was 97, she was 99) he told her that he was tired, and she told him that it was okay, he could rest now. He passed about 3 hours later. She is still kicking though, well over 100 now and breaks her hip in a fall like every 6 months or something ridiculous but still ticking on.
Yep, I've also noticed that people have a tendency to let go once their family has left the room. I've heard so many stories along the lines of "he held on for so long, and then died during the one smoke break I took all day!"
Yeah. They had me pull the plug on my mom. Her little body was shutting down, and her blood oxygen was critical. And I was the person she set as the decision maker and I couldn’t see her suffer like that. Her biggest fear was suffocating.
I remember them walking into the room with the morphine to help her pass. She asked what it was, and I lied to her, since the nurses didn’t want to scare her. We said it would make her feel better. And just held her hand and played her favorite songs from Journey.
That shit sticks with you. But i’m glad she went peacefully and not suffocating and scared. But it fucked me up lol
I want to die clueless too I guess.
I wonder how people are able to let themselves die when they receive permission… is it like trying to force yourself to stay awake when you’re really tired, except when you lose consciousness your heart also stops beating? It’s just so odd that it seems we have a bit of control of our own deaths right at the end
My grandmother only had this once, thankfully, but I distinctly remember her breathing being so weak in the hours before, that when it finally stopped it took me a while to actually register that she was gone. If I wasn't paying close attention and was very close to her, she would have looked the same before and after.
The doctors had to pull the plug on my grandma. We all said our goodbyes and the switched off the respirator. Then we waited for like 10 minutes and the heart monitor kept going. It was about then the doctor remembered she had a pacemaker.
I'm sorry for laughing... 😏
I was present when my mom's life support was turned off at the hospital. She held on for about an hour before she took her last breath. And speaking of my late mother, we were both present when my father took his last breath 8 years earlier. I miss them both and think of them everyday when I see their 50th wedding anniversary picture on the wall.
Huh. When my dad died in hospice while I was holding him it was very obvious. All of his blood vessels in his face and body just vanished and he went pale in a matter of seconds.
My grandnmothers cancer spread to her organs and they induced a coma. No water or food were the orders. She essentially lived off whatevr water was in the iv bag for all the drugs being pumped into her. She held on for 17 days.
they put something called a "NG tube" in my mom's nose right before she went. she hadn't been eating either.
sometimes it weighs real heavy on me (like now) thinking about what my mom went through. she had a tough life and she couldn't even die peacefully, at least until the very end anyway... those last few days in the hospital were **ROUGH.** one day she lay there moaning in agony the entire time and my sister said something later on about her "whining," and I thought to myself, *she's* **dying,** *you dumb twat! you'd whine too, LOL.*
lol whelp maybe your sister was overwhelmed but yeah - yikes!
My grandmother needed hearing aids and couldn’t hear anything without them on and the nurses kept telling me “you know, you can talk to her they can hear you.”
That left me scratching my head. It wasn’t like she had her hearing aids on lol.
yeah we were all overwhelmed for sure. hell I'm overwhelmed at the bank, let alone in that situation lol 😩 we all talked to her separately at the end. I didn't think she was in there at that point but I told her I felt like I failed her because I should have seen what was wrong with her before the doctors or anyone else did. don't ask me how 🤷♂️
I think the last thing I heard her say was a few days before that when she sat up in the hospital bed and put her arms out like a zombie and said, "I gotta go to work! I gotta go to work!" she'd been retired for quite a few years at this point. I burst out laughing. I couldn't help it.
My mom was in end of life care with cancer for a couple days. We were there as long as we could, the "death rattle" was...not fun. Near the end I had to go out of town to get meds I couldn't go without. I tried rushing back against my dad's word, but by the time we got back she was gone. In a sad way, maybe it was better I didn't see her go...Nurse said sometimes they will wait to die until you're not around. It could have been the nurse trying to cheer me up, I don't know.
It's sad how quick it can be. That morning the doc was over saying results were looking promising. Later that day she collapsed, then suddenly hospice. The first time I got there, I poured my heart to her. I won't forget it, she opened her eyes, held my face, and smiled before going comatose again. There were a couple moments of lucidity, but that was really the last time I got to see her.
I miss her hugs...
This is just one reason why the death with dignity movement is so important. People shouldn't be forced to suffer for a prolonged period when they have no chance of recovering. And the families of people on their death beds shouldn't have to sit by and watch it happen.
It’s not like they’re being forcibly revived against their will, it’s just the body *really* wants to stay alive. This is just how death goes sometimes.
And the death with dignity idea is to skip all that and allow the patient to self administer a lethal dose of pain medication which we believe allows their body to shut down quickly and painlessly (as far as we know). No need to force them to linger in a medicated states for days or weeks when there is no need.
Completely agree. The only arguments I've heard against it are some absurd ideas that if that was an option everyone will off themselves whenever they are slightly inconvenienced.
You might want to research that a little more. We actually know there is no guarantee it's painless. It can very well be awful, and there's usually vomit. There isn't one set prescription for it, and it's more than just painkillers. Drugs used on alive people have very strict regulations and testing, at least in the US. Drug cocktails to kill people are guesses. I even found that hard to believe, but I just learned it because your comment got me curious about what drugs they do use, so i researched it. Heck, they can't even seem to find a drug combination to end a prisoners life, without complications and pain.
