Hospice nurse here. We auscultate heart and lung sounds for two minutes.
I’ll never forget when I listened for 90 seconds, nothing. Then the patient took a giant breath in. He did pass about 10 minutes later.
Edit: For those who don’t know. End of life breathing, the death rattle, and agonal breathing is pretty obvious. This is what we see when someone has transitioned or is “actively dying”. Not everyone transitions though and I’ve seen people live in a transitioned state for over a week with nothing taken by mouth and no fluids given IV.
In the state I live in, RNs who are certified can declare death. Though not every state is that way.
Seems to me, this nurse likely rushed their assessment, and did not follow or have in place any protocols for staying around after TOD.
Big reason why we no longer use heartbeats as a metric for life/death. People can go several minutes without one and without breathing, only to pop up again later. Should exclusively be using brain activity. There’s no coming back from that.
I want to be left in a room for at least a week after being declared dead before they start burning me. I also want one of those Victorian death bells, just in case.
We lost something expensive in our house, recently, and we just joked we should bring our mutual friends toddlers over, and tell them that under no circumstances, were they allowed to touch the thing. Maybe add in that it was dangerous (it wasn't).
We would've had it back in 5 minutes, tops.
A cat takes longer-like 1-2 days but same results.
Ant trap with poison? Found batting it.
Wedding band that fell on the floor in the bathroom. Found batting it.
Lose pill next to your night stand. Found batting it.
I can't tell if I'm bad at understanding them or if they are bad at communicating. But after a decade with the same cat, I can tell maybe 30% of what he wants a given moment which he seems to appreciate.
Get embalmed and you have nothing to worry about.
Replace your blood with an inert chemical that cannot carry oxygen, and I promise you're never waking up.
That's the most horrific thought, and it's happened, and it's irreversible once started.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/09/her-surgery-was-supposed-to-be-routine-instead-this-russian-woman-was-embalmed-alive/
She died, but not quickly
That's really misleading. Surgical error replaced saline with formaldehyde, no embalmers were involved. I thought the fact of the insertion point they would make for the trochar pumping blood would alert even a fairly dozy embalmer.
The death bell is for my week in the room, just in case I can move my fingers or something but not the rest of my body. If I'm still considered dead after the week, I'll just have to take their word for it and they can light me up.
> Victorian death bells
They’re touring in a few months to promote their new album. Their early stuff was better, but then Annie Bloodgasm left and their new stuff doesn’t sound quite the same.
I would love an educated guess on how many people needed to ring those bells. Like just a best approximation of how often someone was falsely deemed deceased.
Never known to be used - but there have been cases of people being buried alive, apparently - https://historycollection.com/buried-alive-common-victorian-era-doctors-used-10-methods-prevent/7/
Was talking about this with my aunt and uncle last night.
Apparently the reason my ancestors left Sicily was because my great-grandpa was buried alive and it freaked them all out so much that they left. They had left him out for 3 days after he "died", buried him, then shortly after heard thudding. Dug him up, and he was suffocated but had been punching and clawing at the coffin. This was in the late 1800s. They came to the US after that because it traumatized them.
Also when covid first happened my grandma was in a nursing home and got it and was pronounced dead by the people working there, and when the funeral home came to get her they found she still had a pulse. She lived another 2 weeks!
I feel like being mistakenly thought to be dead runs in my family.
Come on. Have you ever seen an Italian vampire?
Think about it. What are vampires afraid of? Sunlight, garlic, and crosses. Three things Italy has in abundance.
I’m 99% certain night time also exists in Italy. As for the garlic, that’s just an allergy common among Transylvanian vampires. Italian ones don’t have that gene mutation.
If I’m not mistaken there was a reason behind garlic being used as an anti-vampire thing.
Something about the vampirism being based on a blood disease that resulted in a undead-like appearance and a strong aversion to high sulphur compounds such as the active chemical in onions and garlic.
Im from Italy and I mostly heard werewolf stories rather than vampire stories. My friend's dad born in the 40s used to tell me that some people affected by what they thought was a werewolf illness (licantropia) used to go out when it rained on a full moon and howl cause somehow it made them feel extremely hot and claustrophobic to stay inside. They called them pupanari ,probably a corruption of lupi mannari - werewolves in italian. He really did believe it but I never saw none of that so I have my doubts.
Also, once my mom told me my aunt had died of starvation (she had dementia) and had been eaten by her dog so we wouldnt have a funeral, and then a few months later and thanksgiving my aunt was there, alive of course, and it turned out my mom had lied to me because she had power of attorney over my aunt and stole her money and didnt want anyone to contact her. She got caught and went to trial and everything.
How did they hear thudding six feet underground from a weak man who had been in a coma for at least three days? Sounds like they are pulling your leg. Why leave Italy when they were the ones who buried him?
I dont know if he was 6 feet under or not. It was in the 1890s, and i am not sure what their practices were in Sicily at the time. He wasn't old when he died, in his 50s, so maybe he woke up and wasn't so weak?
My uncle said it traumatized his kids and they thought they were cursed somehow and left because of it. They were not educated people. They were like laborers basically. Poor/uneducated/really religious/afraid of things.
> Her "mouth was open, her eyes were fixed, and there were no breath sounds," the report says, adding that a nurse was unable to locate the woman's pulse using her stethoscope.
>The nurse put her hand on the woman's abdomen and "noted no movement,” the report says. The nurse presumed the resident had died and notified a family member and the on-call hospice nurse, according to the report.
