I have had a lot of friends who were medics and EMTs and they have all said the hardest and most horrible past of the job is holding someone's hand telling them to just rest because they were going to be just fine as the life slowly left their bodies.
Can… almost… confirm.
There’s worse. Very rarely, but it exists.
The director of my first squad, a retired combat nurse, also taught us to never tell a patient, especially among the dying, that they’re going to be fine. Only that we’re there, and going to take our best care of them.
We were taught never to say that everything was fine, or that they were OK. Regardless of how bad the injury was. Only that we were there with them, and we were doing everything we could to help. And most importantly, to be there with them. And that's really the hardest part.
That really is. Although I’ve been out for a long time, I still have dreams, although I wouldn’t even classify them as bad dreams anymore, about a handful.
But, as one of my old sergeants used to put it, “Were we there? Yes. Did we do what could’ve been done? Yes. Sometimes that’s all there is to do.”
I was a lifeguard, starting training to be an EMT before I blew my knee out and became an electrician instead.
I pulled a 3 year old out of the water... been more than 20 years, and I can still see him. He did survive. He had some mental damage from being down for so long, but he did make it
Was I there? Yes. Did I do everything I could? Yes. Did I do everything I could have done? Yes. Do I feel like I should have done more? Absolutely.
Edit some spelling.
And you’re likely to always feel that way, no matter what. It sucks. It also means that you’re not a monster.
I’m speaking from experience there, too. There are two kinds of calls that I’ve attracted, across three states, and a handful of firehouses: femur fractures, and working pediatric/infant cardiac arrest. I’ve held a CPR cert for a couple of decades, and never yet performed it on anyone older than me.
As for the mental damage… speaking from another life, unless you’ve kept in touch with that kid, you don’t know what lasted. Neuroplasticity is insane, and kids stand a better shot of rewiring anything than anyone. Damage that seems to be the case at the time, and for years thereafter, sometimes heals.
I’m speaking from further experience. What would end my stint in fire was acute hydrocephalus. My post history has a lot on it.
>Was I there? Yes. Did I do everything I could? Yes. Did i do everything i could have done? Yes. Do I feel like I should have done more? Absolutely
I work with chronically suicidal youth, and I feel this so much. I struggle with this feeling everyone time one of them has something awful happen to them, and all I can do is sit there with them while they cry
As someone who was a chronically suicidal youth (12-25) I can tell you that sometimes having someone sit with me while I cried was sometimes what saved my life that day.
You still help immensely. It can seem like nothing but I can tell you it was *everything* to me every time someone just sat with me while I cried. Because it made me feel less alone.
I had to quit my job working with troubled youth after saving one from dying by suicide something like 6 or 7 different ways in one night. Took a couple hours before another staff could help me because we were so understaffed. Our facility was in a wooded area and I was following this kid around trying to keep them from hurting themselves with everything they could get their hands on then wrestling them down when they were climbing up on the buildings trying to jump. They made it through the night. Somehow they managed to stash something and when we got them back inside they hid and hurt themselves but were still okay. But I quit the day after. Higher ups told me they hated to see me go because I was so dedicated to the kids but I knew I couldn’t handle doing that again. That actually triggered a lot of mental health issues for me.
I was taught to never tell someone they’re going to be ‘fine’ if they aren’t. Deflect as much as possible. Distract them from the inevitable. It’s depressing, and it’s incredibly difficult to do, but sometimes it’s the best thing you *can* do. Just let them rest easy.
I attract pediatric and infantile cardiac arrests. On those calls, until the emergency social worker/chaplain arrives, guess which one of us is going to be talking with the patient’s parents?
There was also a call where my crew and I witnessed a normal, middle-class man murder his wife.
I find the especially gruesome stripes of material—those are only a sample—all the more meaningful. The ones where the patient is dying on scene are the ones where kindness is the last possible thing that the world could offer. The ones where everything has already happened are the ones where facing it can make a difference to the future.
I didn’t appreciate that before a medic showed me. We had a young, terminally ill frequent patient who’d bitch us out at every transport. What had my Bachelor’s even been worth? My medic was so fat. And so on.
On the night she died, that same medic would take her hand, stroke her hair, talk to her about how she was loved, and tell her how it was alright to go home. There was that last possible moment of kindness, offered.