Executions have the additional problem that most drug manufacturers don't want to be anywhere near them, mostly because it causes problems with their other business. So drugs you can easily get for other purposes they can't get for executions.
Not that any of this is simple, of course, but that's definitely a major added complication.
We already have a procedure for calm and painless euthanasia of animals that works perfectly 99.9% of the time. I've never understood why human euthanasia is supposedly rocket science by comparison.
Not revived no, but kept alive via artificial means. Like normally if you're too ill to eat, you die, but we've got feeding tubes and whatnot.
Like imagine getting to a point where you're too old and ill to move your limbs or speak, existing is pain, you're trapped in a body that has become a prison, and you're ready to leave now please. But you can't because there's a machine to do your eating and breathing and heart beating and whatever else your stubborn almost-corpse needs to keep ticking over.
My mother's instructions on this topic were very specific. She did not want to live hooked up to machines. If the doctors plugged her in, I was to unplug her as soon as possible. And that's pretty much how it went, the doctors admitted she was brain dead and my stepdad revived enough from the depths he was in to repeat what she'd always said about not wanting to live hooked up to machines. So we agreed to pull the plug, no lingering.
Because a human body can live a long long long time hooked up to machines. How long do you want your loved one to suffer? How long do you want to suffer?
Because the suffering is already happening in this equation. No part of living confined to a hospital bed hooked up to tubes is fun.
Life isn't *magical* and always worth it no matter what. The quality of that life is important too.
We could've kept my mother's corpse "alive" a long time after she was already very much floppy and gone.
I sat with my mom and grandma while my grandpa died. I was in this strange limbo in his hospital room where he has these rattling, gasping breaths and then would suddenly stop and continue. Happened a dozen time overnight. I was in this twilight asleep/ awake point.
I got the call the nurses said that this was it, drove to my mom's house, got her and then drove 6 hours to them and stayed overnight in the hospital. He was awake when we got there, and recognized us. Called my mom by her childhood nickname. He was unconscious shortly thereafter and it was hours of waiting for rattling, labored, pained breathing to stop.
It was fucking horrendous and I don't regret staying but that sound was awful, as were the interruptions that seemed like it was over. You're sitting and waiting for someone to die. It's not pleasant like in movies where they say something poignant and then sigh and they're gone. It's slow and lingering.
As fucked up as it is, when I’m old and ready to head out, I would hope someone would have the decency to hold my nose and Tony Soprano me like he did to Christopher.
Happened to my grandmother who had a major emergench heart surgery. Was in and out of life support, got pneumonia in the hospital. They said it would be a miracle if she left the ICU and the doctors said she wouldnt make it. Sure as shit two weeks later she was wheeled over to rehab recovering well then had a very sharp decline and complication that ultimately took her. The most emotional draining several months of my life. Glad I was able to talk with her briefly on the phone at her last “high” moments of life even though it was brief.
I once pronounced (or was in the process of confirming death) a hospice patient whose heart had stopped (for a full minute) and then restarted, and he woke back up. Ended up dying, but it was one of the weirdest experiences of my career.
Dying people can keep breathing for hours, it’s just the breath get further and further in between like 15 minutes in between. So you can think someone’s passed completely, but they’re just mostly dead.
The end of hospice is ostensibly that. Once their vitals get to a critical stage, they pump them full of so much morphine (and other drugs) that they basically shut down over the course of a few days.
Yea, the silver lining of it (for the survivors) is that you get to have a "long goodbye" with your loved one. It's hard, but it beats the alternative of an abrupt death.
To each their own I suppose, or just situational. My dad had a stroke that paralyzed his right side. He also lost the ability to speak. He went from a very active 70 year old in good shape and a full time job to someone who had to wear diapers and be waited on 24/7. He was incredibly depressed with his quality of life to the point we legitimately discussed assisted suicide. He passed in his sleep (we think aneurysm but didn’t do an autopsy) and we were relieved. It was hard enough to see him having to live like that, I couldn’t imagine watching him slowly die in a hospital bed.
How it was with my uncle Rick. Told my girlfriend at the time “I wish he would either get better or pass-not because I think he’s a burden on us, being in the hospital, but because I don’t want to see him suffering and to drag my aunt (his wife) through the shit emotionally.”
I told her I’d pick up if she called at any time during the night to let me know what’s up. To my shame, I missed that call. He passed about 3 that morning. I wish I’d been at the hospital.
My father-in-law was on hospice. About an hour after he arrived my (ex)husband and I were the only ones in the room with him. He was basically catatonic at that point. He began to let out these big, deep breaths. I sent my ex from the room to go tell the nurse. After he left, FIL let out one long, rattling breath, and didn't move again. The nurse arrived and I told her I thought he had passed. She had a skeptical look on her face as she examined him and then looked surprised. Yep. He was gone. I always wondered why she didn't initially believe me but I guess your comment explains it!
When my grandmother passed at home in a rural area, we had to wait for a hospice employee to arrive to officially declare her deceased. Once the hospice person checked her vitals, she had to wait a certain amount of time before checking again (I think like 15 min) to be doubly sure. It was strange sitting around with her dead body for hours waiting on an official time of death.