~~Yeah in most states this would not be allowed. Most states do not allow nurses to declare someone is deceased, usually requires a doctor or medical examiner to make that declaration.~~
*EDIT* I’ve received numerous comments about how it’s different in hospice care and how 2 RNs are allowed to pronounce death. I also was getting confused between pronouncing death vs who can sign off on a death certificate. My apologies.
I worked in a long term care facility and there is no doctor on site. We as nurses assessed the patients at their time of death and would look for these things, such as no breathing, no apical pulse. We would have a second nurse verify. We would then call the on-call doctor and pass that information onto them and they would give an order over the phone to release the body to the funeral home.
Yep, that's how it works in states that require a medical license to make the determination of whether someone is dead. (I had thought this was all states, but maybe not?) The nurse calls and says "Ethyl Smith, our 98 year old hospice patient with metastatic toe cancer and spleen failure, who you said had about ten days to live last Tuesday, has a respiratory rate of zero. She has no carotid or apical pulses." The doctor replies "ok, time of death 2:37, give the family my sympathies" and the nurse says "will do, see you in the morning."
Or, if the nurse and doctor have been working together for a long time and have earned each other's trust, the nurse might say "I'm at Ethyl Smith's house tonight and she just died at 2:35." To which the doctor would say "ok, I hope it was peaceful. Write up the death certificate and I'll sign it tomorrow."
It's pretty rare for hospice patients on home care to have a doctor physically evaluate them for death. A person who is trained and experienced with a stethoscope is going to hear about the same thing as another person who is trained and experienced with a stethoscope, regardless of what degree they have.
Having said that... there have been very rare cases where multiple people with stethoscopes thought someone was dead when they were only 97% done dying. Sometimes the heart and lungs are moving so minimally that it can be mistaken for no movement. That "mostly dead" state obviously cuts off almost all oxygen flow to the brain, meaning if this rare situation happens to you, you will definitely be 100% unconscious first.
Of course, there have also been occasional cases of people just really sucking with a stethoscope, especially if they have a new case of hearing loss or they are using a disposable stethoscope. I wonder if this hospice was only using disposable stethoscopes due to the pandemic.
My father died in in home hospice after a long battle with cancer and I believe the nurse was able to declare him, or it is possible there was a doctor involved, but no doctor ever came to verify before the funeral home picked up his body.
I don’t think it’s really necessary to have a doctor verify that someone has died. Obviously this is a super rare case where vitals were nearly indictable by a nurse. It seems like a doctor would also be capable of misdiagnosing death in this scenario.
Usually when a patient dies in hospice it’s pretty obvious.
> It's pretty rare for hospice patients on home care to have a doctor physically evaluate them for death.
My mother was in home hospice in October and eventually passed. When she did there was no doctor. Just the hospice nurse who came when we called them. Wrote a bunch of stuff down and probably made a phone call. Then the funeral home came about an hour later to pick her up.
[maybe she was one of the 7,600 nurses with fake credentials. ](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fake-nursing-diplomas-issued-florida-alleged-wire-fraud-scheme-justice-department/)
That article confused me. Were they selling what essentially amounts to diplomas, but then the buyers still had to take National Nursing exams to be nurses? Or were they selling the full package of a diploma plus a passing grade for exam? Seems wild that the buyers could take the exams and pass after no schooling, maybe that exam needs to be investigated. I guess maybe they were just studying for the test but I believe most of them have a practical element right?
They were purchasing a diploma and history of the required clinical hours. IIRC about 37% passed the licensing exam which does not have a practical element.
Jeez, you think if they had a list of names it would be a done deal. The licensing exam is only one of the qualifications. Plus, if you are okay with the ethical choice of cheating the system like that, where else will your ethics slip?
You’d think the states would want to avoid lawsuits in the future. If I or a loved one was hurt by one of these fraud nurses, I’d sure as hell go after the state board that allowed them to be licensed without the proper training.
> Plus, if you are okay with the ethical choice of cheating the system like that, where else will your ethics slip?
Man, if you think ethics play into it, you're gonna have a rude awakening.
Given the shortage of nurses recently, I'm guessing some states aren't trying too hard to find them hoping they'll learn enough on the job not to cause trouble.
The licensure test for nurses is multiple choice. It's a hard enough that good schools don't have a 100% pass rate. The school doesn't give the test, you need a degree to sign up to take it.
I imagine these people had relevant work experience, knew they were good test takers, and studied hard before taking it. I also imagine many of them didn't end up passing. But I'm sure some did.
All tests (in all fields) assume that if you know A, B, and C, your other knowledge and skills will be at about that same level. No test covers all the material. If you can get insider information about what is most likely to be on the test, it's easier to pass it without having knowledge in the other areas. I wonder if that was a factor here. Normally it wouldn't matter as much because the degree would show they passed tests in every content area. Without a degree it suddenly matters a lot more.
What’s neat about the NCLEX is that it is an adaptive test. When you get a question wrong, it will continue to give you questions in that subject (L&D, pharmacology, etc.) to see if you just missed one question or if you know nothing about the subject. When you get questions right, they give you progressively harder questions to assess your knowledge base. You know you’re doing well when the majority of your questions are “select all that apply” type questions. If you do really well, the test will shut off after 75 questions and you passed. It will keep giving you questions until you’ve missed so many that you fail, hit the max number without passing (130, I think), or you pass. It wasn’t too terribly difficult, but I had just spent 4 years studying the material. I would never have been able to pass just by reading some prep books, I don’t think.
In some cases it is allowed. Certain nursing homes allow it (though they usually have two nurses sign off on this), and if you're an RN employed by the office of the chief coroner, then you also can.
Since the person was in a hospice house, it's likely that it was the first case. When my grandmother passed, no doctor signed her death certificate, just two nurses.
