40 Nurses Joined This Viral Twitter Thread Sharing What Their Older Patients Have Confessed To Them
Interview
Very often, we see people working in the retail industry telling horror stories about clients who demand the most ridiculous things. How they cannot explain to people that things cannot be done as they wish and how they get yelled at for things that don't depend on a simple worker.
There are many other professions where workers have to deal with people, like the medicine field, and they also have some stories to tell. Twitter user zorn put out a thought into the world that nursing school didn't prepare him for the awful things he would be hearing while caring for his patients, and others were quick to share their own stories.
Image credits: Ministerio de Defensa del Peru
Image credits: zozagoon
And those stories aren't funny, but quite serious: they were told by elderly people with illnesses that might have had some effect on their brains, but you never know, and it's chilling how many people have pretty dark secrets.
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Its sad that that is what it takes to shut hateful speech up - not just common decency. :(
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At one hospital i worked at in the US I worked with some of the most brilliant MDs in their specialties in the entire country. I do mean BRILLIANT. Some had actually made medical history that benefits the world to this day. This particular cardiologist is one of them. I went into the patient's room with this MD while he spoke with the patient. I stayed in the room after he left. The patient then said "He sure is a good doctor for a black man" 😡 I informed him that he is a brilliant doctor PEROID. One of the most brilliant cardiologists in the country and you are very fortunate to have him for your doctor. PERIOD. Don't let me hear you say something like that again. Apologies were the only thing he was saying at that point.
I used to be an EMT a million years ago. I was caring for a patient who happened to be an elderly white woman. She looked at me as we were loading up, and said: "The coloreds go in the back." I hopped in, smiled at her and said "Darling, we're both in the back!" She literally clutched her pearls and asked my white partner to keep her bag in the front seat. I just smiled and provided my patient with top-notch care. I might have been a little extra nice to her, I'll admit. Just because :)
Bex, I admire your grace! I hope your kindness comes back to you hundreds of times over ~ You have earned respect!
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Reminds me of that old country song by Tanya Tucker, No Man's Land. If you're not familiar with it, look up the lyrics. Great story.
True story: Older white guy (about 75) comes up to me in a mall parking lot. Asks if I could help him out and give him a boost. I say “Yeah sure” and then out of nowhere says “I’m in the K-K-K…” and I immediately said “You can f**k off and boost your own car.” And he says, “K-K-K-Mart p-p-parking lot.” I held it together long enough to help him out and then almost literally cried laughing for a week.
Well they aren't the smartest of the bunch, so I can totally see having to remind him....smh
You should also treat the people making your food with respect and yet here we are...
It seems that Twitter user zorn really said what a lot of people were wondering about, or genuinely related to, as his tweet amassed 371k likes and got nearly 2k responses, which included just surprised-Pikachu-face reactions or people’s own stories of hearing or witnessing some awful things.
The user zorn whose tweet went viral has been a nurse for three years and worked on a med surg floor for the whole of his career. When Bored Panda reached out to him, he said that he loves working there. He said they "see patients of all ages with a huge variety of backgrounds and diagnoses." Some personal facts about zorn are that he lives with his wonderful girlfriend and they have "three perfect cats."
We asked if zorn was surprised to see how much attention his tweet received and his response was "Not at all! I talk about work fairly often on Twitter, and have definitely never had any response of close to this magnitude. I always do my best to avoid any patient identifiers and to maintain patient privacy and adhere to HIPAA."
He puts out the tweets witjout having any malicious intents, "It's important to have somewhere to vent about work and kind of shout into the void. It's a hard job. And it's hard to talk to people in my real life about it."
That's tragic. I cannot comprehend how abusive people don't realize that their horrible actions will absolutely have life-long effects.
There were a lot of people responding to zorn's tweet with their own stories and the author of the original tweet says, "I think nurses are in a unique position. We are one of the most trusted professionals. And we build relationships with patients when we care for them multiple shifts. We're some of the only people they see while they're in the hospital, sometimes. And they're in a sort of vulnerable position that I feel like makes confessions more likely. Plus, nurses are more likely than a lot of professions to be around people when they're altered in some way or another-- delirious, or coming out of anesthesia, or suffering from dementia, or on certain medications."