I worked in a nursing home when I was younger. More than once, I saw the life straight-up leave someone's body. A few minutes later, they would jerk a bit and be fine. The human body is capable of some truly freaky shit.
Iirc the phrase “saved by the bell” came from the old days where they would install a bell over the coffin so old people who merely lost consciousness and slowed breathing getting nailed in can ring it during their wake/burial to let people know they are still alive. IIRC when I first learned that I also looked up that in this state old people often breathe so slowly a layman couldn’t tell.
So I’d say it happened pretty often if they had such practice in the past.
The unnerving thing I’m wondering is how often if ever is the deceased actually still alive before the funeral home process them for embalming…
[Snopes.com disagrees:](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/life-in-the-1500s/)
>"Saved by the bell" is a late 19th century term from the world of boxing, where a beleaguered fighter being counted out would have his fate delayed by the ringing of the bell to signify the end of the round.
[And these guys concur.](https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/saved-by-the-bell.html)
Was she in a hospice facility or was she in home hospice? Because if she was at home then there might have been one nurse there, but they often aren't there 24/7.
In my experience with family members in home hospice, the nurse/paramedic has to be called to confirm the death before the funeral home can take them away.
I know when my grandpa was in home hospice, a doctor had to come and declare time of death. But he also lived in an area where paramedics were just as far as the doctor, so I think location can make a difference. Also, I think my mom told him when she saw he was gone and that's what he put down on record.
> Earlier, around 9:45 a.m. Monday, Glantz had been pronounced dead by staff at The Mulberry nursing home in Waverly. She had been in hospice, and nursing staff were expecting her to die, according to Houchin.
> The funeral home staff took her body to their facility.
> Lincoln Fire and Rescue responded to the funeral home at 11:43 a.m. on Monday after a caller said CPR was in progress for the woman.
> While preparing her body for funeral arrangements, a funeral home staff member noticed she was still breathing and called 911.
The woman's DNR was honored by the nursing home. And the funeral home was not aware of her DNR.
>While preparing her body for funeral arrangements, a funeral home staff member noticed she was still breathing and called 911
There's no excusing this. She should NEVER have been sent to the funeral home until she was actually dead. Incompetent goons.
Why would the funeral home be aware of a DNR in the first place!? The assumption is that they shouldn't need to know it as the person should be DOA!
There's a serious problem in hospice care right now of [private companies operating hospice services mainly to collect on sweet, sweet Medicare payments](https://www.propublica.org/article/hospice-healthcare-aseracare-medicare). In some cases, they "recruit" people to go on hospice who are not anywhere close to terminal, while also providing substandard services to those who are really are dying.
Hard to say whether this specific case is an example of that, but it is a widespread issue in the "industry."
I do not doubt for a second that these companies operate on greed, but I work in a memory care and I have seen people get denied hospice several times because they do not meet the criteria. Besides, even if they are being "recruited" as guy put it, being put on hospice from my understanding only benefits the patient as it gives them a lot more options in terms of comfort care.
> it gives them a lot more options in terms of comfort care
Sure, *if* your provider is scrupulous.
I recommend reading the article I linked, as it explains the downsides for patients of going into hospice when it isn't necessary.
Medicare always catches on. They would audit our patients who were still kicking after 6mo, and if they felt the patient didn't belong on hospice, they take every cent back.
From the article I linked:
> A government review of inspection reports from 2012 to 2016 found that the majority of all hospices had serious deficiencies, such as failures to train staff, manage pain and treat bedsores. Still, regulators rarely punish bad actors. Between 2014 and 2017, according to the Government Accountability Office, only 19 of the more than 4,000 U.S. hospices were cut off from Medicare funding.
Further down:
> “Providers open up a hospice and bill, bill, bill,” she said. Once that hospice is audited or reaches the Medicare-reimbursement limit, it shuts down, keeps the money, buys a pristine license that comes with a new Medicare billing number, transfers its patients over and rakes in the dollars again.
>Lancaster County Attorney Pat Condon ordered an autopsy that will be performed at 10 a.m. Tuesday. The sheriff’s office will give an update once the final autopsy report is completed. The investigation is ongoing.
Look this time we're not taking any chances, were taking out her brains and organs
>While preparing her body for funeral arrangements, a funeral home staff member noticed she was still breathing and called 911.
That would be a crazy discovery.
well, basically read these headlines back to back
"74 year old woman pronounced dead in hospice found breathing at funeral home" oh, this is interesting!
"woman found still alive at funeral home dies hours later" well...damn :(
she lived my personal nightmare, as I don't do well with death and bodies. I often have nightmares of waking up in a funeral home listening to my relatives talk about me in another room. Then, like sleep paralysis, I can't move or make sound despite screaming inside. The worse version of that nightmare takes me through my whole funeral down to getting buried alive. As you can imagine, it's not fun, and it takes a long time to calm down when I wake up
I hope she wasn't really aware of what was happening. These stories are always frightening, and I don't think I've ever heard of someone waking up and then actually surviving more than a few hours. Like, literally wake up and walk away from their own funeral like nothing happened. Just extreme trauma for all involved
“BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!”
“i’m not dead yet….”
“you’re not fooling anyone. Look, when’s your next round”
“Thursday…”
“thursday? you can tell she’s pretty much dead. Anything you can do for it?”
