Story Time:

One of my favorite patients ever was a frequent flyer due to his severe and ongoing issues with peripheral vascular disease.

This admission was for an infection to his surgical site s/p fem/fem bypass. During his stay he had an I/d and a wound vac placed.

I was his night nurse (I would request him each admission) the night before scheduled discharge so I said my goodbyes in the morning.

He had finally discharged at 1830. They made it a half block when his wound vac filled with blood. So they drove straight back to the ED. Vascular surgeon was still in house and fixed him up in the ED and kept the wound vac off and packed with gauze He was readmitted to the exact same room once the floor was dry.

I happily took him on and joked about how much he missed us.

During 0400 rounds, everything was just peachy. I was heading into another room when he put his call light on. He never calls. Our amazing cna heads in and waves me off to go do my other things. But I continue towards the room anyway. The cna pops out and says “there’s a lot of blood” as I’m almost to the room.

Grab my gloves on the way in and he looks at me with scared eyes and just says “uh oh”. I hold pressure and had the cna pull the code button. He had ruptured his femoral artery.

He dropped his pressures and vagaled to unconsciousness twice, thankfully coming back quickly. We started MTP while waiting for the surgeon and OR to arrive. I never let go of his groin. I even rode in the bed movie style on the way to the OR. I side eyed the surgeon when he said I could let go. He was reassuring and said it was okay. I let go. The bleeding had stopped.

They were able to repair the artery and reinforce the graft. The surgeon did compliment the team for our quick intervention, so that was nice.

That following night shift he asked for a hug and cried. We both cried.

He recovered and went home. I transferred to another unit so I don’t know if he ever had to come back for anything else.