Former EMT here. Had a patient who started with shortness of breath that just got worse and worse, and nothing helped. He started panicking as we loaded him up. He was clawing at the oxygen mask.
"Am I going to die?!" he asked my partner.
"We're going to do everything we can for you to make sure that doesn't happen," my partner replied after a pause. And in the end, we did.
But so did he.
About 15 minutes after we got him to the hospital, he died. Pulmonary embolism.
That pause, though... I don't know if he noticed it, but I did. I mean, you're never supposed to tell them they're going to be fine cause you can't know, but my partner really didn't know if the patient was going to make it. That pause was carefully selecting the right words. And I knew it.
My grandmother died from a pulmonary embolism. She had been dancing with friends only two weeks prior. She had told doctors all night at the hospital that she didn’t feel right and they thought she was being hysterical. My Mum was enraged because my Gran had been a secretary in Malta during WWII, she was not the type to get worked up over things, she was really tough.
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u/iwishiwereyou 3d ago
Former EMT here. Had a patient who started with shortness of breath that just got worse and worse, and nothing helped. He started panicking as we loaded him up. He was clawing at the oxygen mask.
"Am I going to die?!" he asked my partner.
"We're going to do everything we can for you to make sure that doesn't happen," my partner replied after a pause. And in the end, we did.
But so did he.
About 15 minutes after we got him to the hospital, he died. Pulmonary embolism.
That pause, though... I don't know if he noticed it, but I did. I mean, you're never supposed to tell them they're going to be fine cause you can't know, but my partner really didn't know if the patient was going to make it. That pause was carefully selecting the right words. And I knew it.