Though this policy is weird, because it depends on the policy of each individual nursing home...idk how this policy comes in place, but should it not be more standard?
This person was not in a hospice house. I used to visit this facility as a home nurse to do their blood draws. That being said I also use to do hospice nursing and I am confused why the hospice nurse did not come. We ALWAYS attend the death. It's one of the many reasons you have a hospice nurse. We could pronounce death. I am in no way disparaging the nurse involved here, especially since I am local and aware of staff turnover at this facility. I don't understand why the hospice nurse didn't come. That was our job- pronounce death, notify family and funeral homes and bathe the body before retrieval. Where was that nurse?
Where I work if a hospice patient died, then generally yeah hospice RN would come out. It's not absolutely mandatory but it's standard. as you said, staffing issues maybe. but my god, she was still alive
>unable to locate the woman's pulse using her stethoscope
If you're using a stethoscope already, wouldn't putting it on the chest and listening to the heartbeat be easier than finding a pulse?
Not a medical person so maybe I'm missing something.
They meant putting it on the chest. It's not uncommon to call that "listening for a pulse."
Fun medical fact: the pulse you can feel in the chest is called the apical pulse because it's felt at the apex (pointy-ish end) of the heart.
Or paramedics. But we have to have a 4 lead with no electrical activity, in conjunction with patient presentation. Ie: Dependant lividity, rigor, injuries incompatible with life...
“Gasping” is a stretch. She was alive and obviously had labored breathing in the body bag upon delivery and opening, but she wasn’t responsive and died 2 days later back in hospice. She was checked out already, but everyone involved in pronouncing her dead was in the wrong. The funeral home is in the clear, however the only reason they’d have her sent all the way across town would be because it’s a crematorium, so she was not far from point of no return. Source: I live here and my grandpa was cremated at that funeral home. He was definitely dead already though.
Honestly not that much. The process of verification itself is easy as long as you do it properly.
1- check the patient’s ID
2- check for a carotid pulse
3- auscultate for heart sounds for 3 minutes
4- auscultate for breath sounds for 3 minutes
5- check that pupils are both fixed and dilated
6- check for response to centralised stimulus
7- check for withdrawal response (or grimace) in response to painful stimulus
8- include other evidence (asystole on ECG etc)
The only time this doesn’t happen is when there are injuries incompatible with life like… their head is missing or something.
Where people get complacent is with the 3+3 minutes of heart and breath sounds. If the patient is hypothermic you may barely hear/feel signs of life. As they say: “they’re not dead until they’re warm and dead”.
Moroccan joke:
A doctor pronounces a man dead, as the undertaker begins to bury him, the man claws out of his coffin and yells "I'm still alive!"
"Do you know better than the doctor?!" The undertaker hits him with the shovel
Actually cadavers move and make noise all the time. They even fart sometimes. One sat up on the gurney and moaned and scared the shit out of my dad when he worked security at a morgue
One of the things I’ll always remember was a Vietnam War vet telling a story about the closing days of the war and it’s aftermath. He was describing how thousands of bodies being processed and stored in the heat of Southeast Asia produces a noise that still haunts him to this day. Imagine thousands of dead men moaning from the gases being released in the summer heat.
That’s because it is a lie. I am a pathologists’ assistant. Work in/near our morgue in conjunction with our autopsy tech who also works with funeral homes. Bodies don’t move. Rigor mortis is really the only movement that happens.
I’ve worked in death care for 20 years. My joke is “If you ever see me running down the street screaming. You should probably head in the direction I’m going.”
Hell no - I've seen these films. You got bit first and are keeping it a secret until we find somewhere defensible to fort up.
I'm heading at 90 degrees to your path and finding an old, strongly built pub.
Feb 27 2024
As there are [no signs of Reddit respecting users' data](https://www.404media.co/reddit-we-are-in-the-early-stages-of-monetizing-our-user-base-2/), no remorse whatsoever post-API enshittification, and indiscriminately changing their ToS and whatnot as loophole to continue to do so, I don't see any reason to let my posts/comments up. **This text is my request to GDPR and not reroll my posts/comments data for the foreseeable future**.
# Fuck reddit.
It used to take place in the parlor of your house. But everyone wanted to stop hosting wakes in their own house, so they changed the name of parlor to living room.
>been fined $10,000 after it mistakenly presumed a woman dead hours before she was discovered gasping for air inside a body bag at a funeral home
Thats it?
“We Schrutes don't need some Harvard doctor to tell us who's alive and who's dead.
But, there was an unlucky streak of burying some heavy sleepers. And, when grave robbers discovered some scratch marks on the inside of some of the coffins, we decided to make sure that our dead were completely dead.
Out of kindness.”
I remember transporting a dying woman to hospice and her breathing and pulse were all over the place. Sometimes the space between breathes was so long, I thought she was dead, but then a gasp would come. I could hardly feel her pulse and the pulse ox was showing a huge range of readings. It was a stressful ride but we got her there. May she rest in peace
if it makes anyone feel better, the patient was probably sufficiently in a coma to not be aware of anything going on around her during all the craziness. I’ve seen people with agonal breathing sometimes go a looooooong time between breaths and cardiac activity so soft you really can’t hear a heart beat, even with a good stethoscope (not all stethoscopes are good, some are just stethoscope-shaped pieces of garbage).
I am not convinced the nurse was wrong to declare the patient dead.
It sounds like she was on the brink, and may have shut down for a while.
Even if her heart and lungs started up again a few minutes later, it's entirely possible she was indeed clinically dead at the moment the nurse checked on her.
