Someone’s last words can mean a lot. They can be a goodbye to a loved one, a piece of encouragement to family, or even funny jokes to lighten the mood and help with grief.
Still, some last words are just weird.
Let’s look at some last words as recorded by anonymous medical professionals in a Reddit post. Fair warning, some of these are really scary.
1. Why is this happening
From Redditor /u/Awk_Ward1:
“I work in a cardiac ICU. We had a patient who had a pulmonary artery rupture (a rare, but known complication of a Swan-Ganz catheter). One minute he was joking around with us and the next bright red blood was spewing out of his mouth. His last words before he [passed] were, ‘Why is this happening to me?’ It still haunts me years later.”
2. Like an angel
From Redditor /u/melissakfern:
“Get home safe, little one.”
“It wasn’t what he said – he said the same thing to me any time I had him as a patient for the evening. It was how he said it. He gave me this look and pause like he knew. The DNRs in my experience always know when it’s time. It’s creepy.”
3. His name in vain
From Redditor /u/Lolacsd:
“Had a 20-year-old kid, gang member, who [had] primary liver cancer. Super unusual, aggressive, and terminal. He was angry at the universe. His family was there to comfort him, but he literally [spat] in their faces. Every ounce of energy he had left was angry and mean and ugly. His mom would beg him to lighten up and accept Jesus into his heart. He would swing at her and tell her to eff herself. The family remained beside, in hopes he would chill out at the end.
His last day, hours, moments, he was angry. The family called me into the room, and told me they thought he was going (he wasn’t responding, Cheyne-Stokes breaths, eyes glossy, and skin cold – the end was imminent). His lovely mother, in her dearest attempt, whispered to him to go towards the light, to her Jesus. With his [final] breath he opened his eyes, looked at her and said, ‘Eff your Jesus!!!’ A second or two later, he slowly turned his head to the left, and got the most horrific look on his face as if he was looking at something we couldn’t see, and horrified, like in a bad movie, his face contorted, and he screamed with his last breath, eyes wide, ‘Oh sh*t, oh sh*t, OH NOOOOOOO!!!!’ then made a guttural noise and promptly fell back into the bed and [passed]. Every family member was shaking and too frightened to speak, and I left the room and took two days off.”
4. Don’t turn your head
From Redditor /u/PaperRainbow:
“Came into an early shift and was handed over a patient who’d been very anxious and had a panic attack overnight. He was anxious all morning, but obs all fine, ecg fine, and so I just asked someone to sit with him to keep an eye on him/reassure him for me. He gets worse, really panicky, heavy breathing, he’s on his side in the fetal position. Drs will be in in 10 minutes, so I tell him I’ll get them to him as soon as they come in but ask if he’ll lie on his back for me to help his breathing. He tells me he won’t make it until they get here and that he won’t face the other way. Obs still all fine at this point, but he’s more agitated so again I suggest he move position for comfort and that’s when he says ‘I won’t make it until the Drs get here. If I turn to face the other way I’ll [be gone].’ He repeated this a few times to me.
He arrested literally as the Drs walked in and he [passed] on the side he’d been refusing to turn to. I’m convinced he knew.”
5. Seeing the dead
From Redditor /u/Jesspandapants:
“I’m an RN and while I was a student I was caring for a lady who had end-stage renal failure, had a DNR, and was shutting down. We were having a little chat, well I was chatting away while helping her put on some lotion, when she stopped, looked over my shoulder, and said, ‘Bill’s here love, I’ve got to go,’ and swiftly stopped breathing. Read her old notes and Bill was her deceased husband.”
6. A little hot this time of year
From Redditor /u/elle_3:
“I had an old lady flag me down in the hallway a few days before she [passed] and with her emaciated face and bulging eyes, she said, ‘You know where I’m going.’ I asked her what she meant and she repeated herself. ‘You know where I’m going when I [expire]. And it ain’t up.’ I was taken aback and asked her if she wanted to talk with the priest we have on staff. She shook her head and said, ‘It’s too late for that.’ A few days later, she was eating her supper and started screaming. She yelled, ‘Fire! Fire! There’s fire everywhere!’ She [passed] a few hours later, quite suddenly. I didn’t sleep that night and I really hope her soul found some rest.”
7. Find the body
From Redditor /u/ReallyUnbelievable:
“Surgeon here. Not sure if this is ‘creepy,’ but a man on his deathbed kept repeating ‘the body is in the woods next to the oak tree’ over and over until he passed.
The police were notified and they did search some woods behind the man’s house, but never found anything.”
8. Cursed to hell
From Redditor /u/Mclovinisawesome:
“I had this patient who had a stroke. After that, he recovered fine, but did get pneumonia like 4 weeks into his recovery. The last words he said to me [were] at like 4 in the morning.
‘You took his girl and you will burn in hell for it.’
I actually took a girlfriend from a friend of mine. Somehow he knew.”