If you’re not in the field, you wouldn’t think that people become so talkative and spill all their secrets that are really serious and you don’t even know if they are for real or just messing with you.
zorn guesses why nurses sometimes become confessors, "I do feel like there's a trust and intimacy in the patient/nurse relationship that makes confessions of one nature another more likely. In cases where patients are talking about relationships, or traumas they've experienced, it's a privilege to be able to help them carry that burden. Being trusted like that is an honor."
Dementia does strange things to a person. Near the end of my grandmother's life, she conveyed information that was probably a latent memory of a movie she had seen or a book she had read. As her mind was going, she could no longer differentiate between real experiential memories, and things she had read, or simply imagined. Like my father being in a major car wreck that never happened.
Nurses working with elderly people shared how they confessed to them of love affairs and abuse, whether they were the abuser or were being abused, and surprisingly, a lot of people wanted to clear their conscience of murders.
Surely some of them will be just the brain playing tricks on older people as the mind becomes not as sharp as it used to be. Illnesses like dementia and Alzheimer’s damage memories to the point that people will not feel the distinction between reality and movies they’ve seen.
According to zorn, most of the confessions are not that serious, but "the confessions of a more violent nature are definitely more shocking, but at the same time, I kind of just have to carry on with my day, so these shocking things sort of fall in with everything else and get filed away in my brain. All of the patients that have talked about harm to another person either have dementia, or for one reason or another it's impossible to verify, or they already went to trial and were unable to be prosecuted for one reason or another. That sort of thing. If people ever confess to wanting to harm to themselves or others, I have to report that, and I have have report any suspected child or elder abuse."
The nurse couldn't say which story shocked him the most, but what he got from this exerience was feeling a sense of community. He remarked, "It was really cool while reading responses. I was glad I wasn't alone in this."
The last thing that he would like to add was "I do want to say that vaccines are safe and effective, and COVID-19 has devastating short term and long term effects in people of all ages, so if more folks could get vaccinated, that would make me sleep easier."
What do you think of these stories? If you have any of your own, we and other pandas would be very interested to read them, so leave them in the comments. Also, show us which ones surprised you the most by upvoting them!
I bet that some of them probably didn't have anybody to talk to, so they talked to whomever would listen.
"registered sex offender" in some places is not a good indicator of a person's actual crimes. If I can't tell the difference between a rapist and someone that took a piss in an alley while drunk, that list is useless.
Some people felt extreme guilt over this even when they weren't actually involved, they just felt that they should have stopped it even though that would have probably meant them joining the dead
Not sure what's funny enough to laugh one's own a$$ off over the misery of women forced, for any number of societal reasons, to remain in miserable marriages. Yes, yes. Hysterical.
Note: this post originally had 47 images. It’s been shortened to the top 40 images based on user votes.
If there is one thing this thread illustrates, it's that the "good old days" weren't necessarily all that good.
When you find out how explicitly Satanic the KKK was, then see how known members were welcomed into churches, you realize that old-time American was so often more afraid of what the neighbors would think than their own virtue or even fear of God. At the same time, senility makes people say or do things that would never otherwise do, and claim things that are just preposterous.
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Let me tell you one thing though. There's a reason why some of them are in a nursing home. It's called they were so horrible to the people around them that no one wanted to take care of them when they could no longer take care of themselves. My FIL is facing that. 50 years of beating his wives and children. He's looking at a lonely existence now.
I've alwaays thought so. Believe me, I would've sent my father to a shïthole facility without even thinking about it, had he not (thankfully) killed himself. Some people just love to assume all elderly people are sweet and deserve love. And no. A lot of them should die a slow painful death.
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My friend was a nurse in a big hospital in Chicago. She told me about a patient who kind of gave off creepy vibes, she didn't know why, he seemed like a nice, older guy... He wasn't regularly under her care, but one weekend, he took a very bad turn, and she was with him. When they were alone, he said "the first person I ever killed was my brother when I was 8" and described how he lured him to the rooftop and threw him over. Then he said "I am what they call a psychopath, I guess" She didn't know what to do, but took him seriously, especially that he said "the FIRST person I killed". She called for a psych consult, and I guess they took him seriously too. He died before the police came, so I don't know how it ended, but apparently he did cop to at least a couple more murders.
Why is there a lot of "TMI" comments on this thread? It's confessions, so therefore yes, it's much information lol if you're that offended don't read it?