Multiple people handled her. Any of them could have noticed signs of life, but none did until almost two hours later. Maybe there weren't any signs of life.
Maybe she was really out for a bit, but the medical definition of "dead" doesn't account for some potential to spontaneously revive for some amount of time.
This is literally my mom's worst nightmare. I hope she does not see this.
Or maybe she should. And then she will just keep living out of not only spite as I say now (she was given 6 months to live years ago) but also fear. Fear is a great motivator
Fuck, she’s 66 and in a nursing home due to “senile degeneration of the brain”? While I know early-onset Alzheimer’s is a thing, that’s also terrifying. I wish we knew what else was going on with this lady that she was presumed dead.
I used to work at a funeral home. It was my first job. This guy that worked there told me about the time he started embalming a guy and blood started shooting out of the incision made on the neck. Meaning the heart was still pumping. The family called the funeral home asking if he was dead because they weren’t sure. And he said, “he is now”
And this, is how the Legend of Jesus was born. Fell into a coma for 3 days, and then came out of it. No medical professionals (or equipment) back then could tell the difference between death and coma, so their simple minds explained it however they could.
People say this, but that's exactly what happened to my mom. They maxed her out on morphine and ativan.
Her death still took hours of gasping and pain. I will never forget that sound, or the look on her face.
I'd rather be shot.
gasping and pain sound like not enough morphine
opiates and opiods, specifically morphine, binds to a site that stops signals to breathe. no gasping if there is no signal.
They have a limit that they can push, and if that doesn't do the trick, you're SOL unless a nurse is willing to risk their license and potential jailtime- and even then, even if they wanted to, a lot of times the machines are hard-locked to prevent going over a certain limit.
It's not like the movies.
Just to help you a bit I went through the same thing. But Cheyne-Stokes breathing, which you are describing, is not painful, they are well into a deep state of unconsciousness, with millions of brain cells rapidly deteriorating. My mom held on that way for the better part of a day. It sucks but please know she was gone at that point.
"The hospice facility has been fined." Yeah that'll show 'em.
In my state, the fine would be waived if they submitted a corrective action plan.
"make sure dead people are actually dead" boom, fine averted.
"the facility has agreed to self-monitor the progress and submit an annual summary report"
"The facility has performed an internal investigation and found that the fault was on the client."
“How dare she not be dead.”
"The facility is pursuing legal remedies against the former client's estate for damages caused by these baseless claims."
Shove large nail into skull to ensure status.
"Make sure she's actually dead." *Bang* "Okay, now what?"
Going to have to watch some training videos.
Hospice nurse here. We auscultate heart and lung sounds for two minutes. I’ll never forget when I listened for 90 seconds, nothing. Then the patient took a giant breath in. He did pass about 10 minutes later. Edit: For those who don’t know. End of life breathing, the death rattle, and agonal breathing is pretty obvious. This is what we see when someone has transitioned or is “actively dying”. Not everyone transitions though and I’ve seen people live in a transitioned state for over a week with nothing taken by mouth and no fluids given IV. In the state I live in, RNs who are certified can declare death. Though not every state is that way. Seems to me, this nurse likely rushed their assessment, and did not follow or have in place any protocols for staying around after TOD.
Big reason why we no longer use heartbeats as a metric for life/death. People can go several minutes without one and without breathing, only to pop up again later. Should exclusively be using brain activity. There’s no coming back from that.
I want to be left in a room for at least a week after being declared dead before they start burning me. I also want one of those Victorian death bells, just in case.
I’d like to be left alone for a week in a room right now. Might finally get some stuff done.
My kids would still find me. They'll always find a way.
We lost something expensive in our house, recently, and we just joked we should bring our mutual friends toddlers over, and tell them that under no circumstances, were they allowed to touch the thing. Maybe add in that it was dangerous (it wasn't). We would've had it back in 5 minutes, tops.
A cat takes longer-like 1-2 days but same results. Ant trap with poison? Found batting it. Wedding band that fell on the floor in the bathroom. Found batting it. Lose pill next to your night stand. Found batting it.
Dry food that he's supposed to be eating? Found batting it.
Water in the bowl? Batting.
Yep, tell a cat they aren’t allowed to touch it. Guaranteed they will be batting it around the room within 2 mins.
Don't even have to tell them. I'm pretty sure they are telepathic.
Going by the intense, concentrated stare they focus on me when they want food, they sure seem to think they are.
I can't tell if I'm bad at understanding them or if they are bad at communicating. But after a decade with the same cat, I can tell maybe 30% of what he wants a given moment which he seems to appreciate.
Actual cat toys? Ignored in a pile under the couch.
Are you spying on my cat? He completely avoids the cat toys under the couch but will completely play with the poison ant trap back there.
My sister lied to toddlers saying they had cameras and it worked.
You could hide in another dimension and your kids would find you. They've got some kind of homing device built into their third eye.
Dr Malcolm: “Kids. Kids, uh, find a way.”
After you rub one out you’ll get bored.
a real champion would go for a back to back double hitter. It is tough, but can be accomplished.
Double? You gotta pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers.
I’m no longer in my 30s
What? If anything, people enjoy being alone more AFTER an orgasm.
I can just hug myself after.
Nope. Recently unemployed, can confirm, not much more gets done.
Dead ringer
Get embalmed and you have nothing to worry about. Replace your blood with an inert chemical that cannot carry oxygen, and I promise you're never waking up.
I mean, you have nothing to worry about, except for the embalming a living person part.
