" Why don ' t we ask the patient? "

Marcie and I had One Of Those Days a couple of weeks ago. Dr. Vizzini had to go do something neurological halfway through the day, so The Golden Boy took over for him in the afternoon. He gathered his residents like ducklings and re-rounded on all of the patients in the unit. < br / > < br / > Marcie had a guy getting ready to go home. He ' d had a very minor stroke in a very minor place, and was essentially without any aftereffects. He also had Stage IV cancer of the something-or-other--I don ' t remember what; I was busy myself--and was on so many anticoagulants it was ridiculous. (Cancer can make a person more prone to blood clots.) The fact that he ' d stroked while on an injectable anticoagulant and a couple of oral ones was weird, but not unheard of. < br / > < br / > So Mister Man was getting ready to blow that popsicle stand when The Golden Boy decided that he needed umpteen more blood tests, a couple of fairly-invasive scans, another MRI, and some other tests run. To see, you understand, what < i > exactly < /i > could be causing him to clot. The answer to which conundrum was " metastatic cancer, DUH, " but TGB wanted an exact answer. Like, down to the molecular derangement level. < br / > < br / > And Marcie, being the sensible person she is, argued. She pointed out that we had at least a general idea of what the problem was (metastatic cancer, DUH), the patient had a limited amount of time to be futzing around with, and nothing we did at this point was going to m...
Source: Head Nurse - Category: Nursing Authors: Source Type: blogs