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Can you tell someone will die months before it happens? A hospice nurse shares clues.

Even 6 months ahead of time, there are signs.

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Is it possible to know someone is going to die soon?

Death is a mystery in so many ways, despite the fact that we all know for sure it's going to happen. We don’t know when we will go and can't really be sure of what comes next, so whether we’re thinking about ourselves or a loved one, there’s understandably a lot of fear and uncertainty around death.

That’s why Julie McFadden's work is so important. As a palliative care nurse in the Los Angeles area, who has seen over a hundred people die, her videos shed light on the process to make us all a bit more comfortable with the inevitable. McFadden is also the author of the bestseller, “Nothing to Fear.” The nurse’s experience helping people in their final stages has given her a unique perspective on the process.

In one video, she shared how she can see the first symptoms that someone is going to die a natural death about 6 months before they finally do. In other words, she can determine that someone only has half a year left to live when most of us have no idea they have entered the final stages of life.

@hospicenursejulie

Replying to @Mariah educating yourself about scary topics will help decrease fear. ✨Nothing to Fear ✨- my book- out june 11th #hospicenursejulie #hospicenurse #caregiversoftiktok #medicaltiktok #learnontiktok #nothingtofearbook

What are the signs a person is dying at the 6-month mark?

McFadden says that people who are dying are usually placed in hospice care when the symptoms begin to appear around the 6-month mark.

"You will have very generalized symptoms. Those symptoms will usually be, one, you will be less social. So you'll be more introverted than extroverted," McFadden said. "Two, you will be sleeping a lot more. And three, you will be eating and drinking a lot less. Literally, everyone on hospice, I see this happen to."

death, dying, afterlife, hospice, signs of dying What happens when we die is one of life's great mysteries.via PIxbay/Pexels

What are the signs a person is dying at the 3-month mark?

You are going to notice more debility,” McFadden continues. “They will be staying in their house most of the time. It's going to be difficult getting up and just going to the bathroom. Again, sleeping a lot more and eating and drinking a lot less.”

What are the signs a person is dying at the 1-month mark?

Something usually begins to happen in the final month of someone’s life. They start to believe they are in contact with others they have lost. It’s like they are there to make the dying person feel comfortable with their final transition.

"Usually around the one month mark is when people will start seeing 'the unseen', they have the visioning. They'll be seeing dead relatives, dead loved ones, dead pets, old friends who have died,” McFadden said. “Again, not everyone — but many, many people will start seeing these things at around one month."

death, dying, afterlife, hospice, signs of dying Many people start to talk to people and pets who have passed when they're approaching the end of life.via PixaBay/Pexels

Angela Morrow, a registered nurse at Verywell Health, agrees that people in the final stage of life often hear from those who have passed before them. Morrow says we should refrain from correcting the patients when they share their stories of talking to people and pets who have died. "You might feel frustrated because you can't know for sure whether they're hallucinating, having a spiritual experience, or just getting confused. The uncertainty can be unsettling, but it's part of the process," Morrow writes.

At the end of the video, McFadden says that the most important factors palliative care nurses look at to determine the stage of death are eating, drinking and sleeping. “Most people, a few weeks out from death, will be sleeping more than they are awake. And they will be barely eating and barely drinking,” McFadden said.

death, dying, afterlife, hospice, signs of dying Hospice workers deal with death more than most of us do. i.giphy.com

In the end, hospice nurses “allow the body to be the guide” as they help their patients transition from life to death.

McFadden’s work has brought a lot of peace to her followers as they go through trying times. "My mom is in hospice right now and she’s currently, I think, hours or days from death. YourTikToks have helped me out tremendously," Deb wrote. "My grandma passed away in February, and she experienced all of this. this page brings me peace knowing everything she went through was natural," Jaida added.

"Thanks, Julie. I volunteer in a hospice end-of-life facility, and this helps educate the families. Your posts are wonderful," Grandma Nita wrote.

One of the things that makes death so scary is the number of unknowns surrounding the process, so it's important that McFadden shares her stories of helping people to the next side. She shows that death is a natural process and that hospice nurses are here to help make the transition as peaceful as possible.

This article originally appeared last year.

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Hospice nurses share their patients' wildest death bed confessions, and it's eye-opening

Sometimes people wait until the very end to deliver a "mic drop" moment.

Photo credit: Canva

Impending death is the ultimate confessional, it seems.

Death comes for us all, and with it often comes one last opportunity to speak our full truth. Whether for religious reasons or to finally release psychological baggage, many find themselves wishing to expose long held secrets once they know the end is drawing near.