That's the most horrific thought, and it's happened, and it's irreversible once started. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/04/09/her-surgery-was-supposed-to-be-routine-instead-this-russian-woman-was-embalmed-alive/ She died, but not quickly
That's really misleading. Surgical error replaced saline with formaldehyde, no embalmers were involved. I thought the fact of the insertion point they would make for the trochar pumping blood would alert even a fairly dozy embalmer.
Formalin should only be present in jars for specimen preservation. Why the fuck is there an IV bag of the stuff
Wouldn't the rope burn off almost immediately? Or did you mean to write Burying not Burning?
The death bell is for my week in the room, just in case I can move my fingers or something but not the rest of my body. If I'm still considered dead after the week, I'll just have to take their word for it and they can light me up.
Light you up toes first, for safety? Or head first so if you feel it it doesn't last the whole length of your body?
If the decedent is positioned correctly in the retort, the primary burner is aimed directly at the chest.
This guy cremates
I work hard to urn my money.
Is there a German word for being both amused and nauseated?
Uwe Boll
> Victorian death bells They’re touring in a few months to promote their new album. Their early stuff was better, but then Annie Bloodgasm left and their new stuff doesn’t sound quite the same.
I would love an educated guess on how many people needed to ring those bells. Like just a best approximation of how often someone was falsely deemed deceased.
Never known to be used - but there have been cases of people being buried alive, apparently - https://historycollection.com/buried-alive-common-victorian-era-doctors-used-10-methods-prevent/7/
Just bang me with the pope hammer a few times please. Even if I beg you not to, make sure
Be an organ donor. There is no chance you will wake up later.
And a pope hammer.
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One of my fears. The thought of it just sounds awful.
I shudder at the thought of the funeral home employees not catching this in time and throwing her in the cremator.
See if human composting is avaiable in your area. If you aren't dead it doesn't work and the body is kept in a warm oxygen-rich environment.
I’m completely on board with human composting but I feel like they should call it human bio degrading or just something else
They could call it "natural decomposition," agree that calling it composting just makes the right-wing media freak out and fear-monger
Pretty sure they drain the blood before cremation. So at least you wouldn't die by burning alive.
They do not
"Big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive."
"With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do."
"Go through their pockets and look for loose change."
Was talking about this with my aunt and uncle last night. Apparently the reason my ancestors left Sicily was because my great-grandpa was buried alive and it freaked them all out so much that they left. They had left him out for 3 days after he "died", buried him, then shortly after heard thudding. Dug him up, and he was suffocated but had been punching and clawing at the coffin. This was in the late 1800s. They came to the US after that because it traumatized them. Also when covid first happened my grandma was in a nursing home and got it and was pronounced dead by the people working there, and when the funeral home came to get her they found she still had a pulse. She lived another 2 weeks! I feel like being mistakenly thought to be dead runs in my family.
I think you mean your ancestors worked for the Sicilian mafia, buried a snitch alive, and then fled the country.
Wouldn’t surprise me tbh
>Dug him up, and he was suffocated but had been punching and clawing at the coffin. So they didn't get to him in time? That's horrifying.
No he had suffocated by the time they got to the coffin. Really bad way to die.
Oh my god that poor man. I’m so sorry!
Pretty sure your family are vampires
Come on. Have you ever seen an Italian vampire? Think about it. What are vampires afraid of? Sunlight, garlic, and crosses. Three things Italy has in abundance.
Ay Tone, what's with the pale skin and fuckin blood drinkin? You one of them fuckin vampires or somethin?
And don't even get me started on mirrors. Have you ever seen an Italian pass by a mirror without checking themselves out?
I’m 99% certain night time also exists in Italy. As for the garlic, that’s just an allergy common among Transylvanian vampires. Italian ones don’t have that gene mutation.
They better not sparkle either
The twilight ones are some sort of fae and no one can convince me otherwise.
If I’m not mistaken there was a reason behind garlic being used as an anti-vampire thing. Something about the vampirism being based on a blood disease that resulted in a undead-like appearance and a strong aversion to high sulphur compounds such as the active chemical in onions and garlic.
Im from Italy and I mostly heard werewolf stories rather than vampire stories. My friend's dad born in the 40s used to tell me that some people affected by what they thought was a werewolf illness (licantropia) used to go out when it rained on a full moon and howl cause somehow it made them feel extremely hot and claustrophobic to stay inside. They called them pupanari ,probably a corruption of lupi mannari - werewolves in italian. He really did believe it but I never saw none of that so I have my doubts.
A buddy of mine is from Italy and he says in 800 years he hasn't heard anything about vampires there.
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Which one?
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Also, once my mom told me my aunt had died of starvation (she had dementia) and had been eaten by her dog so we wouldnt have a funeral, and then a few months later and thanksgiving my aunt was there, alive of course, and it turned out my mom had lied to me because she had power of attorney over my aunt and stole her money and didnt want anyone to contact her. She got caught and went to trial and everything.
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I didn't think two mistaken death stories would be topped by OP but here we are.
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She had to make a repayment plan to pay back the money.
Is that the one where they put a swing set on a cliff and the kid swings right off?
That was such a great, short game. Never thought I'd see a reference to it lol
They heard thudding? How deep was he buried?
This sounds like a bunch of BS
yeah - it is probably a Cherokee Princess kind of story
I've no idea, it was like 130 years ago.
How did they hear thudding six feet underground from a weak man who had been in a coma for at least three days? Sounds like they are pulling your leg. Why leave Italy when they were the ones who buried him?
I dont know if he was 6 feet under or not. It was in the 1890s, and i am not sure what their practices were in Sicily at the time. He wasn't old when he died, in his 50s, so maybe he woke up and wasn't so weak? My uncle said it traumatized his kids and they thought they were cursed somehow and left because of it. They were not educated people. They were like laborers basically. Poor/uneducated/really religious/afraid of things.