When I was a student I worked at something like a nursing home (buts it's a bit different in my country). I loved it, because the residents where just wonderful - from the severely ill, Alzheimer and dementia patients, to those who were disabled some way and needed daily help with everything. No one ever 'confessed' anything, but hearing stories from the women was eye-opening to the way our society has developed (again, not the US). One woman had a horrible upbringing simply because she was a girl. But, she told me, she had the most wonderful husband because he never beat her and once the refrigerator was invented he allowed her to make his lunch in advance, so she didn't have to get up extra early each day. Mind you, she also had a full time job as a washer woman.
please remember that patients suffering from dementia, Alzheimer's, or other brain related illness may not have actually done what they are confessing. Old memories of movies, books, newspaper stories, can resurface incompletely. But if the patient doesn't have that excuse and it's deathbed guilt, a call to authorities may help close the book on old crimes and relieve the pain of victim's families.
What you say is true. My grandad began hallucinating at the end, that he was actually his great great grandfather and that he had stolen a bible from someone in England (we are Australian). Then he apparently met his future wife but then got caught and transported to Australia where the wife met him as she was also sent to Aus due to the potato famine. He had some stories in his head from writing his family history and they mixed up. His ancestor was never transported for a crime (as far as we are aware) just migrated by choice and he didn't meet his wife until they were both in Australia.
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One of my patients told me he was involved in a massacre in my home town during WWII. My father was a child hiding in neighbour's basement with his whole family during that massacre. Fortunately they all survived Another patient told me she lived in an isolated island and both her brothers raped her when they were young.She even justified their actions "because, you know,there was no one else and they didn't mean any harm".I needed counselling after doing that patient's assessment
I cared for my father in law who had dementia. He lost all inhibitions. Would sit for hours outside naked. He had the mental level of a toddler. Some of these people probably had/have some form of dementia. It can change personalities completely.
My mother certainly changed how she interacted. Dementia they loose the ability to manipulate and their true self becomes obvious.
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I'm not sure why people are suprised. The heinous crimes we see today are not new, people literally got away with it and society made excuses for them. All predators get old. Being old doesn't make you seert or wise.
Not a confession just a couple of things I experienced working at nursing home I was doing the last of my clinicals at a NH by my college First I experienced a 84 yo man streaking down the hall towards the "outhouse" A former Hells Angel who thought the rolling nurses chair was his Hog and a 27 yo gentleman who was born with no bones in his legs After I left there I continued coming to see these 3 men each week for 8 months until they tore down the nursing home
Geez! Everybody here makes me feel normal. Always thought of myself as a nice person, this confirms that I'm even better than that. And my favorite bit of advice from years ago -- Even a bad example serves a purpose. Don't be like that.
Had an elderly patient tell me she killed "Them revenuers" that came "lookin' for her moonshine still." We thought she was confused because she would talk to people who weren't seen by us nurses. When she died her obit said she was indeed a moonshiner and she did kill some revenuers and was in prison for awhile. (She really was a nice lady. just don't touch her moonshine I guess!)
I've had a Hungarian woman try to get the Filipino care aides to "join her and her husband" (from whom she was estranged) she used to change the words to white Christmas to "and may all your mistresses be white". And yes, so many stories of the "older brother" they had to stay away from or lock the bedroom door. Husbands that cheated. I had a resident that had a back alley abortion of her twin girls in the 60s (when she was married) because kids cost too much (she was very well off) I have a resident who gave birth to babies, but they died after a few days, and she cries for them, but the story that stuck with me always was a woman who married the love of her life, and he came home once during WW2 and told her his base (in England) had been bombed while the men were out flying, and all the WAC were there. The women were all in pieces, they just put approximate body weight of each woman in pieces into caskets to send back to the families because they couldn't be identified. That husband later went MIA over the white cliffs of Dover, and her second husband was a cheating selfish man that she started l stayed with until he died, in the facility with her.
The only positive thing I can get from this is that all those people are dead or will be dead soon.