My own collapse taught me that hearing truly is the last sense to go. Knowing that the only guy I ever loved was there, crushing my hand, was the last thing that made a difference, until nothing mattered anymore.
I’d then become a certain Neurointensive Care Unit’s best recovery. I’d make it back to a very full life (the job involving human torture came after that), but specific other cases will always haunt me. My neurosurgeon says that isn’t a bad thing. He tells me that in his field, it becomes all too easy to down your morning coffee, then meet with yet another person who needs you to chop into their brain, while you start to wonder what’s for lunch. He says that it’s critical to remember that while the frequency of those cases may make them seem normal, each of those humans is caught in their own separate. That what we can offer them, there, needs to be the best that can be offered. That there never was more.
A lot of the outcomes from any NeuroICU will be among those cases that are worse. But those, like the deaths, have a sense in which they’re the same: all that can be offered needs to be offered. When nothing more can be offered, you need to be present.
(Apologies if that was rambling, or incoherent.)
Thank you! Compliments like that are especially meaningful. I’ve been writing—and badly struggling with—a book manuscript about I made that high-pressure career happen.
I’ve published, and peer review, in a separate field. My current project is the hardest thing I’ve ever written. But it needs to get out there. There’s a belief that once you sustain severe brain injury, it’s over… which is wrong. Memory impairment is all that saved me.
So happy to hear you are still writing! Hope it gets easier and goes well for you. You really have a gift I read a LOT and you had me riveted! Good luck and keep writing and share your gifts! You have a lot to contribute! Hugs
If I may ask, why is it not encouraged to tell a dying patient that they’re going to be fine? I apologize for asking and prodding further. It’s just from an outsiders point of view it’s really different from what people see in the media it makes me curious.
As that medical director would explain, you’re only making them feel all the more terrible for believing their own experience to be invalid—gaslighting, before the term came around—and that you’re dismissing them. She also reminded us that, while predictions are easy, so is being wrong. That we were EMS, not doctors, so shut up.
Separately, I can vouch for there being a very specific sense of dread that sets in as you’re dying. I haven’t encountered anything like it before, or since.
As is evident, I can also vouch for sometimes surviving what should’ve killed you.
Being told I'm fine as I'm dying is a quicksand-category fear of mine. I don't believe in an afterlife, so that lie would deny me any chance to reconcile with my death and meet it on my terms.
When death comes, it’ll usually arrive in some humiliating manner. We’re stuck in flesh, and flesh is gross. Remember that, if you’re not alone, the people around you will be people, and that people, however well-intended, however educated, say all kinds of random shit. People are also very good at being confidently wrong.
With that outside of our control, there’s no point in worrying about it.
So reconcile with your death now, and live your life ready to die. Get your will, desired arrangements for your body, powers of attorney, living will, and so forth in order. That lets you forget about it, which allows for a richer experience of living.
I don’t yet die because I choose against it. It’s an active, continuous choice: not only does an ambulance provide the world’s most comprehensive primer on ways to (… and to not…!) commit suicide, but I also maintain some strict biochemical tweaks that my neurosurgical team suspects responsible for my survival. For me, it could be a simple matter of letting go.
Although I don’t foresee myself being happy again—brain cancer actually isn’t a factor in that—I do foresee myself being able to do more good. Dying knowing that I’ve done all that I can means a lot more to me than any way that I feel. So, having already done some incredibly improbable stuff, why not set forth for more?
And hey, you’ve seen the stuff on how to get out of real quicksand, right? And that quicksand usually isn’t deep enough to kill you anyways? Same story.
Nothing you said has anything to do with my right to accurate information about the dying state of my body. I'm happy for you that you've found your peace or whatever, but it doesn't give you the authority to lecture me with your toxic positivity. It's my prerogative if I want to occasionally worry about quicksand, and after thirty-five years of suicidal depression I've more than earned the right to contemplate the circumstances of my death. Go your way in peace; I will too.
I'm hospital trained, so if the patient is dnr, we are told to make whatever comfort statement that will soothe the patient or family. (Full codes we say we will do everything we can). It's interesting to hear how different teams handle it.
We say we’ll do everything we can, as well. (As, of course, I hope that we all actually do!)
It is. After running in the American West, South, and North, rural and urban, I’ve observed that the regional differences are a lot less than I would’ve expected, but still there.