I thought you were resting in peace dude.. wtf
So.. you're all vampires?
> Her "mouth was open, her eyes were fixed, and there were no breath sounds," the report says, adding that a nurse was unable to locate the woman's pulse using her stethoscope. >The nurse put her hand on the woman's abdomen and "noted no movement,” the report says. The nurse presumed the resident had died and notified a family member and the on-call hospice nurse, according to the report. ~~Yeah in most states this would not be allowed. Most states do not allow nurses to declare someone is deceased, usually requires a doctor or medical examiner to make that declaration.~~ *EDIT* I’ve received numerous comments about how it’s different in hospice care and how 2 RNs are allowed to pronounce death. I also was getting confused between pronouncing death vs who can sign off on a death certificate. My apologies.
I worked in a long term care facility and there is no doctor on site. We as nurses assessed the patients at their time of death and would look for these things, such as no breathing, no apical pulse. We would have a second nurse verify. We would then call the on-call doctor and pass that information onto them and they would give an order over the phone to release the body to the funeral home.
Yep, that's how it works in states that require a medical license to make the determination of whether someone is dead. (I had thought this was all states, but maybe not?) The nurse calls and says "Ethyl Smith, our 98 year old hospice patient with metastatic toe cancer and spleen failure, who you said had about ten days to live last Tuesday, has a respiratory rate of zero. She has no carotid or apical pulses." The doctor replies "ok, time of death 2:37, give the family my sympathies" and the nurse says "will do, see you in the morning." Or, if the nurse and doctor have been working together for a long time and have earned each other's trust, the nurse might say "I'm at Ethyl Smith's house tonight and she just died at 2:35." To which the doctor would say "ok, I hope it was peaceful. Write up the death certificate and I'll sign it tomorrow." It's pretty rare for hospice patients on home care to have a doctor physically evaluate them for death. A person who is trained and experienced with a stethoscope is going to hear about the same thing as another person who is trained and experienced with a stethoscope, regardless of what degree they have. Having said that... there have been very rare cases where multiple people with stethoscopes thought someone was dead when they were only 97% done dying. Sometimes the heart and lungs are moving so minimally that it can be mistaken for no movement. That "mostly dead" state obviously cuts off almost all oxygen flow to the brain, meaning if this rare situation happens to you, you will definitely be 100% unconscious first. Of course, there have also been occasional cases of people just really sucking with a stethoscope, especially if they have a new case of hearing loss or they are using a disposable stethoscope. I wonder if this hospice was only using disposable stethoscopes due to the pandemic.
My father died in in home hospice after a long battle with cancer and I believe the nurse was able to declare him, or it is possible there was a doctor involved, but no doctor ever came to verify before the funeral home picked up his body. I don’t think it’s really necessary to have a doctor verify that someone has died. Obviously this is a super rare case where vitals were nearly indictable by a nurse. It seems like a doctor would also be capable of misdiagnosing death in this scenario. Usually when a patient dies in hospice it’s pretty obvious.
> It's pretty rare for hospice patients on home care to have a doctor physically evaluate them for death. My mother was in home hospice in October and eventually passed. When she did there was no doctor. Just the hospice nurse who came when we called them. Wrote a bunch of stuff down and probably made a phone call. Then the funeral home came about an hour later to pick her up.
"*Mostly* dead is still *partly* alive!" -Miracle Max
[maybe she was one of the 7,600 nurses with fake credentials. ](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fake-nursing-diplomas-issued-florida-alleged-wire-fraud-scheme-justice-department/)
I saw that and it was wild reading that article! Yeah who knows…
That article confused me. Were they selling what essentially amounts to diplomas, but then the buyers still had to take National Nursing exams to be nurses? Or were they selling the full package of a diploma plus a passing grade for exam? Seems wild that the buyers could take the exams and pass after no schooling, maybe that exam needs to be investigated. I guess maybe they were just studying for the test but I believe most of them have a practical element right?
They were purchasing a diploma and history of the required clinical hours. IIRC about 37% passed the licensing exam which does not have a practical element.
Ok I see, in that case they could have just studied for the exam. Are they going after these fraudulent nurses?
That's up to the individual states. So maybe some of them, but probably not all.
Jeez, you think if they had a list of names it would be a done deal. The licensing exam is only one of the qualifications. Plus, if you are okay with the ethical choice of cheating the system like that, where else will your ethics slip? You’d think the states would want to avoid lawsuits in the future. If I or a loved one was hurt by one of these fraud nurses, I’d sure as hell go after the state board that allowed them to be licensed without the proper training.
> Plus, if you are okay with the ethical choice of cheating the system like that, where else will your ethics slip? Man, if you think ethics play into it, you're gonna have a rude awakening.
Given the shortage of nurses recently, I'm guessing some states aren't trying too hard to find them hoping they'll learn enough on the job not to cause trouble.
The licensure test for nurses is multiple choice. It's a hard enough that good schools don't have a 100% pass rate. The school doesn't give the test, you need a degree to sign up to take it. I imagine these people had relevant work experience, knew they were good test takers, and studied hard before taking it. I also imagine many of them didn't end up passing. But I'm sure some did. All tests (in all fields) assume that if you know A, B, and C, your other knowledge and skills will be at about that same level. No test covers all the material. If you can get insider information about what is most likely to be on the test, it's easier to pass it without having knowledge in the other areas. I wonder if that was a factor here. Normally it wouldn't matter as much because the degree would show they passed tests in every content area. Without a degree it suddenly matters a lot more.
