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Hospice nurse’s ‘craziest’ experience suggests people can ‘choose’ when they are going to die
Death can be a scary, confusing and difficult time for everyone involved, but a hospice nurse has made it her duty to normalise the dying process and show there nothing to fear.
Julie McFadden shares TikTok videos reimagining death�as not the worst outcome, and one clip in which she talks about her ‘craziest’ experience will bring you comfort.
Hospice nurse recalls her ‘craziest’ experience
In the video, she explains that a woman came into hospice care as she had a terminal illness, but she didn’t really meet the requirements for end-of-life support as she wasn’t showing any symptoms of being close to death.
Julie decided to provide her with home care on a “trial run” but thought she would probably be removed after six months. As she wasn’t having many symptoms, that was the only visit booked with the hospice nurse that week.
The patient was left with her caregiver over the weekend. On Monday, the hospice nurse then got an urgent call saying she needed to visit immediately because the lady had died, which came as a huge shock.
“Yes people die on hospice but usually we know they are gonna die. They are showing symptoms that they are going to be dying soon,” she said.
Before dying, the patient said she was tired and wanted to go and lie down. Then, she started thanking the caregiver for looking after her for so many years and asked her to promise she would continue looking after her disabled son.
“I’m really tired, I’m going to go home,” the patient said, to which the caregiver confusedly replied: “You are home?”
The woman called her son into the room and began telling him how much she loved him. Then, she went to sleep. In the morning, the caregiver went to check on the patient and found she had passed away in the night.
There was no sign of her taking any drugs or harming herself, she just knew she was going to die, which is why she was telling everyone how much she loved them the night before.
“You see this on hospice. People basically choosing when they are going to die,” Julie said – but that’s the first and only time she has seen something so drastic.
Some may ‘choose’ when they are going to die
Death is one of life’s biggest mysteries and there is no scientific evidence that people can control the moment they die. However, people are sharing similar stories of people in their lives ‘choosing’ when it was their time to go in the comments.
One person wrote: “I had a patient on hospice and he said Im going to die in 3 days and in 3 days he passed. So crazy. They know.”
“That happened when I worked in a nursing home! We had a patient who was enjoying his breakfast like any normal day, looked up at the nurse next to them and said ‘It’s time to go’,” said another.
A third person added: “My mom did something similar. Told us I’m ok, nothing is wrong. I’m not sick or depressed. Just ready to go. She died a few days later.”
It’s impossible to know why people die at the precise moment they do, but the idea that loved ones ‘choose’ the right moment for them is a lovely, comforting thought.