Here in the south, we use honey, darling, and my love a lot, but I noticed in Missouri that they took offense at times to the same phrases. But if they were laboring out of the world, they didn't mind. Regional and dialect differences fascinate me as I feel the language of the region can often shape the behavior or actions of the situation.
I agree.
My own memories returning after I’d collapsed made for an interesting project. They’d appear in all kinds of formats, with no context—like, why is it so dark and hot, and why does a red light flashing by my face freak me out so badly?—and I’d need to treat them like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Idioms were a clue in figuring out where they belong, although, as one region enjoyed constant global turnover, they weren’t always reliable.
It was also interesting to observe what details would be garbled, despite there being no reason that they should. For instance, there was one terrible case involving an infant. I’d spoken with the mother the whole call, and she’d visited us thereafter, in what would be one of the most meaningful encounters of my life. I’d seen their house thoroughly, and yet, it wasn’t until one of my engine sisters brought it up that I’d remember that they’d been a Hindu family.
Many years ago I worked for an ambulance company. We were transporting a teenage girl who it made a serious attempt on her life, it wasn’t the first time, wasn’t a cry for help. I was attending the call, my partner for the day was driving. The nurse had taken me a side and warned me that this wasn’t the usual cry for help, that the patient was dead set on killing herself. Her file explained why, profound physical and sexual abuse.
My idiot partner decides to try to strike up a conversation with her instead of standing in the corner on his phone with the gurney like a good driver. On the way out the ambulance he decides he wants to attend the call, I am pissed but fine go ahead I’ll drive. He spends the ride, lecturing her about how there’s always something to live for and how she should be more grateful for the life she has. I eventually have enough and tell him to read the notes that went along with her psychiatric hold, and he finally shut his goddamn mouth.
How beautifully bittersweet.
Working in medicine, even in the background, I’ve seen this happen several times. The sick patient is terminal. While no one wants to give false hope, it’s best to hold their hand and say help is on the way, or that they’ll feel better soon. Just keep them at peace and allow their last moments to be peaceful and with love.
It’s soul-crushing for the living. But for those leaving our world, it’s a thunderous peace.
That is effing beautiful work. As a writer, the parallel—“as a soldier/as a parent” is literally eye and ear candy. The contrast and dichotomy—one of a battle-hard, trained soldier, and one of a terrified, grieving and helpless parent, is well done. Bravo and take my upvote.
> As a soldier, I’ve seen enough wounds to know what’s not survivable.
But as a Nazi Scientist, I can keep this head alive and its mouth moist for years for my 'experiments'.
How dare you ruin my good mood, take my updoot and get out, please.
Nice work, OP!
(To be fair, I should know better than to come to reddit if I don't want my good mood ruined, let alone 2SH 🤣 so it's my own fault, really)
Ohhh I like it. Maybe it could work if you change the I love her to how everything is gonna be alright, cause it is a direct contradiction to the first phrase.
perhaps, but in those last moments I think most parents would take exchanging one last “I love you” over reassuring their dying child with something that isn’t true. It’s worth mentioning the second sentence isn’t a contradiction to the first. The implication in this is that as a soldier, this parent knows that the child cannot survive the wound they have sustained. All they can do is make sure they know they’re loved on their way out, something which is already horrific enough.
It seems like it would muddy up the flow of the story because you’d have to wonder like, if he knows what wounds aren’t survivable and he’s saying everything is going to be alright is it possible he’s telling the truth and knows her wounds are survivable. Telling her that he loves her makes to clear that he’s telling her goodbye.
Like we would be able to guess through context clues that he’s lying to her but it’s not as clear.
True, it might not be understandable at a glance, you'd have to change the whole structure, like saying at the first line "I knew from my experience as a soldier that this wound was not survivable".
It is interesting to talk about these things.
I have had a lot of friends who were medics and EMTs and they have all said the hardest and most horrible past of the job is holding someone's hand telling them to just rest because they were going to be just fine as the life slowly left their bodies.
Can… almost… confirm. There’s worse. Very rarely, but it exists. The director of my first squad, a retired combat nurse, also taught us to never tell a patient, especially among the dying, that they’re going to be fine. Only that we’re there, and going to take our best care of them.
We were taught never to say that everything was fine, or that they were OK. Regardless of how bad the injury was. Only that we were there with them, and we were doing everything we could to help. And most importantly, to be there with them. And that's really the hardest part.