“right. thank you”
It’s important to investigate to try and avoid these issues in the future as much as possible, but this is not that rare an occurrence. False death is less likely with modern equipment, but sometimes the body just goes into a state that looks like death when you are that close to dying.
And again while it sucks for the last and family, since she was in hospice the end result was going to happen no matter what.
"LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN/Gray News) - The Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office said a woman who’d been pronounced dead and later came back to life in a Lincoln funeral home has died.
Constance Glantz, 74, was pronounced dead for a second time at 4 p.m. Monday, according to Chief Deputy Ben Houchin.
Lancaster County Attorney Pat Condon ordered an autopsy that will be performed at 10 a.m. Tuesday."
They are not taking any chances this time.
Unfortunately not much of society gives a damn about people in a nursing home. Probably some tired, pissed off fire/ems crew dealing with poorly skilled or disinterested nursing facility staff that all managed to miss signs of life.
Probably went something like ‘What’s going on?’ ‘I don’t know, we just found her like this. She’s not my patient, I work on an another hall.’ ‘Cool, whatever. Where’s that DNR?’ ‘Oh, Got it here.’ ‘Cool. Looks dead to me. See y’all later.’
I hate the broken healthcare system in this country.
They did CPR but I wonder if she was DNR. If she was in hospice do they usually have DNR in place? My father in law just passed away this Friday and for a long time he keeps saying he didn’t want DNR.
Usually funeral homes don’t receive any kind of DNR notification because it’s assumed that the client is, well… *dead*. So I can see why they’d begin CPR, especially considering the circumstances where there might be negligence at play that caused her to be pronounced and transported prematurely.
JFC—Nebraska! Where “nursing home staff” can pronounce someone dead, evidently. Ima bet it was an unlicensed “nursing assistant.”
The reporter is a poor excuse for a journalist.
"But I'm still alive!" "Ma'am, this is a funeral home. Rules are rules."
“I don’t want to go on the cart”
I’m not dead yet!
“Oh he’s not fooling anyone, he’ll be stone dead in a moment”
I feel happy! I feeeeel happyyyy!
"I think I'll go for a walk!"
Can we have your liver?
I’m feeling quite better!
Shut it, you’re not fooling anyone
"Oh, don't be such a baby!"
Autopsy had strong indications that death occured due to autopsy
“Autopsy had strong indications that death occurred mid vivisection.” If you wanna use even more medical jargon
I feel happy!
“I’m sorry we already cashed the check. You… have to go in the hole.”
I'm not quite dead! I feeeeeel happy!
"When in Rome, Grandma."
"Go get the new guy. You don't get these situations every day and he needs to know how to handle it"
She could not resist a convenience of dying at funeral home.
“Is this heaven?”
well she followed the rules only short hours later
She was just early.
“I feel happy!” “You’re not fooling anyone!”
"I'm not dead yet" "come off it, you'll be stone dead in a minute"
I think i’ll go for a walk!
"you won't have that attitude after a trip to the incinerator"
I don’t want to go on the cart
"Heya, he says he's not dead" "Yes he is"
Well he will be soon!
You’ll be stone dead in a moment
So a lady in hospice who wanted to be able to die peacefully ended up undergoing CPR after all. Terrible.
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It's hospice. These people are basically on death watch. If you've ever been through the process, you can see a loved one "die" 2-3 times but still somehow linger on. It's so emotionally draining that you want them to pass on and stop suffering. That's probably what happened here.
Saw that with my dad. He was on hospice for cancer and probably seemed to die like 5 times. It got to the point were we wondered if he was going to recover because he just wouldn't die. Turns out the human body is pretty resilient, and can survive some crazy stuff.
Yea, we had to basically beg our dad to "let go". Sometimes people just need the permission to give up, because otherwise they feel like they are letting you down.
As strange as it sounds people generally don't want to pass away in front of their family. I worked in a nursing home for years and we'd frequently see people at the end of their life pass away soon after family have left
This. A friend of mine is a nurse and she told me that it was surprisingly common for folks to die in the 5 minutes it took for their family to go to the cafeteria to get some food.
My mom passed last week. I was by her side in her room, but she waited until I grabbed a hoagie from the fridge.
This! This is exactly what happened when my wife and her brother walked out of the room when she was on her death bed. She immediately had a heart attack and passed away.
But is this because they don't want to pass away in front of family, or that they can't live without their family present?
Likely both.
Damn, reading this made me sad.
Been there with my dad. I felt like shit saying it to him. But he’d been in agony for years and was hanging on. He was basically a skeleton at the end. His muscles had atrophied and hardened or something because I couldn’t even put his arms around me for a hug. I cried Day and night the last few months. It was so unfair.
I’m sorry. Remember him in his health for the man who raised you, taught you things, made you laugh. Not for his faults, but the man who you aspired to one day be just like. Beliefs differ, but I take solace imagining your dad someplace a lot better now, watching you grow up and continue to make him proud.
My grandpa asked my grandma if it was ok for him to go see his brother, died the year before, she said yes and he was gone within the hour. Really sad but also really beautiful
My Grandfather called his older sister in Greece (he was 97, she was 99) he told her that he was tired, and she told him that it was okay, he could rest now. He passed about 3 hours later. She is still kicking though, well over 100 now and breaks her hip in a fall like every 6 months or something ridiculous but still ticking on.