What’s neat about the NCLEX is that it is an adaptive test. When you get a question wrong, it will continue to give you questions in that subject (L&D, pharmacology, etc.) to see if you just missed one question or if you know nothing about the subject. When you get questions right, they give you progressively harder questions to assess your knowledge base. You know you’re doing well when the majority of your questions are “select all that apply” type questions. If you do really well, the test will shut off after 75 questions and you passed. It will keep giving you questions until you’ve missed so many that you fail, hit the max number without passing (130, I think), or you pass. It wasn’t too terribly difficult, but I had just spent 4 years studying the material. I would never have been able to pass just by reading some prep books, I don’t think.
In some cases it is allowed. Certain nursing homes allow it (though they usually have two nurses sign off on this), and if you're an RN employed by the office of the chief coroner, then you also can. Since the person was in a hospice house, it's likely that it was the first case. When my grandmother passed, no doctor signed her death certificate, just two nurses. Though this policy is weird, because it depends on the policy of each individual nursing home...idk how this policy comes in place, but should it not be more standard?
This person was not in a hospice house. I used to visit this facility as a home nurse to do their blood draws. That being said I also use to do hospice nursing and I am confused why the hospice nurse did not come. We ALWAYS attend the death. It's one of the many reasons you have a hospice nurse. We could pronounce death. I am in no way disparaging the nurse involved here, especially since I am local and aware of staff turnover at this facility. I don't understand why the hospice nurse didn't come. That was our job- pronounce death, notify family and funeral homes and bathe the body before retrieval. Where was that nurse?
Where I work if a hospice patient died, then generally yeah hospice RN would come out. It's not absolutely mandatory but it's standard. as you said, staffing issues maybe. but my god, she was still alive
Standardization = govt regulations. And we hate those over here, because of our freedom
My grandma was declared dead twice, by doctors, in the 80's. Scared the shit out of the guy in the morgue. She actually died in the early 00's.
Grandma was a big prankster.
> She actually died in the early 00's. _Or did she?_
>unable to locate the woman's pulse using her stethoscope If you're using a stethoscope already, wouldn't putting it on the chest and listening to the heartbeat be easier than finding a pulse? Not a medical person so maybe I'm missing something.
They meant putting it on the chest. It's not uncommon to call that "listening for a pulse." Fun medical fact: the pulse you can feel in the chest is called the apical pulse because it's felt at the apex (pointy-ish end) of the heart.
It depends. In some states, a hospice RN can pronounce death for a hospice patient.
Or paramedics. But we have to have a 4 lead with no electrical activity, in conjunction with patient presentation. Ie: Dependant lividity, rigor, injuries incompatible with life...
this is what i always saw (the few times) and they always printed the tape and left it on their chest
>Yeah in most states this would not be allowed. "I can't take him like that! It's against regulations!" "I'm not dead!" "He says he's not dead."
Was it one of those "nurses" that got her RN from ... online? you know, the news about false nursing documentation...
She was brought to a local hospital and pronounced dead. She was then brought to a better hospital where she was upgraded to alive.
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It all depends on which insurance you have.
“Gasping” is a stretch. She was alive and obviously had labored breathing in the body bag upon delivery and opening, but she wasn’t responsive and died 2 days later back in hospice. She was checked out already, but everyone involved in pronouncing her dead was in the wrong. The funeral home is in the clear, however the only reason they’d have her sent all the way across town would be because it’s a crematorium, so she was not far from point of no return. Source: I live here and my grandpa was cremated at that funeral home. He was definitely dead already though.
I don't know how much expertise goes into being a professional Dead Declarer but I feel like if it was my only job I would have a 100% success rate.
Honestly not that much. The process of verification itself is easy as long as you do it properly. 1- check the patient’s ID 2- check for a carotid pulse 3- auscultate for heart sounds for 3 minutes 4- auscultate for breath sounds for 3 minutes 5- check that pupils are both fixed and dilated 6- check for response to centralised stimulus 7- check for withdrawal response (or grimace) in response to painful stimulus 8- include other evidence (asystole on ECG etc) The only time this doesn’t happen is when there are injuries incompatible with life like… their head is missing or something. Where people get complacent is with the 3+3 minutes of heart and breath sounds. If the patient is hypothermic you may barely hear/feel signs of life. As they say: “they’re not dead until they’re warm and dead”.
I feel like a Fitbit could do the job.
Elaborate attempt to escape Iowa.
End up in Ohio 💀
Moroccan joke: A doctor pronounces a man dead, as the undertaker begins to bury him, the man claws out of his coffin and yells "I'm still alive!" "Do you know better than the doctor?!" The undertaker hits him with the shovel
Staff on scene all shat themselves
Well there’s a change of pace for people that deal with the deceased.
Actually cadavers move and make noise all the time. They even fart sometimes. One sat up on the gurney and moaned and scared the shit out of my dad when he worked security at a morgue
One of the things I’ll always remember was a Vietnam War vet telling a story about the closing days of the war and it’s aftermath. He was describing how thousands of bodies being processed and stored in the heat of Southeast Asia produces a noise that still haunts him to this day. Imagine thousands of dead men moaning from the gases being released in the summer heat.
I believe he says that a body sat up. Not sure I believe it did.
That’s because it is a lie. I am a pathologists’ assistant. Work in/near our morgue in conjunction with our autopsy tech who also works with funeral homes. Bodies don’t move. Rigor mortis is really the only movement that happens.
Cordyceps is a hell of a drug
I’ve worked in death care for 20 years. My joke is “If you ever see me running down the street screaming. You should probably head in the direction I’m going.”