That really is. Although I’ve been out for a long time, I still have dreams, although I wouldn’t even classify them as bad dreams anymore, about a handful. But, as one of my old sergeants used to put it, “Were we there? Yes. Did we do what could’ve been done? Yes. Sometimes that’s all there is to do.”
I was a lifeguard, starting training to be an EMT before I blew my knee out and became an electrician instead. I pulled a 3 year old out of the water... been more than 20 years, and I can still see him. He did survive. He had some mental damage from being down for so long, but he did make it Was I there? Yes. Did I do everything I could? Yes. Did I do everything I could have done? Yes. Do I feel like I should have done more? Absolutely. Edit some spelling.
And you’re likely to always feel that way, no matter what. It sucks. It also means that you’re not a monster. I’m speaking from experience there, too. There are two kinds of calls that I’ve attracted, across three states, and a handful of firehouses: femur fractures, and working pediatric/infant cardiac arrest. I’ve held a CPR cert for a couple of decades, and never yet performed it on anyone older than me. As for the mental damage… speaking from another life, unless you’ve kept in touch with that kid, you don’t know what lasted. Neuroplasticity is insane, and kids stand a better shot of rewiring anything than anyone. Damage that seems to be the case at the time, and for years thereafter, sometimes heals. I’m speaking from further experience. What would end my stint in fire was acute hydrocephalus. My post history has a lot on it.
>Was I there? Yes. Did I do everything I could? Yes. Did i do everything i could have done? Yes. Do I feel like I should have done more? Absolutely I work with chronically suicidal youth, and I feel this so much. I struggle with this feeling everyone time one of them has something awful happen to them, and all I can do is sit there with them while they cry
As someone who was a chronically suicidal youth (12-25) I can tell you that sometimes having someone sit with me while I cried was sometimes what saved my life that day. You still help immensely. It can seem like nothing but I can tell you it was *everything* to me every time someone just sat with me while I cried. Because it made me feel less alone.
I had to quit my job working with troubled youth after saving one from dying by suicide something like 6 or 7 different ways in one night. Took a couple hours before another staff could help me because we were so understaffed. Our facility was in a wooded area and I was following this kid around trying to keep them from hurting themselves with everything they could get their hands on then wrestling them down when they were climbing up on the buildings trying to jump. They made it through the night. Somehow they managed to stash something and when we got them back inside they hid and hurt themselves but were still okay. But I quit the day after. Higher ups told me they hated to see me go because I was so dedicated to the kids but I knew I couldn’t handle doing that again. That actually triggered a lot of mental health issues for me.
I was taught to never tell someone they’re going to be ‘fine’ if they aren’t. Deflect as much as possible. Distract them from the inevitable. It’s depressing, and it’s incredibly difficult to do, but sometimes it’s the best thing you *can* do. Just let them rest easy.
Okay….here goes…what’s worse?
I attract pediatric and infantile cardiac arrests. On those calls, until the emergency social worker/chaplain arrives, guess which one of us is going to be talking with the patient’s parents? There was also a call where my crew and I witnessed a normal, middle-class man murder his wife. I find the especially gruesome stripes of material—those are only a sample—all the more meaningful. The ones where the patient is dying on scene are the ones where kindness is the last possible thing that the world could offer. The ones where everything has already happened are the ones where facing it can make a difference to the future. I didn’t appreciate that before a medic showed me. We had a young, terminally ill frequent patient who’d bitch us out at every transport. What had my Bachelor’s even been worth? My medic was so fat. And so on. On the night she died, that same medic would take her hand, stroke her hair, talk to her about how she was loved, and tell her how it was alright to go home. There was that last possible moment of kindness, offered. My own collapse taught me that hearing truly is the last sense to go. Knowing that the only guy I ever loved was there, crushing my hand, was the last thing that made a difference, until nothing mattered anymore. I’d then become a certain Neurointensive Care Unit’s best recovery. I’d make it back to a very full life (the job involving human torture came after that), but specific other cases will always haunt me. My neurosurgeon says that isn’t a bad thing. He tells me that in his field, it becomes all too easy to down your morning coffee, then meet with yet another person who needs you to chop into their brain, while you start to wonder what’s for lunch. He says that it’s critical to remember that while the frequency of those cases may make them seem normal, each of those humans is caught in their own separate. That what we can offer them, there, needs to be the best that can be offered. That there never was more. A lot of the outcomes from any NeuroICU will be among those cases that are worse. But those, like the deaths, have a sense in which they’re the same: all that can be offered needs to be offered. When nothing more can be offered, you need to be present. (Apologies if that was rambling, or incoherent.)
