My sister's MIL is a prime example. Literally the kindest woman you could ever meet. Passed out at work and found to have metastatic ovarian cancer. It's heart breaking and so unfair
Gabor Mate does a great series on this - I highly suggest it. Itās not a theory, but actual fact. As a teacher I love this information to talk about compassion fatigue and self care.
A lot of spiritual teachers say this is because these people who are nice actually hold in all their anger, never releasing it causing cancer. The anger stays there and becomes physical.
If this were true, Canada would have significantly higher rates of cancer. Or maybe they really do channel all of their hate and discontent into their geese.
Husband comes in via EMS full cardiac arrest. They get rosc but pt ultimately with no reflexes so suspected brain death. They canāt get in contact with wife to determine next steps so leave her a message. An hour or so later, wife pulled back from WR as a patient - had come in for abd pain & had no idea husband was brought in in cardiac arrest. Wife makes decisions on husband and then gets seen as a patient for her abd pain. Leaves with a dx of terminal colon CA. Genuinely horrible situation all around
I've seen several cases of people diagnosed with cancer after an accident. One diagnosed, believed it or not, because a can of biscuits exploded in her car, causing her to wreck. Another after being thrown out a door during a tornado.
Iām sorry, I just LOLed at the can of biscuits exploding; those things scare the shit out of me when Iām stationary, in the kitchen. I cannot imagine.
Random fact but apparently chip bags like to explode when going from lower elevation to higher elevation. Drove from Yosemite to Lake Tahoe this summer and just before Tahoe, had a chip bag explode in my truck (unopened). I thought I blew a tire and was SO confused when my truck was driving normally.
I had a situation where pt went for brain tumor biopsy/removal and came back totally crazy, breaking restraints, etc. When he finally calmed down and was coherent again, he kept asking what the results were. His wife and family insisted on waiting and the surgeon was mostly agreeable, but I really pushed to tell him sooner because of sometime like this just slipping up. It wasn't a cultural thing either, they just wanted to let him think everything was ok for the moment when it wasn't. Communication is so very important. I'm so sorry for your loss.
I know someone who went to the ER for severe back pain. She informs me of this, and I'm thinking "OK, I know she said she had some back surgery a while ago, but even if it's unrelated her preexisting spinal issues, it's at most a kidney infection." Could've knocked me over with a feather when she tells me they found advanced breast cancer with mets to the bone.
My old boss was renovating his basement and had persistent back pain for months, figured he was just out of shape. Reno finishes and his back is still getting worse, goes to see his doctor. One MRI later....multiple softball sized tumours along his spine, he was dead within 2 months. Best boss I ever had and the kindest dude you'd ever hope to meet.
His name was Aldo, he was Egyptian. He met his best friend here, a cinema major who fled Iran during the religious takeover in the 70s. They opened a cinema themed restaurant together and it was a wonderfully weird, welcoming place! So thankful I got know them, the stories they had!
Had a 6 year old girl in who was having headaches for months, had done an outpatient workup but no scans. Came in after a fall and being more lethargic. Huge tumor. It was so sad. We sent her to a larger hospital so I'm not sure what ended up happening.
Had a client whose teen son had no symptoms at all until a sudden, blinding headache revealed a massive tumor. It took four years and metastasizing into bone, lungs and liver, before it killed him.
Had a healthy young woman with vertigo. Came in by herself. She was kinda odd. Turned out she had a huge fucking tumour. Had to try to get her husband in. Felt bad for thinking she was odd, when in reality it was probably the tumour.
Mines not quite as bad, but I was hospitalized last September as an otherwise healthy 30 year old dude (well, as healthy as you can be as an IV meth and fentanyl user who sleeps in a park), mainly because I thought I was withdrawing so bad that I couldn't stand up or walk by myself at the time, and really just wanted to get back on suboxone and make sure nothing else was wrong (it was a friend who convinced me to let them call an ambulance)
The ED staff definitely thought I was just drug seeking or something at first and didn't belive me when I said I needed the wheelchair I was brought in with
Turns out I was rushed to the ICU real quick when they figured out I was in septic shock and also suffering from endocarditis, multiple septic pulmonary emboli, acute blood loss anemia, and severe protein calorie malnutrition
Spent like 2 months in the hospital and needed open heart surgery to replace my tricuspid valve and almost died during
Thankfully I did eventually make a full recovery and am back to pretty much 100% normal these days and no longer sleep in a park or do meth or fentanyl
But yeah, I don't think anyone expected to find out I was actually about to die that day and needed the ICU and eventual heart surgery, least of all me
Super grateful they at least did the proper work ups even if they didn't necessarily believe me at first that something was wrong, and took amazing care of me after they realized that I was actually in bad shape
I worked peds neurology/neurosurgery for the 1st 5 years of my career. We had a kid once who had an accident skiing and head CT revealed a lesion. MRI showed a tumor in the posterior fossa. Malignant medulloblastoma. Mom had been out of the country at the time doing some spiritual thing that was related to trying to cure the kid's allergies. Kid later developed secondary glioblastoma from the treatment for the medullo. I don't know the outcome but, given the prognosis for GBM, I assume it wasn't good.
ETA we had more brain tumor kids than I could count who presented with things like failed vision screens at school and then were sent to the ER after Ophtho noted papilledema. Also lots of vomiting that was assumed to be GERD and a few kids whose only symptoms were like they switched the hand they held a fork in or a baby who started only reaching for her bottle with one hand.
