I’m a hospice nurse and I saw an angel leaning over my dying patient – what happened next blew my mind
LOOKING after those who are terminally unwell can be emotional.
But in her 15-years of being a hospice nurse, Julie McFadden said there is once incident that really sticks out to her.
The 39-year-old healthcare professional said she has had one patient that she would consider a ‘miracle’.
Nurse Julie said she had been caring for a woman that was actively dying, and had been expected to pass away that night.
While the patient’s children were in the other room, informing their nearest and dearest that their mother was about to die, nurse Julie went in to check on her.
She said: “In my mind’s eyes, which again, this doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen to me, I got this crazy vision of what I would consider an angel.
Read more on end of life care
“But it wasn’t what you would consider an angel to look like because in my minds eye it was basically like this huge version of an angel, not a little twinkly baby angel, this huge massive thing.
“The feeling I got when I saw this huge massive thing was that it was an angel basically standing over this woman’s bed.”
Nurse Julie said she quickly pushed the thought out of her mind, because she said it’s something she ‘doesn’t know much about’.
She added that she didn’t think much else about it until the next day when she went to check on the patient again.
The healthcare professional said she assumed that the patient would have died that evening.
However, she walked into the room and the patient was active, eating and walking around, she said.
“She was up eating pancakes and lived a very good life for another three months.
“Then my mind went back to that vision I had in my mind’s eye and that thing standing over her bed.
“It wasn’t a scary thing it was a beautiful large angelic thing.
“I don’t know what it all means but I consider it a miracle and I felt like I saw an angel,” she added.
Hospice experts say that deathbed vision are common in dying patients, with many reporting seeing loved ones, angels or spiritual guides.
However, there is not much research into whether hospice staff also experience this.
Nurse Julie previously revealed how she helps guide her terminally ill patients during their final days.
She also discussed the tell-tale sign your loved one is about to pass away.