Of course, there are reasons why people wait until they are on their deathbed to make such confessions. Often they revolve around illegal activity, abuse, cheating, or other choices that might either incriminate themselves or hurt relationships if shared while they are still living.

Most of the time, these confessions aren’t even made to a family member or loved one, but to strangers providing hospice care. This undoubtedly offers an additional level of safety while disclosing sensitive information. However, for the nurses and other hospice workers, hearing these stories can’t be an easy part of the job.

Recently, nurses shared some of the more shocking deathbed confessions they’ve heard in their professional careers, and while the conversation shines a light on the darker side of humanity, it’s also a glimpse into the beauty of this brief candle that is life.

Many nurses shared moments when their patients simply knew the end had come.

This isn’t a confession, per se, but clearly a common phenomenon:

“I've had a few people casually tell me, "I'm going to die today." The first time someone who was awake, alert and not-in-distress told me that (then died later that day), I was spooked. Then, I learned to believe them.”

hospice nurse and patient talking to each other "I took her to the bathroom and right there in my arms she went home…Photo credit: Canva

“Brought a pediatric patient back for emergency heart surgery (about 14yrs old). He was very nervous. Outlook looked grim. I held his hand as they began to induce anesthesia. He looked like he was about to cry. I told him there was nothing to worry about. He was gonna be just fine. He gripped my hand super tight as the propfol took hold, looked me in the eye and said 'I'm going to die, aren't I?' I told him I would be there in PACU when he woke up. He died on the table. I was the last thing he ever saw. 8 years later I still think about that kid. I still see his face. The fear in his eyes. I still feel guilty that I lied right to his face…”

“I don’t know if this fits in here, but the first death I witnessed was in a dementia ward. The patient has been sad and depressed as long as I’d known her. No matter what we did to cheer her up, it just didn’t stick. One morning I went in to her room to get her out of bed and make her ready for the day, she sat up in her bed with her feet straight out. She somehow looked like a little child and she was smiling. Delighted that she looked happy I exclaimed : 'Are you already up, friend?' She answered, so happy and so smiley: 'yes, I’m going home today' I took her to the bathroom and right there in my arms she went home…I was young and it scared me back then, but now I cherish that memory. We should all be so lucky to leave the world happy and content.”

Then there are other signs, such as seeing an already deceased loved one, or seeing celestial beings.

“When they tell me this or that deceased relative visited them the day or night before, I know something will go down.”

“I’m a nurse now and honestly have seen much more sudden and traumatic deaths since this one, but this one always is the first I think of…There was this one resident who was much younger than most there, only in her mid 60s. She was in really rough physical and mental shape due to severe liver failure and other compounding issues for years…The day I was wearing new scrubs and in there cleaning her like normal, she suddenly looked right at me and in a very soft, clear voice said, ‘you look like an angel.’ I remember being pretty shocked that she spoke out loud and kinda just said, ‘isn’t this a pretty color??’ She went back to being nonverbal the rest of the shift and I remember thinking about it a lot until I went home. When I got back 2 days later I found out she had died in her sleep that night.”

As hinted at earlier, there were a LOT of death bed confessions involving, well, salacious secrets.

“An old lady told me she had a 22 year long affair with a bus driver, and all five of her adult children might be his."Photo credit: Canva

“Working in oncology at the time, had an older gentleman with liver cancer that had spread everywhere including his brain. Having brain mets made him very vague, often nonsensical, he was in and out of consciousness…He also had a thick Eastern European accent…Anyways, one day I’m taking his vitals and he grabs my hand, looks me straight in the eyes and just says to me ‘you know, I have killed so many people’ in his very strong accent. I kind of just froze and didn’t know what to say but he let go and went back to sleep/reduced consciousness.”

“An old lady told me she had a 22 year long affair with a bus driver, and all five of her adult children might be his. I didn't pass that along.”

“I work with dementia clients…A mind blowing confession I always think about was a veteran who confessed to all the war crimes he committed and how he felt so terrible for all the things he did. He said this was the reason he had no relationship with his family and to be honest I don't blame his family for not having anything to do with him.”

“I've had a few senior women who are in different stages of dementia describe violent SA they experienced as children, many of the stories were similar in the sense of when they told their parents they were blamed or not taken seriously. Really heart breaking but I never knew if they were actually true stories.”

“I once had a man who was extremely sick, confused and at the end stages of life. I had only dealt with him on 2 separate occasions a few days apart so wasn't super familiar with him. He confessed on both occasions to beating a woman to death in great detail…not sure if it was the confusion or true, but the amount of details he had and the way he said he was ready to be put away for it was really disturbing.”