The first one (the original post) made me laugh and be a bit scared attst
Life. She ended up paralyzed from the waist down. Her "loving" husband, instead of bringing her home, using her money to renovate the house and have a private aid to assist her a CPL of hours a day, threw her into a damn nursing home. He visited MAYBE once a month for an hour, maybe. After I got to know her, and realized that she just wanted her clothes a certain way to make it easier for her to keep some of her independence. The amount that she paid to be there, if she wanted to have a silver dinner service every night I wouldn't have blamed her. Poor woman had been fighting for years to get the judgement overturned. Idk if he was paying off someone in the nursing home or they just didn't want to lose another cash cow. But this woman was in no way mentally incapacitated. That was the most disgusting thing I ever personally witnessed. Besides old men trying to grope you.
My first job ever was doing laundry in a nursing home. I was dating my children's father at the time. He would come to visit me sometimes to bring me lunch or early to pick me up,etc. There was this lady, early 90's and from her accent from the deep south. My children's father is Indian and gets very dark in the summertime. She must've had something on the side back in her younger years or something, because she would always scream at me to get away from her man. If he was there during lunchtime, she wouldn't let anyone else feed her unless he went to talk to her, help feed her,etc. It was amusing to us, she wasn't violent or anything. The one situation that utterly disgusted me was a woman who was there on a wheelchair. Couldn't have been older than early 40's. I was given warning about her, she was difficult,etc. She was an attorney, and she was in a bad accident. Her husband while she was in a medically induced coma, went to court for power of attorney over every aspect of her
Incredible stories. Such vivid events. The longer we live, the more we experience and the more truth can be told. I wonder what I will confess near the end? There's so much...
If there is one thing this thread illustrates, it's that the "good old days" weren't necessarily all that good.
When you find out how explicitly Satanic the KKK was, then see how known members were welcomed into churches, you realize that old-time American was so often more afraid of what the neighbors would think than their own virtue or even fear of God. At the same time, senility makes people say or do things that would never otherwise do, and claim things that are just preposterous.
Load More Replies... Let me tell you one thing though. There's a reason why some of them are in a nursing home. It's called they were so horrible to the people around them that no one wanted to take care of them when they could no longer take care of themselves. My FIL is facing that. 50 years of beating his wives and children. He's looking at a lonely existence now.
I've alwaays thought so. Believe me, I would've sent my father to a shïthole facility without even thinking about it, had he not (thankfully) killed himself. Some people just love to assume all elderly people are sweet and deserve love. And no. A lot of them should die a slow painful death.
Load More Replies... My friend was a nurse in a big hospital in Chicago. She told me about a patient who kind of gave off creepy vibes, she didn't know why, he seemed like a nice, older guy... He wasn't regularly under her care, but one weekend, he took a very bad turn, and she was with him. When they were alone, he said "the first person I ever killed was my brother when I was 8" and described how he lured him to the rooftop and threw him over. Then he said "I am what they call a psychopath, I guess" She didn't know what to do, but took him seriously, especially that he said "the FIRST person I killed". She called for a psych consult, and I guess they took him seriously too. He died before the police came, so I don't know how it ended, but apparently he did cop to at least a couple more murders.
Why is there a lot of "TMI" comments on this thread? It's confessions, so therefore yes, it's much information lol if you're that offended don't read it?
When I was a student I worked at something like a nursing home (buts it's a bit different in my country). I loved it, because the residents where just wonderful - from the severely ill, Alzheimer and dementia patients, to those who were disabled some way and needed daily help with everything. No one ever 'confessed' anything, but hearing stories from the women was eye-opening to the way our society has developed (again, not the US). One woman had a horrible upbringing simply because she was a girl. But, she told me, she had the most wonderful husband because he never beat her and once the refrigerator was invented he allowed her to make his lunch in advance, so she didn't have to get up extra early each day. Mind you, she also had a full time job as a washer woman.
please remember that patients suffering from dementia, Alzheimer's, or other brain related illness may not have actually done what they are confessing. Old memories of movies, books, newspaper stories, can resurface incompletely. But if the patient doesn't have that excuse and it's deathbed guilt, a call to authorities may help close the book on old crimes and relieve the pain of victim's families.
What you say is true. My grandad began hallucinating at the end, that he was actually his great great grandfather and that he had stolen a bible from someone in England (we are Australian). Then he apparently met his future wife but then got caught and transported to Australia where the wife met him as she was also sent to Aus due to the potato famine. He had some stories in his head from writing his family history and they mixed up. His ancestor was never transported for a crime (as far as we are aware) just migrated by choice and he didn't meet his wife until they were both in Australia.
