A2A @ Rowan

This week I really began to feel like I was becoming a nurse! The patient I had was 59 and was just admitted for hypoxia and they found a few spots of cancer. Since we didn’t have prep on Wednesday, I gathered all my info on Thursday morning and that made the day fly bye. I did my morning assessment on him and when I listened to his heart I couldn’t believe the murmur I heard. I was just going to get Ms. Phelps to listen to what I heard when an oncologist walked in so I stayed to hear what he said. He did his thing and listened to his heart and you should have seen his facial expression. At that point he told him how loud and strong his murmur was. So I was right! After he left I finished talking to my patient and did the rest of my assessment. He had +3-pitting edema in his lower extremities and had gained 37lbs in 3 weeks! When I got home that afternoon I started reviewing everything. His K+ was 2.5 and 2.8 for the 2 days he was there. He was getting 40mEq of K+ and it wasn’t helping. A lot of his other labs were out of whack. At that point I came to the conclusion he was having major heart problems. The labs, edema, SOB, and asities just all came together. Plus in his history he had rheumatic fever when he was 4. So I called Ms. Phelps at home to run it past her if I was on the right tract. I was! The next morning during report nothing was said about it so I brought it up to the nurses. They said that it definitely could be and they had just done an echo on him and something would be said to the doctor. I hoped he would have a consult with a cardiologist. I hate not knowing the outcome, but I really felt like I was there helping him! It felt great!!!!!