9. Devil is in the details
From Redditor /u/Coyena:
‘The devil has been in my room all night, but don’t worry, God is with you.’ This man had like the worst [end] ever, too. He had a horrendous seizure and [passed] with his eyes wide open and had a horrible grimace on his face. He had also been yelling all night about the ‘devil’ and saying over and over, ‘Get out of here! This building’s gonna blow!’
10. A final call
From Redditor /u/PrincessShelbyy:
“I worked in a secured Alzheimer’s unit and one of my 99-year-old residents rolled up to me in her wheelchair and said, ‘can I use your phone honey, I want to call my son before I [expire] today.’ I said no granny (what everyone called her) you aren’t going to [pass] today. I let her use my phone anyway. After dinner, one of the CNAs asked if I had seen her so they could put her in bed. I said no and helped them look for her. Turns out she just laid down in an unoccupied room and [passed] that evening. I was never more happy that I had let a resident use my phone to call a family member.”
11. The classic “bright light”
From Redditor /u/Patlani:
“ER physician here, had heard many last words from patients, but the creepiest one has to be of a man who was on his last breaths as he succumbed to renal failure. He said, ‘I see a bright light… Horses… No eyes… No… NO… NOOO!’ as he loudly yelled, at this point he was crashing when he suddenly woke up, looked up, and with his last breath he said, ‘I understand…’ and he [passed].
We know in the medical field that these situations are provoked by a cascade of neurotransmitters in disarray due to tissue and organ failure, but I sometimes have my doubts and perhaps we are seeing more than we are lead to believe.”
12. A little rum
Redditor /u/BrianGossling had a patient who knew the end was neigh and wanted one last toast:
“Old lady few hours before [passing], ‘I think I deserve some damn rum.'”
13. Shadowy figures in the room
From Redditor /u/RinnyRN:
“Had a patient who had a tracheostomy have a full-on panic attack, was setting off her alarms. She could still write as a form of communication. She wrote to me that there were some black figures in her room (floating above her and on the ceiling) and she drew me this devilish, creepy picture of what she saw. Coded about an hour later.”
14. End it, please
From Redditor /u/KaliAsari:
“DNR patient was on comfort cares. Was on a high dose of morphine and hallucinating. She would alternate between grasping for things not there and trying to climb out of bed. She was too unsteady to walk, so my job was to sit in the room and make sure she was safe. She tried to get up and I went to ask her what she needed. She grabbed my arm and pulled me down towards her face and said, very angrily, ‘[end] me.’ That one f*cked with me for a while.”
15. Called it
From Redditor /u/Porkchop247:
“Working in the ICU and an elderly guy came in with sepsis. As we were working on him, he looks up and says, ‘Yeah, that’s it!’ and promptly codes, we did not get him back.”
16. See ya next week!
From Redditor /u/ICallHerBeeb:
“Not a nurse, not a doctor, but I’m an apprentice funeral director. We went to a nursing home on a removal and as we were walking down the hall one of the patients got antsy and opened the door to his room and saw us walking with the stretcher.
‘I’ll see you next week boys.’
And guess who we had to pick up the next week.”
17. Pleading for help
From Redditor /u/fallingstar24:
“My first code as a nurse was of a middle-aged mother who we think ended up having a brain bleed. I was trying to check her vitals and she was super agitated (and had been all day – she managed to bend her IV pole somehow). She was ripping her gown off, and the sheets off the bed, and she’d yanked her heart monitor off. I was trying to start a blood transfusion, but needed to get her vitals beforehand, which was impossible because she wouldn’t stay still long enough for any of it to read. I’d given her a sedative (for what we thought was anxiety), and I was praying it would kick in soon. She kept grabbing my arm saying, ‘Come here. Look at me! Help me!’ with fear in her eyes that I will never forget. I’m pretty sure I snapped back, ‘I’m trying!’ which I of course wish was something comforting instead. Then she leaned back, her eyes got droopy, she shut her mouth, then snapped her eyes wide open but totally glossed over. She took one last breath as a coworker was helping me while I called the code.”
18. Thanks for saving me
From Redditor /u/YellowSublimaze:
“Right after a code in a hospital… ‘Thank you for saving me.’ Then he [passed] an hour later.”
19. Just getting comfy
From Redditor /u/whiterussian04:
“Nurse here – had a patient come into the ER with shortness of breath. He started deteriorating in the ER, and then quite rapidly on the transport up the ICU.
We got him wheeled into his room, replaced the ER lines and tubes with our own, and transferred him from the transport stretcher to his ICU bed.
He actually did most of the transfer himself. He didn’t say anything, but just before he [passed] he pleasantly adjusted his own pillow, laid his head down, and then his eyes went blank. This man just made himself comfortable before laying down to [expire].”
20. A Final Smile
“My dad fell into unconsciousness around noon. We managed to get him into bed and he responded with a hand squeeze when I said ‘I love you.’ We watched and waited the rest of the day. Around 3:00 am his breathing changed and as his breathing become more and more labored he bolted upright, eyes wide open, looked at his wife, my sister, them me. Smiled, exhaled, and died.”
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