Deathbed visions

emmycRN · Jan 10, 2007

My great-grandmother saw her already deceased husband and daughter the day she died. Those that were there say she smiled and reached for them. During these visions she was more lucid than she had been for months.

I have never seen this in any of my patients but I have seen many who know they are going to die before there are any clinical indications that death might be imminent. Just a few weeks ago I took care of a lady who said to me, "I won't make it out of here." She died just a day and a half later. Also, I have noticed patients becoming increasingly anxious and fearful in the days prior to thier passing, even if their physical condition is unchanged.

Guardian · Jan 10, 2007

Dear ones,

I myself have experienced visions etc. of the sort already described here and they are quite common and helpful to the dying as well as the living. I wish to correct "CuriousMe", however. The quote that is often attributed to Nelson Mandela was created and written first by Marianne Williamson and used by Pres. Mandela in his 1994 inaugural speech.

storm06 · Jan 10, 2007

I have heard of several patients who have dreamt of black crows, who then passed very quickly and quietly. From what I understand it's an old Eastern European superstition (can anyone confirm this?)

If someone tells me they have dreamt of black crows I call the family ASAP.

It is comforting to see a patient who is dying draw comfort from their dreams/visions. I have seen and heard of it often enough to believe that it is real.

Guardian · Jan 10, 2007

Dear Storm,

The crow in the ancient Celtic teachings, (and others), is the animal totem or energy that represents the "Otherworld", or the doorway to the other dimensions. The transition of the dying is the passing through a doorway into another experience of "being" that is truly just another beginning. The remarkable series "Six Feet Under" aptly used the Crow in it's opening sequence. Possibly those who "see Crows" have this as their totem. Lovely!

Antikigirl, ASN, RN · Jan 10, 2007

I haven't seen my patients talk to someone that wasn't there or claimed to see someone who wasnt'...but I have seen many people once they have died either in an up position in bed or actually walking position on the floor as if they were trying to enter "the light". I have also seen people fall just before death trying to walk towards a hall light or other room light...maybe thinking it was "the light".

BoomerRN · Jan 10, 2007

During my first year of nursing in a hospital, about 29 yrs ago, a woman in her fortys, who was not acutely ill, told me she saw an army of men on the ceiling in her room. I assured her that there was no one there but she insisted that they were there. I telephoned her dr. and informed him, charted it and passed it on to the next shift. When I returned the next afternoon, I was told that this woman had coded and died during the night. This was my first experience with deathbed visions. About 15 years ago while working weekends in a ltc facility, a night nurse and cna told me an eery experience they had. They were in a room with two patients and were providing care to one of these men. They said they heard a scream from the other man in the room, turned to look at him, and said his face was distorted in fear and he quit breathing. He was a cancer pt. I thought they were joking, but both swore this happened. They said the supervisor said he saw the devil. I was working in a ltc facility in the early 80's and came in that morning and was talking with a nurse from another unit in the building. I told her that I had a dream that night that this certain pt., an elderly man, was lying on his bed all in white and he was dead. When I was telling her this, the man was still alive. She went to her unit and we started working. About 2 hrs. later she called me and said: "You will not believe this, but he is dead, I walked in his room and he was wearing a white gown with a white sheet over him and as white as the sheet." This scared her and she told me please not to dream about her. One of the good dreams I had was about a friend of our family in another state. She was sitting in a beautiful meadow with a lamb in her lap. When I spoke with my mother, I ask her how this women was? My mom said, "Oh, she's doing well, but her husband has cancer". I told mom about my dream, and suddenly I knew the meaning: "God was saying that the lamb of God (Jesus Christ) was with them and everything would be fine. Our friend had chemotherapy and he was healed and still is in excellent condition. I am a born again Christian and I don't live my life by the dreams I have had, but the Lord speaks to his children by them soemtimes. I haven't had these type of dreams for years. John 14:6.

tvccrn, ASN, RN · Jan 10, 2007

When I was in nursing school I worked the weekend in a NH. We had one patient who was one of those little old ladies we would get up in the into the wheelchair and she would putter around all day long. Never said anything to us, just putter around going about her business. Other than the fact that she didn't talk and was whellchair bound, not too much wrong with her healthwise.

Her roommate was bed-bound and very vocal. Would lay there and scream at the top of her lungs all day long. It didn't matter if you were in there or not. She was also very contractured and you couldn't straighten her limbs out without the most ear-piercing screeches.

One morning the roommate was uncharacteristically quiet after breakfast and during the time we were getting the putterer ready for the day. Got the putterer dressed, combed and off safely in her chair. She was joyfully headed down the hallway when the roommate motioned me over to the bed and whispered, yes whispered, "Do you see him?" I asked her who she was talking about and she very calmly raised her arm straight out and pointed to the upper corner of the room over the putterer's bed, "Him." She then said, "He's come to take her."