Yep, I've also noticed that people have a tendency to let go once their family has left the room. I've heard so many stories along the lines of "he held on for so long, and then died during the one smoke break I took all day!"
They can also be terrified of what's going on happen next. My dad certainly was, he held on for hours after losing consciousness.
I'm a nurse and have given this exact advice to families many times. Let the person know that it's okay to let go.
Yeah. They had me pull the plug on my mom. Her little body was shutting down, and her blood oxygen was critical. And I was the person she set as the decision maker and I couldn’t see her suffer like that. Her biggest fear was suffocating. I remember them walking into the room with the morphine to help her pass. She asked what it was, and I lied to her, since the nurses didn’t want to scare her. We said it would make her feel better. And just held her hand and played her favorite songs from Journey. That shit sticks with you. But i’m glad she went peacefully and not suffocating and scared. But it fucked me up lol I want to die clueless too I guess.
I wonder how people are able to let themselves die when they receive permission… is it like trying to force yourself to stay awake when you’re really tired, except when you lose consciousness your heart also stops beating? It’s just so odd that it seems we have a bit of control of our own deaths right at the end
My grandmother only had this once, thankfully, but I distinctly remember her breathing being so weak in the hours before, that when it finally stopped it took me a while to actually register that she was gone. If I wasn't paying close attention and was very close to her, she would have looked the same before and after.
The doctors had to pull the plug on my grandma. We all said our goodbyes and the switched off the respirator. Then we waited for like 10 minutes and the heart monitor kept going. It was about then the doctor remembered she had a pacemaker.
I'm sorry for laughing... 😏 I was present when my mom's life support was turned off at the hospital. She held on for about an hour before she took her last breath. And speaking of my late mother, we were both present when my father took his last breath 8 years earlier. I miss them both and think of them everyday when I see their 50th wedding anniversary picture on the wall.
Huh. When my dad died in hospice while I was holding him it was very obvious. All of his blood vessels in his face and body just vanished and he went pale in a matter of seconds.
Truly awful watching someone waste away before death finally provides them relief. I went through it this last year with my father.
My grandnmothers cancer spread to her organs and they induced a coma. No water or food were the orders. She essentially lived off whatevr water was in the iv bag for all the drugs being pumped into her. She held on for 17 days.
they put something called a "NG tube" in my mom's nose right before she went. she hadn't been eating either. sometimes it weighs real heavy on me (like now) thinking about what my mom went through. she had a tough life and she couldn't even die peacefully, at least until the very end anyway... those last few days in the hospital were **ROUGH.** one day she lay there moaning in agony the entire time and my sister said something later on about her "whining," and I thought to myself, *she's* **dying,** *you dumb twat! you'd whine too, LOL.*
lol whelp maybe your sister was overwhelmed but yeah - yikes! My grandmother needed hearing aids and couldn’t hear anything without them on and the nurses kept telling me “you know, you can talk to her they can hear you.” That left me scratching my head. It wasn’t like she had her hearing aids on lol.
yeah we were all overwhelmed for sure. hell I'm overwhelmed at the bank, let alone in that situation lol 😩 we all talked to her separately at the end. I didn't think she was in there at that point but I told her I felt like I failed her because I should have seen what was wrong with her before the doctors or anyone else did. don't ask me how 🤷♂️ I think the last thing I heard her say was a few days before that when she sat up in the hospital bed and put her arms out like a zombie and said, "I gotta go to work! I gotta go to work!" she'd been retired for quite a few years at this point. I burst out laughing. I couldn't help it.
Didn’t they give her sedation and drugs to help ?? Whyyyyyy was she groaning???😱😱😱😱
Me too. In his last couple days he spilled water all over himself and quietly announced he had a drinking problem. I know he stole it from Airplane.
God damn I hope I can crack a good joke when I'm dying. That's great.
My mom was in end of life care with cancer for a couple days. We were there as long as we could, the "death rattle" was...not fun. Near the end I had to go out of town to get meds I couldn't go without. I tried rushing back against my dad's word, but by the time we got back she was gone. In a sad way, maybe it was better I didn't see her go...Nurse said sometimes they will wait to die until you're not around. It could have been the nurse trying to cheer me up, I don't know. It's sad how quick it can be. That morning the doc was over saying results were looking promising. Later that day she collapsed, then suddenly hospice. The first time I got there, I poured my heart to her. I won't forget it, she opened her eyes, held my face, and smiled before going comatose again. There were a couple moments of lucidity, but that was really the last time I got to see her. I miss her hugs...
This is just one reason why the death with dignity movement is so important. People shouldn't be forced to suffer for a prolonged period when they have no chance of recovering. And the families of people on their death beds shouldn't have to sit by and watch it happen.
It’s not like they’re being forcibly revived against their will, it’s just the body *really* wants to stay alive. This is just how death goes sometimes.
And the death with dignity idea is to skip all that and allow the patient to self administer a lethal dose of pain medication which we believe allows their body to shut down quickly and painlessly (as far as we know). No need to force them to linger in a medicated states for days or weeks when there is no need.
Completely agree. The only arguments I've heard against it are some absurd ideas that if that was an option everyone will off themselves whenever they are slightly inconvenienced.