“That none of her adult kids were her husband’s - and there were 4 of them , and none of them knew.”

woman helps an elderly woman walk with a cane in a room with other elderly people socializing "Approach everything with gusto ladies and gentlemen, like it might be your last time.”Photo credit: Canva

“I work in a nursing home. One of our residents was a well-known local pimp in his younger years. It involved filming videos of young girls for his rental business. Nicest man in the world now…Another resident harbored a known serial killer when there was a statewide manhunt for him. She was related by marriage and this was what women did for the men back in the day… A third resident did hard time for having stockpiled explosives in his house…Those are just a couple of backstories I know. It can make caring for people…complicated. You really have to suspend judgement and deal compassionately with what’s right in front of you.”

Then there were some that really just fell into their own category…

“That she liked Hitler because she was poor as a child and she would only get new shoes when she went to the train station to see the Jews off to the concentration camps.”

“I've got several, but this is one of my favorites. 98 yrs old guy heart failure…I asked him ‘so, 98 yrs. What have you learned?’ His response was awesome. He said ‘sex. If I knew the last time I had it was going to be the last time, I would not have been such a gentleman’…Approach everything with gusto ladies and gentlemen, like it might be your last time.”

But on a brighter note, not every daybed confession contained so much gloom and doom.

Just as many stories, though still heartbreaking in their own way, revolved around forgiveness, gratitude, and a longing to feel or express love.

hospice nurse shows elderly woman in chair something on her phone"They basically just held hands and apologized to each other and died together.”Photo credit: Canva

“A mother and son were cooking meth and the house exploded. They both had enough burns they were not going to make it. They basically just held hands and apologized to each other and died together.”

“Working in dementia care I was helping a resident with a bath having a typical conversation with him about his day, my day, etc…Near the end he thanked me [my name] for the help but then he quickly grabbed my hand saying “Thank you for being here [daughters name]”, she hadn’t visited him in a long time. He dozed off as I was cleaning up supplies and when patted his hand as a goodbye gesture not to wake him, I realized he had passed. I was 16, it really shaped my perception of both death and love.”

“Patient once told me he wished he had worked less and spent more time traveling and being with friends and family. He died the next day, not on my shift. It stuck in my head. A few years later I retired and this was one of the reasons. It changed my perspective.”

“I had an elderly lady in for shortness of breath…She had been with us for about 5 hours at this point, she's ready for imaging so the husband goes to get her an overnight bag and we head to imaging. Fully lucid…[she] asks me to tell her husband when he came back that she loves him very much and has enjoyed her life with him. 15 minutes later we return to the room, I plug her monitor back into the podium and she arrests. She didn't get to tell him she loved him that one last time like I reassured her she would. I often think about that man, I think he would have shortly passed from a broken heart. The way he looked at her after 70+ years of marriage.”

One has to wonder what holding onto such things does to our quality of life. On the other hand, maybe there never is a right time to share our secrets, until there isn’t any time left.

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Hospice nurse shares the 'one sign' that someone is going to die 'in a few weeks'

Most people don't believe it happens.

via Canva

A nurse and a man in hospice care.

Death is the final mystery that we all must face and it’s natural to be scared about going through the process. However, a new video by a hospice nurse shows an excellent reason for people to feel comfortable facing the unknown.

Julie McFadden, aka Hospice Nurse Julie on YouTube, has witnessed over a hundred deaths, says that people are often comforted by friends and relatives who have passed away in their final days. She says that when people begin experiencing these visions, it’s a sign that they will be passing away within a few weeks.

McFadden is also the author of the bestseller, “Nothing to Fear.”

"Here's one sign that someone is close to death that most people don't believe happens,” Julie began the video.

- YouTubewww.youtube.com

"Usually a few weeks to a month before someone dies, if they're on hospice, they will start seeing dead loved ones, dead relatives, dead pets. This happens so often that we actually put it in our educational packets that we give to patients and their families when they come on hospice so they aren't surprised or scared when it happens,” she continues.

The experience is called visioning; although no one knows how or why it happens, it’s common among all her patients.

"We don't know why it happens, but we see it in definitely more than half of our patients," she continues.

People often believe that the visions are caused by a lack of oxygen to the brain. However, Juie says that isn’t true. “Because when it does happen, most people are alert and oriented and are at least a month from death, so they don't have low oxygen," she said.

The good news is that the visioning experience is always comforting for those who are nearing the end. It often involves relatives who come from the other side to let them know everything will be okay and encourage them to let go and pass away. People also experience being taken on journeys with loved ones or having sensory experiences from the past, such as smelling their grandmother's perfume or father’s cigar.