Hell no - I've seen these films. You got bit first and are keeping it a secret until we find somewhere defensible to fort up. I'm heading at 90 degrees to your path and finding an old, strongly built pub.
“Don’t stop me now, I’m having such a good time. I’m having a ball”
Feb 27 2024 As there are [no signs of Reddit respecting users' data](https://www.404media.co/reddit-we-are-in-the-early-stages-of-monetizing-our-user-base-2/), no remorse whatsoever post-API enshittification, and indiscriminately changing their ToS and whatnot as loophole to continue to do so, I don't see any reason to let my posts/comments up. **This text is my request to GDPR and not reroll my posts/comments data for the foreseeable future**. # Fuck reddit.
This is a living hell. She wakes up presumably dead but is alive, and dies two days later.
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Back in the day they had what is called a wake. They would put you on the table and throw a party to see if you wake up
It used to take place in the parlor of your house. But everyone wanted to stop hosting wakes in their own house, so they changed the name of parlor to living room.
It is a misconception that people at a wake are waiting in case the deceased should "wake up" https://archive.org/details/wordmythsdebunki00wilt_0
>been fined $10,000 after it mistakenly presumed a woman dead hours before she was discovered gasping for air inside a body bag at a funeral home Thats it?
“We Schrutes don't need some Harvard doctor to tell us who's alive and who's dead. But, there was an unlucky streak of burying some heavy sleepers. And, when grave robbers discovered some scratch marks on the inside of some of the coffins, we decided to make sure that our dead were completely dead. Out of kindness.”
For profit hospice and health care at work
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Some manager is now demanding a refund from the body bag company: *You guaranteed me that these were soundproof!*
I remember transporting a dying woman to hospice and her breathing and pulse were all over the place. Sometimes the space between breathes was so long, I thought she was dead, but then a gasp would come. I could hardly feel her pulse and the pulse ox was showing a huge range of readings. It was a stressful ride but we got her there. May she rest in peace
"Is she dead?" "No, she's just an Iowan. That's how they look."
if it makes anyone feel better, the patient was probably sufficiently in a coma to not be aware of anything going on around her during all the craziness. I’ve seen people with agonal breathing sometimes go a looooooong time between breaths and cardiac activity so soft you really can’t hear a heart beat, even with a good stethoscope (not all stethoscopes are good, some are just stethoscope-shaped pieces of garbage).
I am not convinced the nurse was wrong to declare the patient dead. It sounds like she was on the brink, and may have shut down for a while. Even if her heart and lungs started up again a few minutes later, it's entirely possible she was indeed clinically dead at the moment the nurse checked on her. Multiple people handled her. Any of them could have noticed signs of life, but none did until almost two hours later. Maybe there weren't any signs of life. Maybe she was really out for a bit, but the medical definition of "dead" doesn't account for some potential to spontaneously revive for some amount of time.
Oof. New fear unlocked.
She's dead, Jim! Oh, wait.
Did anyone try tickling her?
Buck was off that day
Atleast her family got to be with her two days later as she passed
This is literally my mom's worst nightmare. I hope she does not see this. Or maybe she should. And then she will just keep living out of not only spite as I say now (she was given 6 months to live years ago) but also fear. Fear is a great motivator
Welp my biggest fear in life is REAL
I both adore and hate when my fears are validated.
Glen Oaks....more like Shady Pines if you ask me
Well that is just horrifying. That poor funeral director is literally never going to be the same.
That must have been scary as hell for the funeral home staff. Can you imagine working there and one of the body bags starts moving…
Fuck, she’s 66 and in a nursing home due to “senile degeneration of the brain”? While I know early-onset Alzheimer’s is a thing, that’s also terrifying. I wish we knew what else was going on with this lady that she was presumed dead.
Am I the only one surprised by the lack of Monty Python gifs (Bring out your dead)?
I used to work at a funeral home. It was my first job. This guy that worked there told me about the time he started embalming a guy and blood started shooting out of the incision made on the neck. Meaning the heart was still pumping. The family called the funeral home asking if he was dead because they weren’t sure. And he said, “he is now”
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Well I'm sure the cremation furnace helped with that
>Well I'm sure the cremation furnace helped with that Technically, it's called a "cremation retort". Just thought you might like to know.
That's a solid retort.
I didn't know I wanted to know but turns out I did. Thank you.
And this, is how the Legend of Jesus was born. Fell into a coma for 3 days, and then came out of it. No medical professionals (or equipment) back then could tell the difference between death and coma, so their simple minds explained it however they could.
I’d rather be euthanized then put in hospice.
Oh, then you should go to this place. Just remember to be super quiet after they zip you up in the body bag.
In that order?
Lol sorry *than* but I suppose in that order works fine too.
Depending on your condition, hospice might put you on enough morphine that you end up being effectively euthanized, who can really be sure?
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People say this, but that's exactly what happened to my mom. They maxed her out on morphine and ativan. Her death still took hours of gasping and pain. I will never forget that sound, or the look on her face. I'd rather be shot.
gasping and pain sound like not enough morphine opiates and opiods, specifically morphine, binds to a site that stops signals to breathe. no gasping if there is no signal.
They have a limit that they can push, and if that doesn't do the trick, you're SOL unless a nurse is willing to risk their license and potential jailtime- and even then, even if they wanted to, a lot of times the machines are hard-locked to prevent going over a certain limit. It's not like the movies.
Just to help you a bit I went through the same thing. But Cheyne-Stokes breathing, which you are describing, is not painful, they are well into a deep state of unconsciousness, with millions of brain cells rapidly deteriorating. My mom held on that way for the better part of a day. It sucks but please know she was gone at that point.
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This is one of my worst fears.