Load More Replies... One of my patients told me he was involved in a massacre in my home town during WWII. My father was a child hiding in neighbour's basement with his whole family during that massacre. Fortunately they all survived Another patient told me she lived in an isolated island and both her brothers raped her when they were young.She even justified their actions "because, you know,there was no one else and they didn't mean any harm".I needed counselling after doing that patient's assessment
I cared for my father in law who had dementia. He lost all inhibitions. Would sit for hours outside naked. He had the mental level of a toddler. Some of these people probably had/have some form of dementia. It can change personalities completely.
My mother certainly changed how she interacted. Dementia they loose the ability to manipulate and their true self becomes obvious.
Load More Replies... I'm not sure why people are suprised. The heinous crimes we see today are not new, people literally got away with it and society made excuses for them. All predators get old. Being old doesn't make you seert or wise.
Not a confession just a couple of things I experienced working at nursing home I was doing the last of my clinicals at a NH by my college First I experienced a 84 yo man streaking down the hall towards the "outhouse" A former Hells Angel who thought the rolling nurses chair was his Hog and a 27 yo gentleman who was born with no bones in his legs After I left there I continued coming to see these 3 men each week for 8 months until they tore down the nursing home
Geez! Everybody here makes me feel normal. Always thought of myself as a nice person, this confirms that I'm even better than that. And my favorite bit of advice from years ago -- Even a bad example serves a purpose. Don't be like that.
Had an elderly patient tell me she killed "Them revenuers" that came "lookin' for her moonshine still." We thought she was confused because she would talk to people who weren't seen by us nurses. When she died her obit said she was indeed a moonshiner and she did kill some revenuers and was in prison for awhile. (She really was a nice lady. just don't touch her moonshine I guess!)
I've had a Hungarian woman try to get the Filipino care aides to "join her and her husband" (from whom she was estranged) she used to change the words to white Christmas to "and may all your mistresses be white". And yes, so many stories of the "older brother" they had to stay away from or lock the bedroom door. Husbands that cheated. I had a resident that had a back alley abortion of her twin girls in the 60s (when she was married) because kids cost too much (she was very well off) I have a resident who gave birth to babies, but they died after a few days, and she cries for them, but the story that stuck with me always was a woman who married the love of her life, and he came home once during WW2 and told her his base (in England) had been bombed while the men were out flying, and all the WAC were there. The women were all in pieces, they just put approximate body weight of each woman in pieces into caskets to send back to the families because they couldn't be identified. That husband later went MIA over the white cliffs of Dover, and her second husband was a cheating selfish man that she started l stayed with until he died, in the facility with her.
The only positive thing I can get from this is that all those people are dead or will be dead soon.
The first one (the original post) made me laugh and be a bit scared attst
Life. She ended up paralyzed from the waist down. Her "loving" husband, instead of bringing her home, using her money to renovate the house and have a private aid to assist her a CPL of hours a day, threw her into a damn nursing home. He visited MAYBE once a month for an hour, maybe. After I got to know her, and realized that she just wanted her clothes a certain way to make it easier for her to keep some of her independence. The amount that she paid to be there, if she wanted to have a silver dinner service every night I wouldn't have blamed her. Poor woman had been fighting for years to get the judgement overturned. Idk if he was paying off someone in the nursing home or they just didn't want to lose another cash cow. But this woman was in no way mentally incapacitated. That was the most disgusting thing I ever personally witnessed. Besides old men trying to grope you.
My first job ever was doing laundry in a nursing home. I was dating my children's father at the time. He would come to visit me sometimes to bring me lunch or early to pick me up,etc. There was this lady, early 90's and from her accent from the deep south. My children's father is Indian and gets very dark in the summertime. She must've had something on the side back in her younger years or something, because she would always scream at me to get away from her man. If he was there during lunchtime, she wouldn't let anyone else feed her unless he went to talk to her, help feed her,etc. It was amusing to us, she wasn't violent or anything. The one situation that utterly disgusted me was a woman who was there on a wheelchair. Couldn't have been older than early 40's. I was given warning about her, she was difficult,etc. She was an attorney, and she was in a bad accident. Her husband while she was in a medically induced coma, went to court for power of attorney over every aspect of her
Incredible stories. Such vivid events. The longer we live, the more we experience and the more truth can be told. I wonder what I will confess near the end? There's so much...