Christopher Kerr, a CEO of Hospice & Palliative Care, an organization that provides palliative care in Buffalo, New York, says that the relatives that often appear in these visions are people who protected and comforted the dying parent when they were alive. So, they may see a parent who nurtured them but not one they feared.

Kerr has extensively studied the mysterious phenomena that happen when people die but has no real explanation for why the visioning experience happens. “I have witnessed cases where what I was seeing was so profound, and the meaning for the patient was so clear and precise, that I almost felt like an intruder,” he told BBC Brazil. “And trying to decipher the etiology, the cause, seemed futile. I concluded that it was simply important to have reverence, that the fact that I could not explain the origin and process did not invalidate the experience for the patient.”

It's comforting to know that for many, the final days of life may not be filled with pain and fear but instead with a sense of peace and joy. While we may never fully understand the reasons behind these mysterious visions, if they bring calm during such a daunting time, we can simply be grateful for their presence. They’re kind of like life, in general. In the end, we may not really know what it was all about, but we can be happy that it happened.

This article originally appeared last year.

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Hospice nurse reassures people worried by recent footage of Jimmy Carter at 100

Carter has been in hospice care for nearly 2 years.

via Hospice Nurse Julie and Commonwealth Club/Wikimedia Commons

Julie McFadden and former President Jimmy Carter.

Former President Jimmy Carter is known for being one of the most beloved former presidents in American history for his resolve to use his talents to help others, whether it was eradicating the Guinea worm or his work with Habitat for Humanity into his late 90s. Carter says that his faith is the big reason for his resilience. “I have one life and one chance to make it count for something,” he said. “My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I am, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference.”

The man who held the presidency from 1977 to 1981 went into hospice in February 2023 but has lived much longer than most expected. Carter has made 2 public appearances in that time, the first in November 2023 for the funeral of his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn and on October 1, 2024 for his 100th birthday. When Carter was wheeled into his wife’s funeral, some family members expressed shock and worry about Cartter’s appearance.

Since beginning hospice care, Carter has appeared frail and gaunt without expression and mouth agape. It shouldn’t be shocking for a person who has reached the age of 100 to appear so fragile, but it’s right to be concerned that he may be uncomfortable in such a state. However, Julie McFadden, also known as Hospice Nurse Julie, settled a lot of people’s fears in a TikTok video where she explained Carter’s appearance and why he’s most likely comfortable during his transition.

McFadden has assisted over a hundred people in their final days and is the author of the bestseller, "Nothing to Fear."

@hospicenursejulie

#greenscreenvideo #greenscreen Jimmy Carters 100th birthday! #hospicenursejulie #hospicenurse #jimmycarter #education

What is Jimmy Carter's condition?

“I have been tagged in this Jimmy Carter turns 100 years old today video,” she begins her viral TikTok with over 600,00 views. “So many times people asking me, why does he look like this? Is he okay? Does this mean anything? As a hospice nurse, this video was not alarming to me. Jimmy Carter, to me, looks just like someone who was 100 years old on hospice and getting towards the end of their life.”

She then speculated on what his life is like at age 100. “Jimmy Carter is likely sleeping 20 to 22 hours a day. He is likely not really eating and drinking, which is all normal and to be expected at the end of life. So that's why he looks so thin. He looks cachectic. His body is slowly shutting down and the more we just let his body be the guide, the better he will be.”

A lot of people are concerned about the way that Carter’s mouth seems to be permanently open. McFadden says that is due to muscle wasting. “His mouth is hanging open because it takes muscles to keep your mouth shut. And at the end of life, those muscles relax. So he is likely so relaxed that when he's sleeping, which is most of the time, even when he's in a wheelchair, he's asleep, and his muscles relax, so his mouth hangs open.”



McFadden also addressed many people's concerns: Should Carter have been brought outside to celebrate his birthday with his family in such an advanced state? Should he have been in front of the cameras?

“In my opinion, it's up to the family. The family knows that person best,” McFadden said. “From what we know of Jimmy Carter, he was a family man who loved being around his family. So why not be around him and celebrate his one hundred? One-hundredth birthday and bring family around, bring him outside. They know his personality. They must think he would love this. So let's do it. We don't have to keep dying people hidden away.”

McFadden is such an incredible gift because we tend to lock away the dying and talking about death and hospice is a very uncomfortable topic for most. This lack of information leads us to believe that someone in Carter’s position suffers. But, according to McFadden, he’s probably comfortable and relaxed. McFadden knows that when people better understand Carter’s condition, they will probably feel better about their final days as well.


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