Hospice nurse shares phenomena people go through right before they die

19 January 2024 , 14:02

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The nurse says she sees it in a third of her patients (stock photo) (Image: Getty)

When someone is terminally ill and begins receiving palliative, end-of-life care, or they go into a hospice, there is next to no chance they will recover. Save for a miracle, their mind, body, and soul are getting ready to leave this earthly plane.

Death itself is a mystery, although many people who have died and come back - something known as Lazurus syndrome - often remark that they feel an overwhelming sense of peace and calm.

Now, a hospice nurse, Julie McFadden, has shared another phenomenon that she’s witnessed over her career working in palliative and intensive care units. Dressed in blue scrubs, she told her TikTok followers: “Here’s one phenomenon that happens during the death and dying process that medical professionals, like myself, cannot explain,” she said in the video, calling the term "the rally.”

She went on: “This is when someone is really sick and almost towards actively dying, meaning dying within a few days, and then suddenly they look like they are ‘better'. This can manifest in different ways but a lot of times they suddenly will eat, they'll suddenly talk, maybe even walk, they act like their old selves.

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"They have a little more of a personality kind of laughing, talking joking but then usually they die within a few days after this, sometimes even that night and it happens to probably a third of our hospice patients so it happens quite a bit. We try to educate the family about this before it happens so it doesn't devastate them when they suddenly pass after doing so well for a few days.”

People watching were quick to agree, with many citing Grey’s Anatomy character Mark Sloan as a reference to this very occurrence. Fans of the show will remember that he was involved in a horrific plane crash that ended the life of his girlfriend, Lexie Grey.

Fans were convinced he would never come out of the coma but were left stunned when he woke up, happy, joking around and even reading his own medical notes. However, it was ‘The Rally’ or 'The Surge' and he ended up succumbing to his injuries not long after the miraculous recovery.

Another hospice nurse commented: “As a Hospice Nurse, I tell the family that I believe it is nature's way of giving them time to say goodbye/ enjoy/or complete unfinished business.” And someone else shared: “yes! my husband got on the lawn mower and mowed "I love u" into the lawn for me and he passed 3 days later.”

Eve Wagstaff