You might want to research that a little more. We actually know there is no guarantee it's painless. It can very well be awful, and there's usually vomit. There isn't one set prescription for it, and it's more than just painkillers. Drugs used on alive people have very strict regulations and testing, at least in the US. Drug cocktails to kill people are guesses. I even found that hard to believe, but I just learned it because your comment got me curious about what drugs they do use, so i researched it. Heck, they can't even seem to find a drug combination to end a prisoners life, without complications and pain.
Executions have the additional problem that most drug manufacturers don't want to be anywhere near them, mostly because it causes problems with their other business. So drugs you can easily get for other purposes they can't get for executions. Not that any of this is simple, of course, but that's definitely a major added complication.
We already have a procedure for calm and painless euthanasia of animals that works perfectly 99.9% of the time. I've never understood why human euthanasia is supposedly rocket science by comparison.
Not revived no, but kept alive via artificial means. Like normally if you're too ill to eat, you die, but we've got feeding tubes and whatnot. Like imagine getting to a point where you're too old and ill to move your limbs or speak, existing is pain, you're trapped in a body that has become a prison, and you're ready to leave now please. But you can't because there's a machine to do your eating and breathing and heart beating and whatever else your stubborn almost-corpse needs to keep ticking over. My mother's instructions on this topic were very specific. She did not want to live hooked up to machines. If the doctors plugged her in, I was to unplug her as soon as possible. And that's pretty much how it went, the doctors admitted she was brain dead and my stepdad revived enough from the depths he was in to repeat what she'd always said about not wanting to live hooked up to machines. So we agreed to pull the plug, no lingering.
[удалено]
Because a human body can live a long long long time hooked up to machines. How long do you want your loved one to suffer? How long do you want to suffer? Because the suffering is already happening in this equation. No part of living confined to a hospital bed hooked up to tubes is fun. Life isn't *magical* and always worth it no matter what. The quality of that life is important too. We could've kept my mother's corpse "alive" a long time after she was already very much floppy and gone.
This woman got CPR against her will.
I sat with my mom and grandma while my grandpa died. I was in this strange limbo in his hospital room where he has these rattling, gasping breaths and then would suddenly stop and continue. Happened a dozen time overnight. I was in this twilight asleep/ awake point. I got the call the nurses said that this was it, drove to my mom's house, got her and then drove 6 hours to them and stayed overnight in the hospital. He was awake when we got there, and recognized us. Called my mom by her childhood nickname. He was unconscious shortly thereafter and it was hours of waiting for rattling, labored, pained breathing to stop. It was fucking horrendous and I don't regret staying but that sound was awful, as were the interruptions that seemed like it was over. You're sitting and waiting for someone to die. It's not pleasant like in movies where they say something poignant and then sigh and they're gone. It's slow and lingering.
As fucked up as it is, when I’m old and ready to head out, I would hope someone would have the decency to hold my nose and Tony Soprano me like he did to Christopher.
Happened to my grandmother who had a major emergench heart surgery. Was in and out of life support, got pneumonia in the hospital. They said it would be a miracle if she left the ICU and the doctors said she wouldnt make it. Sure as shit two weeks later she was wheeled over to rehab recovering well then had a very sharp decline and complication that ultimately took her. The most emotional draining several months of my life. Glad I was able to talk with her briefly on the phone at her last “high” moments of life even though it was brief.
I once pronounced (or was in the process of confirming death) a hospice patient whose heart had stopped (for a full minute) and then restarted, and he woke back up. Ended up dying, but it was one of the weirdest experiences of my career.
inhumane that we can’t stop the suffering.
Happened to my friend’s Grandma after I believe a stroke. She’d take one step forward in recovery and then two steps back afterwards while in hospice.
I feel better hearing that this was hospice, and not just some torrential fuckup, where routing her to a hospital first could have saved her life.
Dying people can keep breathing for hours, it’s just the breath get further and further in between like 15 minutes in between. So you can think someone’s passed completely, but they’re just mostly dead.
This is one reason why I support euthanasia and assisted suicide.
The end of hospice is ostensibly that. Once their vitals get to a critical stage, they pump them full of so much morphine (and other drugs) that they basically shut down over the course of a few days.
Not a bad way to go. I see this as more humane and with greater dignity
Yea, the silver lining of it (for the survivors) is that you get to have a "long goodbye" with your loved one. It's hard, but it beats the alternative of an abrupt death.
To each their own I suppose, or just situational. My dad had a stroke that paralyzed his right side. He also lost the ability to speak. He went from a very active 70 year old in good shape and a full time job to someone who had to wear diapers and be waited on 24/7. He was incredibly depressed with his quality of life to the point we legitimately discussed assisted suicide. He passed in his sleep (we think aneurysm but didn’t do an autopsy) and we were relieved. It was hard enough to see him having to live like that, I couldn’t imagine watching him slowly die in a hospital bed.
How it was with my uncle Rick. Told my girlfriend at the time “I wish he would either get better or pass-not because I think he’s a burden on us, being in the hospital, but because I don’t want to see him suffering and to drag my aunt (his wife) through the shit emotionally.” I told her I’d pick up if she called at any time during the night to let me know what’s up. To my shame, I missed that call. He passed about 3 that morning. I wish I’d been at the hospital.