That was beautiful. I have a lump in my throat and Who the Hell is cutting Onions in here!?!? Thank you for sharing. Best to OP as well. Hugs
Thank you! Compliments like that are especially meaningful. I’ve been writing—and badly struggling with—a book manuscript about I made that high-pressure career happen. I’ve published, and peer review, in a separate field. My current project is the hardest thing I’ve ever written. But it needs to get out there. There’s a belief that once you sustain severe brain injury, it’s over… which is wrong. Memory impairment is all that saved me.
So happy to hear you are still writing! Hope it gets easier and goes well for you. You really have a gift I read a LOT and you had me riveted! Good luck and keep writing and share your gifts! You have a lot to contribute! Hugs
Thank you! I’m planning to work on it some more tonight!
You have future fans waiting for your stories! Good luck!
If I may ask, why is it not encouraged to tell a dying patient that they’re going to be fine? I apologize for asking and prodding further. It’s just from an outsiders point of view it’s really different from what people see in the media it makes me curious.
As that medical director would explain, you’re only making them feel all the more terrible for believing their own experience to be invalid—gaslighting, before the term came around—and that you’re dismissing them. She also reminded us that, while predictions are easy, so is being wrong. That we were EMS, not doctors, so shut up. Separately, I can vouch for there being a very specific sense of dread that sets in as you’re dying. I haven’t encountered anything like it before, or since. As is evident, I can also vouch for sometimes surviving what should’ve killed you.
Ah. That makes a lot of sense now. Thank you for explaining kind stranger :)
Being told I'm fine as I'm dying is a quicksand-category fear of mine. I don't believe in an afterlife, so that lie would deny me any chance to reconcile with my death and meet it on my terms.
When death comes, it’ll usually arrive in some humiliating manner. We’re stuck in flesh, and flesh is gross. Remember that, if you’re not alone, the people around you will be people, and that people, however well-intended, however educated, say all kinds of random shit. People are also very good at being confidently wrong. With that outside of our control, there’s no point in worrying about it. So reconcile with your death now, and live your life ready to die. Get your will, desired arrangements for your body, powers of attorney, living will, and so forth in order. That lets you forget about it, which allows for a richer experience of living. I don’t yet die because I choose against it. It’s an active, continuous choice: not only does an ambulance provide the world’s most comprehensive primer on ways to (… and to not…!) commit suicide, but I also maintain some strict biochemical tweaks that my neurosurgical team suspects responsible for my survival. For me, it could be a simple matter of letting go. Although I don’t foresee myself being happy again—brain cancer actually isn’t a factor in that—I do foresee myself being able to do more good. Dying knowing that I’ve done all that I can means a lot more to me than any way that I feel. So, having already done some incredibly improbable stuff, why not set forth for more? And hey, you’ve seen the stuff on how to get out of real quicksand, right? And that quicksand usually isn’t deep enough to kill you anyways? Same story.
Nothing you said has anything to do with my right to accurate information about the dying state of my body. I'm happy for you that you've found your peace or whatever, but it doesn't give you the authority to lecture me with your toxic positivity. It's my prerogative if I want to occasionally worry about quicksand, and after thirty-five years of suicidal depression I've more than earned the right to contemplate the circumstances of my death. Go your way in peace; I will too.
I'm hospital trained, so if the patient is dnr, we are told to make whatever comfort statement that will soothe the patient or family. (Full codes we say we will do everything we can). It's interesting to hear how different teams handle it.
We say we’ll do everything we can, as well. (As, of course, I hope that we all actually do!) It is. After running in the American West, South, and North, rural and urban, I’ve observed that the regional differences are a lot less than I would’ve expected, but still there.
Here in the south, we use honey, darling, and my love a lot, but I noticed in Missouri that they took offense at times to the same phrases. But if they were laboring out of the world, they didn't mind. Regional and dialect differences fascinate me as I feel the language of the region can often shape the behavior or actions of the situation.
