Medical Professionals Share Their Craziest 'One More Minute And They'd Be Dead' Stories

Almost everyone has heard an "I almost died" story either first or secondhand. But how common are these occurrences?

If it happens as often as stories make it seem, surely members of medical staff in emergency rooms have seen it all the time.

Reddit user BirdLawAssociatesInc asked:

"ER nurses of reddit, how often do all those "one more minute and I'd be dead" stories get exaggerated?"

Anaphylaxis

"I recently had a patient carried in by her dad that was peri-arrest from anaphylaxis. Dad was uncomfortable using her epi-pen and thought he was close enough to the hospital to drive in instead of calling 911."

"She had weak central pulses, no peripheral pulses, and her BP was 50/30s on arrival. She was minutes away from a bad outcome potentially."

"We did a lot of education and she ended up okay. If you have an epi-pen, know how to use it."

"The dad was well-intentioned, appropriately worried when he arrived, and cared for her lovingly at her bedside as she recovered. This wasn’t meant to shame him. Emergencies look different for everyone, and allergies evolve quickly."

"She probably was not 'that bad' when he decided to get in the car and it’s not always easy to know how bad something will get. But he got her to us just in time. She was safe and dad learned a lot, so everyone won."

~ idrawhands

Choking

"Emergency calltaker here. Most recent was a small child choking on some food. The ambulance my colleague sent was 10 minutes away the helicopter 15."

"While i was giving first aid instructions to the parents my colleague called the local family doctor, who in a stroke of luck took a last glance at his phone before he would have gone for a run where he would have left it at home."

"He was there within a minute and managed to dislodge the stuck food."

~ Horizon317

I'll Never Forget

"One story that I'll never forget is a family of 6 (2 parents, 2 kids, 2 grandparents staying over) who saved themselves from a collective carbon monoxide poisoning by sheer luck :

Everybody was asleep, the mom got up to pee, and fainted (from the CO poisoning) on her way back to bed."

"The sound of her fall woke her husband up who checked on her and called an ambulance. The first responders' CO detectors went off upon arrival and they evacuated everyone."

"If she didn't have to pee, they'd all be dead."

"If she just made a few more steps and reached her bed without fainting, they'd all be dead."

"If the husband had a heavier sleep and didn't hear her fall, they'd all be dead."

"If they thought the fainting was nothing and she'd see a doctor the next day, they'd all be dead."

"Instead I had them all in the ER, casually recovering from a moderate poisoning, chatting casually about this 'unusual night' they were having, completely oblivious to how close they all got to making the local news the next day."

"It was eerie."

~ bhangmango

Ventricular Tachycardia

"I never really saw this in the ED, to be honest. The human body is amazingly resilient, especially when it has some time to adjust. I had plenty of people walk in and I was like 'holy sh*t, how long have you just been walking around like this?'."

"In my last job, I had a patient who had a (ventricular tachycardia) VT arrest while visiting his mom (also our patient) on the tele-floor of our hospital. It could have easily killed him if it had happened almost anywhere else."

"He came through it neurologically intact and in pretty good shape... Other than needing a heart transplant."

~ samcuts

Waiting

"I'm a respiratory therapist and work in the ER. It's pretty common to have patients code in the ambulance on their way to the ER."

"But I think in these situations, they know right away that things are bad and they barely make it."

One of the paramedics who taught my CPR class said that since we're in a dense, but geographically small municipality with 2 hospitals, the chance of surviving cardiac arrest is much higher than average."

"They call once they're in the rig and they're outside the hospital by the time report is given."

~ PriorOk9813

"I heard that sometimes it's believed that even if the ambulance took a little longer, the person would've still coded in the ambulance and not earlier because sometimes people apparently cling on until help is there and as soon as help is there they basically let go?"

"No idea if that's actually real or just belief, but basically the idea is that even if the ambulance would've been just a little earlier or later, the person would've still coded once help got there?"

"Maybe it's just one of those old wives tales."

~ mnbvcdo

Survival

"When I took an EMT class a couple of decades ago, they said people die when they expect they will die. People survive when they expect to survive."

"They gave examples of bullet wounds soldiers receive are more survivable than those civilians receive, as civilians assume if they get shot, they will die. Another example was when a surgery had a low percentage of survivability, having someone say almost everyone they’ve seen get this surgery survive, statistically increased patient survival rate."

"Likewise, telling people their odds of survival being low, decreased survivability IN ACUTE CIRCUMSTANCES. For lifestyle changes, telling people that if they don’t lose weight or quit cigarettes, they’ll die soon makes people live longer."

"The takeaway was just telling someone your an expert and that they will be alright increased their survivability. Telling them they were going to die, decreased it."

~ Dannyz

Colonoscopy

"My stepdad showed up at the hospital for a scheduled colonoscopy with a heart rate of 23. He was admitted immediately and given a pacemaker."

"Not really a one-minute situation, but if he hadn’t had the colonoscopy appointment, he would have stayed home alone all day and probably been dead by the time my mother got home from work."

~ Pentagogo

Perspective

"I was a patient transport service in high school. My favorite was a guy had gotten in a car accident and had his bone sticking out of his arm."