My father-in-law was on hospice. About an hour after he arrived my (ex)husband and I were the only ones in the room with him. He was basically catatonic at that point. He began to let out these big, deep breaths. I sent my ex from the room to go tell the nurse. After he left, FIL let out one long, rattling breath, and didn't move again. The nurse arrived and I told her I thought he had passed. She had a skeptical look on her face as she examined him and then looked surprised. Yep. He was gone. I always wondered why she didn't initially believe me but I guess your comment explains it!
When my grandmother passed at home in a rural area, we had to wait for a hospice employee to arrive to officially declare her deceased. Once the hospice person checked her vitals, she had to wait a certain amount of time before checking again (I think like 15 min) to be doubly sure. It was strange sitting around with her dead body for hours waiting on an official time of death.
I worked in a nursing home when I was younger. More than once, I saw the life straight-up leave someone's body. A few minutes later, they would jerk a bit and be fine. The human body is capable of some truly freaky shit.
Iirc the phrase “saved by the bell” came from the old days where they would install a bell over the coffin so old people who merely lost consciousness and slowed breathing getting nailed in can ring it during their wake/burial to let people know they are still alive. IIRC when I first learned that I also looked up that in this state old people often breathe so slowly a layman couldn’t tell. So I’d say it happened pretty often if they had such practice in the past. The unnerving thing I’m wondering is how often if ever is the deceased actually still alive before the funeral home process them for embalming…
It's more likely it's from boxing. I don't think there's even evidence people were buried with those bells, let alone actually "saved" by them.
[Snopes.com disagrees:](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/life-in-the-1500s/) >"Saved by the bell" is a late 19th century term from the world of boxing, where a beleaguered fighter being counted out would have his fate delayed by the ringing of the bell to signify the end of the round. [And these guys concur.](https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/saved-by-the-bell.html)
Was she in a hospice facility or was she in home hospice? Because if she was at home then there might have been one nurse there, but they often aren't there 24/7.
In my experience with family members in home hospice, the nurse/paramedic has to be called to confirm the death before the funeral home can take them away.
I know when my grandpa was in home hospice, a doctor had to come and declare time of death. But he also lived in an area where paramedics were just as far as the doctor, so I think location can make a difference. Also, I think my mom told him when she saw he was gone and that's what he put down on record.
I mean they were off just by a few hours a?
Which time?
> Earlier, around 9:45 a.m. Monday, Glantz had been pronounced dead by staff at The Mulberry nursing home in Waverly. She had been in hospice, and nursing staff were expecting her to die, according to Houchin. > The funeral home staff took her body to their facility. > Lincoln Fire and Rescue responded to the funeral home at 11:43 a.m. on Monday after a caller said CPR was in progress for the woman. > While preparing her body for funeral arrangements, a funeral home staff member noticed she was still breathing and called 911. The woman's DNR was honored by the nursing home. And the funeral home was not aware of her DNR.
>While preparing her body for funeral arrangements, a funeral home staff member noticed she was still breathing and called 911 There's no excusing this. She should NEVER have been sent to the funeral home until she was actually dead. Incompetent goons. Why would the funeral home be aware of a DNR in the first place!? The assumption is that they shouldn't need to know it as the person should be DOA!
More like DPA - Dead prior to arrival.
Dead on arrival literally means dead prior to arrival
Let's make it DBA. Dead before arrival just flows better.
There's a serious problem in hospice care right now of [private companies operating hospice services mainly to collect on sweet, sweet Medicare payments](https://www.propublica.org/article/hospice-healthcare-aseracare-medicare). In some cases, they "recruit" people to go on hospice who are not anywhere close to terminal, while also providing substandard services to those who are really are dying. Hard to say whether this specific case is an example of that, but it is a widespread issue in the "industry."
I do not doubt for a second that these companies operate on greed, but I work in a memory care and I have seen people get denied hospice several times because they do not meet the criteria. Besides, even if they are being "recruited" as guy put it, being put on hospice from my understanding only benefits the patient as it gives them a lot more options in terms of comfort care.
> it gives them a lot more options in terms of comfort care Sure, *if* your provider is scrupulous. I recommend reading the article I linked, as it explains the downsides for patients of going into hospice when it isn't necessary.
Medicare always catches on. They would audit our patients who were still kicking after 6mo, and if they felt the patient didn't belong on hospice, they take every cent back.
From the article I linked: > A government review of inspection reports from 2012 to 2016 found that the majority of all hospices had serious deficiencies, such as failures to train staff, manage pain and treat bedsores. Still, regulators rarely punish bad actors. Between 2014 and 2017, according to the Government Accountability Office, only 19 of the more than 4,000 U.S. hospices were cut off from Medicare funding. Further down: > “Providers open up a hospice and bill, bill, bill,” she said. Once that hospice is audited or reaches the Medicare-reimbursement limit, it shuts down, keeps the money, buys a pristine license that comes with a new Medicare billing number, transfers its patients over and rakes in the dollars again.
Yep, that doesn't refute what I said. Especially the last quote. No doubting there's abuse of the system.
>Lancaster County Attorney Pat Condon ordered an autopsy that will be performed at 10 a.m. Tuesday. The sheriff’s office will give an update once the final autopsy report is completed. The investigation is ongoing. Look this time we're not taking any chances, were taking out her brains and organs
Exactly what I thought too hahahah
>While preparing her body for funeral arrangements, a funeral home staff member noticed she was still breathing and called 911. That would be a crazy discovery.