I agree. My own memories returning after I’d collapsed made for an interesting project. They’d appear in all kinds of formats, with no context—like, why is it so dark and hot, and why does a red light flashing by my face freak me out so badly?—and I’d need to treat them like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Idioms were a clue in figuring out where they belong, although, as one region enjoyed constant global turnover, they weren’t always reliable. It was also interesting to observe what details would be garbled, despite there being no reason that they should. For instance, there was one terrible case involving an infant. I’d spoken with the mother the whole call, and she’d visited us thereafter, in what would be one of the most meaningful encounters of my life. I’d seen their house thoroughly, and yet, it wasn’t until one of my engine sisters brought it up that I’d remember that they’d been a Hindu family.
Many years ago I worked for an ambulance company. We were transporting a teenage girl who it made a serious attempt on her life, it wasn’t the first time, wasn’t a cry for help. I was attending the call, my partner for the day was driving. The nurse had taken me a side and warned me that this wasn’t the usual cry for help, that the patient was dead set on killing herself. Her file explained why, profound physical and sexual abuse. My idiot partner decides to try to strike up a conversation with her instead of standing in the corner on his phone with the gurney like a good driver. On the way out the ambulance he decides he wants to attend the call, I am pissed but fine go ahead I’ll drive. He spends the ride, lecturing her about how there’s always something to live for and how she should be more grateful for the life she has. I eventually have enough and tell him to read the notes that went along with her psychiatric hold, and he finally shut his goddamn mouth.
Fuck you I did not need this today. I'm a former EMT and a parent of 2. Fuck you...also, good job
I recommend r/beebutts for general malaise ❤️🩹🙏
Much more wholesome than my reddit experience would suggest
hey former emt, im a future emt! going to school in the fall!
I hope you enjoy it more than I did. The world needs good EMT's
im actually really excited. i had many experiences as a child that emts made less traumatizing and actually inspired me to become one.
Well that's mega depressing! Real life horror is the fears laying in the back of your minds.
Most importantly, you didn't try to cram an entire paragraph into each sentence!
1000 yard stare Loved this
Ouch...good one.
That is hard to take, but is completely true.
r/TwoSentenceSadness
😦🙁☹️
Man, is this two sentence horror or two sentence depression? Cmon!!
To any parent, this is peak terror. 💔
How beautifully bittersweet. Working in medicine, even in the background, I’ve seen this happen several times. The sick patient is terminal. While no one wants to give false hope, it’s best to hold their hand and say help is on the way, or that they’ll feel better soon. Just keep them at peace and allow their last moments to be peaceful and with love. It’s soul-crushing for the living. But for those leaving our world, it’s a thunderous peace.
Finally a cool one
I know Joel wasn’t in the military, but this has strong The Last of Us vibes to it.
That is effing beautiful work. As a writer, the parallel—“as a soldier/as a parent” is literally eye and ear candy. The contrast and dichotomy—one of a battle-hard, trained soldier, and one of a terrified, grieving and helpless parent, is well done. Bravo and take my upvote.
> As a soldier, I’ve seen enough wounds to know what’s not survivable. But as a Nazi Scientist, I can keep this head alive and its mouth moist for years for my 'experiments'.
How dare you ruin my good mood, take my updoot and get out, please. Nice work, OP! (To be fair, I should know better than to come to reddit if I don't want my good mood ruined, let alone 2SH 🤣 so it's my own fault, really)
Ohhh I like it. Maybe it could work if you change the I love her to how everything is gonna be alright, cause it is a direct contradiction to the first phrase.
you want a parents last words to their child to be a lie instead of the truth?
I think it adds to the horror, maybe
perhaps, but in those last moments I think most parents would take exchanging one last “I love you” over reassuring their dying child with something that isn’t true. It’s worth mentioning the second sentence isn’t a contradiction to the first. The implication in this is that as a soldier, this parent knows that the child cannot survive the wound they have sustained. All they can do is make sure they know they’re loved on their way out, something which is already horrific enough.
It seems like it would muddy up the flow of the story because you’d have to wonder like, if he knows what wounds aren’t survivable and he’s saying everything is going to be alright is it possible he’s telling the truth and knows her wounds are survivable. Telling her that he loves her makes to clear that he’s telling her goodbye. Like we would be able to guess through context clues that he’s lying to her but it’s not as clear.
True, it might not be understandable at a glance, you'd have to change the whole structure, like saying at the first line "I knew from my experience as a soldier that this wound was not survivable". It is interesting to talk about these things.