Daily Activities

Sometimes it is hard to believe I have been in this business for as long as I have...looking back to when I first started as an NP and now have many rewarding memories...Most recently I had the opportunity to help an individual outside of my normal working area....It was last Monday and not so anxious to get the work week started, I was walking to morning report ..I came upon a man wandering in the halls with his coat over his head and face...thinking this was strange, but also realizing Halloween was around the corner...I thought this was an early Halloween performance by one of our outpatients...then I suddenly realized this gentlemen was not celebrating or performing...he was walking into things and stumbling...I ran up to him and took the coat off to see it was one of my patients who I had taken care of many years ago...I see him almost daily at his volunteering post outside of outpatient registration.. He always greets me with "Hi Dr Jayne"...He was glazed over and diaphoretic....He responded to his name...at first I thought he was hypoglycemic...luckily for me the Urgent care was 50 feet away...someone had seen me already and brought a wheelchair to my rescue...we wheeled the patient in and took his sugar to find it was high...he was incoherent would answer questions but not very accurately....I quickly looked through his chart to see if he had any med changes recently ...there were none to be seen...I then asked for him to be further evaluated by the NP who saw Urgent Patients...the remainder of the day I wondered what happened to him..by afternoon he arrived in our Acute Unit...still alert but confused and hypotensive....IV fluid challenge did not rescue his pressure...my attending picked him up and assessed him to find he had a raging cellulitis under his arm...she placed him on IV antibiotics but was concern he was much more then we could handle...he was emergently transferred to a nearby community hospital....I thought of him often as a couple days went by...I then was informed he wasn't doing well and required extensive surgical intervention of the cellulitis...it was so extensive he required transfer to a tertiary hospital....I think to this day....thanks goodness I was in the right place at the right place....thankfully my normal daily routine was helpful to someone else's need...just hope it does well and I can see him again in the hallway back to his old self and hear him say "Hi Dr Jayne".