"He did the 'I'd have been dead in a few more minutes!' and kept trying to have all services directed at himself."

"One hour later they brought in his passenger who had his arm torn off and was impaled through the chest with a peice of a sign after they freed him from the wreck. He demanded Starbursts and water with ice at our earliest convenience."

~ joebluebob

Collapsed Lung

"My lung collapsed, and I thought it was anxiety. When I finally ended up in the ER, I had to sign a paper and then be taken to a room for an emergency chest tube."

"The urgency in which they worked around me definitely felt like one of those 'I could’ve died' moments, but no one ever said it to me."

"I’m curious if it has ever actually been said to a patient out loud."

~ ashcap13

Ventricular Fibrillation

"ER doctor here: It is exceedingly uncommon to see a patient who would have died had they not come to the ER a minute earlier."

"I have heard numerous patients make claims like this and in the rare case that it's both potentially relevant to their current care AND I have enough time to look ... I've looked up the relevant records."

"In precisely zero of those cases would the person have died if they waited another hour. Another day? Sure."

"I've had one personal case where the guy would have died if he had waited any longer to come in. He felt odd. Lightheaded. Nothing specific. 40 something generally healthy guy."

"Went into VFib right after he arrived. Shocked him out of it. He went back into a fatal arrhythmia a few more times, but ultimately stabilized after more shocks and amio."

"If he hadn't arrived in the ER when he did, there's a high chance he either would have died or not walked out neurologically intact like he did."

~ DrSlappyPants

Misheard

"Oncology fellow here. I quite frequently think about the similar anecdotes of 'The doctors said {insert family/friend/self} had less than 3 months to live, but here we are two years later!'.”

"Say I have a patient with a new diagnosis of pancreatic cancer and they ask about prognosis. The typical answer is IF this goes untreated and IF this is already metastatic, 50% of people will be dead in 3 months - some will have less time and some more. It’s usually a skewed bell curve. There is a good amount of nuance in there."

"I’ve come to suspect most of those 'They said I’d already be dead!' stories are likely a product of remembering only a slice of the conversation. Which in all honesty is fair; expecting someone to wrestle with these nuances in such a stressful situation is probably asking too much."

"I just tell them I’m glad that wasn’t the case. Makes me wonder if these ED tales are the product of an off-handed comment like 'I’m glad you didn’t come in even a minute later'."

~ Oncologay

Spin Doctors

"I used to work with a general surgeon who LOVED telling patients that their gallbladder, appendix, hernia, etc was:"

"• The worst one he'd ever seen."

"• He got there 'just in time'."

"Patients loved hearing it and repeating it. It wasn't their fault; it was this old jerk's."

~ shadrap

Appendicitis

"When I was 12, I spent a week throwing up strange colors and having cramps in my guts. At the end of the week I woke up one morning and it hurt so much I couldn't even get out of bed."

"My mom was very alarmed, called her friend who said I was probably faking and to see if I was better by Monday (this was Saturday morning). My mom fortunately decided to call an ambulance anyway, and I was rushed into emergency surgery as soon as I got to the hospital."

"That week of lead up was my appendix telling me it was in distress, and Saturday morning it burst. According to what I was told later, another hour delay and I'd have been dead from the toxic crap my guts were swimming in."

"As it was, I spent almost 2 weeks in the hospital."

~ PiercedGeek

Aortic Dissection

"ER Nurse here, I am of the opinion that I would rather you come in and have us say 'It's nothing, go home' than not come in when you really should."

"That being said, most of what walks through the front door could be treated at an urgent care during normal business hours. It's cheaper, I guarantee it."

"I've had two patients in my care who experienced those. One guy had a little upset stomach and was generally feeling crummy. Nice guy. Really chatty. We put him through the CT, and I watched his abdominal aorta dissect as the images came up."

"The serendipitous part was that the trauma team had just finished with one guy, so they were all two rooms down. Guy brought in baked goods for the ER staff."

~ DocMcCall

Cardiac Arrest

"Internal medicine (IM) doc here. I had a guy who came in after feeling 'weird in the chest' all day. 40s, athletic, in the middle of a divorce, stressed. EKG looked OK."

"I see nonspecific chest pain all day long and it’s usually heartburn or stress or asthma or a strained rib muscle. I was SO CLOSE to sending him out with some Maalox, but there was something about this guy that made me send him to the emergency department (ED)."

"I asked if he wanted a wheelchair escort and he said no, he’d walk. It was about 200 feet."

"Anyway, an hour later I logged back into his chart to see how things were going in the ED and the first thing I see is a code note. He’d made it to the ED, gotten some blood drawn and turned out to be having a mild heart attack and while the doc was delivering the news and explaining next steps he’d had a cardiac arrest."

"They got him back immediately since having your arrest in an ED in front of an emergency physician is kind of a best case scenario. When I saw him again a week later, he was doing great, but told me that he’d almost gone to get some food (it was lunchtime) before going to the ED, but decided against it."

"If he’d waited, he would have had his arrest in a Jimmy John’s and things probably would not have gone so well for him."

"Anyway, almost 20 years of practice and that’s my closest call."

~ terracottatilefish

Have you or someone you know had a close call?