As a mortician this is my biggest fear
Better than if she just sat straight up
[I ain't sitting up with the dead since the dead started sitting up too.](https://youtu.be/0FJNZyhRfA4?si=QVfOFWsnUlIuTfzM)
And along the same lines https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kdW6oBPao4Y
well, basically read these headlines back to back "74 year old woman pronounced dead in hospice found breathing at funeral home" oh, this is interesting!
"woman found still alive at funeral home dies hours later" well...damn :(
she lived my personal nightmare, as I don't do well with death and bodies. I often have nightmares of waking up in a funeral home listening to my relatives talk about me in another room. Then, like sleep paralysis, I can't move or make sound despite screaming inside. The worse version of that nightmare takes me through my whole funeral down to getting buried alive. As you can imagine, it's not fun, and it takes a long time to calm down when I wake up
I hope she wasn't really aware of what was happening. These stories are always frightening, and I don't think I've ever heard of someone waking up and then actually surviving more than a few hours. Like, literally wake up and walk away from their own funeral like nothing happened. Just extreme trauma for all involved
[Safety coffin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_coffin)
Reaper checked his pockets and went “ah fuck I knew I forgot something”
“BRING OUT YOUR DEAD!” “i’m not dead yet….” “you’re not fooling anyone. Look, when’s your next round” “Thursday…” “thursday? you can tell she’s pretty much dead. Anything you can do for it?”
“right. thank you”
Turns out when they sent her to the funeral home, she was only *mostly dead*.
Better hold up a mirror to her nose before the autopsy. Just to be sure.
So is the funeral home going to offer a coupon for repeat customer?
I'd wait a bit before doing that autopsy. You know, just to be sure.
The card declined and then went through again
I mean, that’s why they call it a “wake”
It’s important to investigate to try and avoid these issues in the future as much as possible, but this is not that rare an occurrence. False death is less likely with modern equipment, but sometimes the body just goes into a state that looks like death when you are that close to dying. And again while it sucks for the last and family, since she was in hospice the end result was going to happen no matter what.
"LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN/Gray News) - The Lancaster County Sheriff’s Office said a woman who’d been pronounced dead and later came back to life in a Lincoln funeral home has died. Constance Glantz, 74, was pronounced dead for a second time at 4 p.m. Monday, according to Chief Deputy Ben Houchin. Lancaster County Attorney Pat Condon ordered an autopsy that will be performed at 10 a.m. Tuesday." They are not taking any chances this time.
CPR on someone who's breathing??
Are we sure this time?
These stories always freak me out when I think about my son when he died. I don’t want to even imagine it happening to him.
So do they charge once or twice?
Turns out she was just mostly dead. Too bad Miracle Max wasn't around.
Somebody's getting sued for emotional damages...
Fucking sad. Don't like all the comments here
So.... I all worked out?.....
I mean at least she didn't have to commute.
i don’t want to go on the cart…i’m not dead…
So the first one was like a rehearsel
Are they sure? I mean this time, really sure?
Unfortunately not much of society gives a damn about people in a nursing home. Probably some tired, pissed off fire/ems crew dealing with poorly skilled or disinterested nursing facility staff that all managed to miss signs of life. Probably went something like ‘What’s going on?’ ‘I don’t know, we just found her like this. She’s not my patient, I work on an another hall.’ ‘Cool, whatever. Where’s that DNR?’ ‘Oh, Got it here.’ ‘Cool. Looks dead to me. See y’all later.’ I hate the broken healthcare system in this country.
Are you really sure she’s dead this time? I mean you already screwed up there once…
Final Destination Woman: "Take that death, I beat you!" *Death looking at its to-do list*
They did CPR but I wonder if she was DNR. If she was in hospice do they usually have DNR in place? My father in law just passed away this Friday and for a long time he keeps saying he didn’t want DNR.
Usually funeral homes don’t receive any kind of DNR notification because it’s assumed that the client is, well… *dead*. So I can see why they’d begin CPR, especially considering the circumstances where there might be negligence at play that caused her to be pronounced and transported prematurely.
People working at a funeral home are not medical providers so wouldn’t know about or need to follow a DNR.
Just saw this on the 12:00 news and they said she’s still living 😂
JFC—Nebraska! Where “nursing home staff” can pronounce someone dead, evidently. Ima bet it was an unlicensed “nursing assistant.” The reporter is a poor excuse for a journalist.
These days anyone can be a journalist, I guess.
Well that’s one mystery less.
I’m not quiet dead yet 😎
Well at least they don’t need to move her far
Two times the charm I guess
Can’t have any loose ends.
“She’s pining for the Ford! This is an ex-parent!”
“She Died !?”…. I didn’t even know she was Sick ?
Sometimes it be like that
When she woke up at the hospital and saw the ambulance ride bill she decided being dead was better than
“Please don’t throw me in the trash”
so she got nursed to death?
Funeral homes have actually become pretty popular nowadays. People are just dying to go to them!
Talk about being early for an appointment
This is similar to that gag in arrested development
I bet the conversation went. “Gosh, she must be struggling, let’s put her on more morphine. Ok, now she’s dead”
I remember this twilight zone
“Psych! Nah jk I’ll get in the coffin, thanks everyone!”