Now, she was referring to the putterer who I had just sent gaily on her daily routine.

I did inform the day nurse and all day long we kept an eye on putterer. Nothing amiss. The roommate, meanwhile, was quiet all day and could be heard humming. When we were in the room checking on her and whatnot, she would talk coherently and in a normal speaking voice for the first time in the entire 6 months that she had been there.

When I came in the next morning, I went into the room to get the putterer ready for the day and found that she was lethargic. The day nurse came in, examined her, said to feed her breakfast in bed and then see if I could arouse her enough to get up. Nope, I left to get her breakfast tray and upon reentering the room, her roommate said, "It's too late, they just left."

Sure enough, upon exam, the putterer had passed away.

From then on the roommate was a model patient, never once screaming again and just seemed to be a more content person.

tvccrn

2008nurse2b · Jan 10, 2007

I myself have seen these visions, I had eclampsia with both my children , but with my son I was very sick, after an emergency C-section, I was resting in my room and starting dreaming of angels, I immediatley woke up with a bloody nose and my O2 stats quickly declining. I was terrified, I just had a little boy and was not ready to go, the nurse was kind enough to stay in the room with me most of the night to make sure I was ok, I refused to sleep for a couple days.

When my sister was passing she was calling my uncle's name who had died a couple years prior and right before she died she held her hand in the air.

ksbrn99 · Jan 10, 2007

When I was a new nurse on a med-surg floor, another nurse with me on the night shift was annoyed with a pt who was rambling on and told him she was talking to God. He laughed about it and thought she was crazy. I told him to be careful, because if she says she's talking to God, then she probably is, and to take her seriously. She died 2 days later.

Another weird thing that happened to me, kind of off topic. I was working in the ICU and my pt was basically delerious, not making a bit of sense or saying one clear thing. Her son was in the room, trying to help her settle down. I was about 6 mos pregnant and she looked at me and said "You're gonna have a mother". I thought I misunderstood as she kept mumbling it, and asked her son what she meant. He said she was saying I was having a girl, that mother meant girl. I told her her son that I actually was having a girl.

It just goes to show that when you think you're patient is nuts, maybe you should really take another listen!

mom4sure · Jan 11, 2007

Have you taken care of any patients who've had any?
The first time I had a patient who was apparently having one was a lady who kept looking straight ahead at the wall & having conversations with someone named Mary that no one else could see. Come to find out from her adult son, Mary was his aunt who was deceased. The patient died a few days later.
Another one was recently. She was an elderly lady who was so weak, she could barely speak and definately was unable to assist us when we would turn her from side to side. Well, while we were all sitting in the nurses station charting and it was quiet, we heard her talking. Her room was beside the nurses station and we kept the door open. We all looked and the lady was SITTING UP IN BED and talking loud enough that we could hear from outside the room. When asked who she was talking to, she said it was a little girl dressed in white who keeps coming to see her. A little while later, the lady was back the way she was before she had that visitor we couldn't see. We told her niece about it the next morning when she came to visit and she said several of their family members have also talked of a little girl dressed in white coming to see them soon before death. That lady also died a few days later.
Neither of these patients had been medicated with anything that would cause hallucinations and neither were confused patients. I've heard of other nurses who've seen these kinds of things happen. Have you?

I have seen patients who seem to see something that no one else can see, they always have a look that gives the impression that they are looking at something very interesting and very pleasant. I have noticed that they seem to have a far away gaze as if in a trance, death usually follows shortly.

midcom · Jan 11, 2007

I'm not a nurse yet so can't comment on any of the patients but my Dad can't seem to stay wherever he went to when he died. He visited my Mom less than a year after his death when she was at her lowest. She asked him to take her with him & he told her it wasn't time yet & disappeared. Then a few years later when I was hospitalized, I saw him standing at the foot of my bed just shaking his head at me. I tried to convince myself that it was just the morphine, but I don't think so after my sister's experience this summer. She was gravely ill. We didn't know if she was going to make it. Fortunately, she did & later she told me of Dad, once more, standing this time at the foot of her bed, scowling. She felt a bear hug, something Dad was famous for giving, and disappeared.

Oh, I just rememberd. Just hours before dying, our grandmother reported seeing her own mother hovering above her bed.

Dixie

abbieRnChpn · Jan 11, 2007

Dying patients frequently see people that are no longer living, as a hospice nurse and previously in geriatrics, I've seen it alot. I find it comforting that someone is waiting for us when we cross over.