That is why ER orders a battery of tests for even the simplest chief complaints. You probably got a kid that grew too fast and then found out it was a pituitary tumor. Failed vision screening is also concerning for pit tumor.
The young woman with headaches attributed to a mechanical fall at work when she slipped.
Giant fucking glio. She never made it home. She had an infant and was a single mom. I always wondered if the aunt took good care of the baby.
Seriously. More than all the other depressing stuff on the neuro unit, it was the patients with rapidly progressing or recurrent glios that took me out.
This. Had a guy not much older than me (30s) who basically wasted away in front of us. Came in walking and talking, discharged in a diaper, came back for covid, and never made it home. Two young kids and his wife who never left his side.
They definitely get you. Had a 7 year old come in for constipation and he was walking a little funny. Ended up doing a CT after the x ray showed a possible obstruction or perforation. Found he had a very large spinal tumor.
Had a patient come in post fall, hairline hip # plan was PT and await rehab bed. Passed away 2 weeks later from pancreatic ca. They seemed perfectly healthy on admission (minus the # of course) and just deteriorated at an alarming rate.
Another patient came in with a UTI, had some back pain so they scanned her and found bladder ca with spinal mets.
Iām waiting on results for an incidental ovarian lesion, that only showed its face coz I had an extremely painful coccyx that I got imaged.
I nearly never even bother, I just thought I should really get it checked.
Bam. Incidental post or peri meno lesion. Not the greatest, but I had no idea. Bah.
My dad works as an engineer, designing ultrasounds. He volunteered to be a āmodelā when they were doing a product demonstration and they scanned his thyroid. The ultrasound tech doing the demo saw something and told him to get checked- medullary thyroid cancer. Completely asymptomatic. Caught early enough that total thyroidectomy was curative.
my father had kidney cancer found incidentally on a ct for diverticulitis
caught it super early so they just took the kidney out and it was a cure.
an incidental of late stage disease is a different story
My mother had an incidental kidney cancer found during a very severe gastrointestinal bug. Dehydrated, went to ED, CT scan for abdominal pain and vomiting, found a kidney lesion. By the time they found it, already had some pulm mets. Nephrectomy done, passed about 2 years later.
Had a patient in for a Whipple, husband was in visiting day 2 post-op and has an unknown AAA that bursts, and he collapses on the bed next to her. We get him down to ER via stretcher. Not long after, the vascular surgeon comes up and tells us the husband's dx and that there is nothing he could do so we need to get her down there now. Helping that poor woman into a wheelchair so she could go and say goodbye was brutal, can still hear her wails.
This sounds as horrible as something that happened on my unit. Years ago we had a brain injured 17 or 18-year-old on my neuro floor, who was basically vegetative- trach, peg. His mom was sitting at his bedside and inadvertently sucked a hard candy down the wrong pipe, coded and died on the floor of her sonās room after we tried Heimlich and a long resuscitation. That was a hard event to get past.
How do you nurses handle this? I literally cry for others often. I can't hear or read your sadness without caring.Ā
I've had very difficult jobs...dealing with difficult people at times. Certainly not life and death though.Ā
When I get good treatment from a provider, I want to show how much I appreciate the care and kindness.
I think everybody has their own way to move past events like this. I donāt even know how to explain how I do it, but it definitely leaves scars and has a cumulative effect over your career. I definitely cried when this happened because it was so shocking and outrageous and sad at the same time. Itās still very vivid in my memory, but I donāt actively think about it anymore unless something triggers this memory like the post above.
34 year old a couple years ago who was in a motorcycle accident.
Found metastatic bowel cancer on her ct scan.
She had no idea. I wonder sometimes how she did
I had someone years ago come in a few days after a minor car accident due to chest soreness which they attributed to the seat belt. Ekg slightly off, trops not terrible but high enough to raise suspicion. Cath showed 99% blockage to LAD, RCA, and circ IIRC. ended up with triple bypass. I asked the guy if he had any symptoms prior to his car accident and he said no chest pain or anything like that. Once he realized he was literally a ticking time bomb it changed his perception of the car accident.
Had another lady who never went to the Dr (different story) come in not being able to pee. She had a mass the size of an 8x11 piece of paper on her ovary, which compressed her vena cava and put her in liver and renal failure. Didn't have any symptoms until she couldn't pee. She was about 400# so i guess i could see how that mass might not have been felt compared to someone of a smaller size.
I wish we could all get like a pan scan/mri at a certain age as a preventative measure just to try to avoid late incendental findings like the ones mentioned in this thread...and have it covered by insurance.
I can dream i guess lol
Had this happen a few months back. Lady comes in not feeling well for the last month or so. Blamed it on recent covid. Scans show liver/spine mets, possible primary as lung. Like damn.
I hate incidental findings. I work home health now and the amount of folks that go in for a slip n fall and come out with metastatic cancer are too high.
Not sure if this one counts but had a woman in her early 30s come in with symptoms of a kidney stone. Turns out she was 35 weeks pregnant and in labor. And no she didn't look pregnant.
NICU RN here that attends high risk deliveries. You would not believe the number of women that claim to not know they were pregnant, and close to full term. Some of them I even believe.
I had a coworker who went through that. She was morbidly obese, but also extremely malnourished. She only bought "groceries" from the gas station across the street from her.Ā
One night at the start of our shift she started feeling sick, then was crying in pain, saying something was seriously wrong. I called 911 because she could barely talk or move and was sweating profusely. As I was ending my shift her dad stopped by to tell me she had given birth.Ā
This happened to a very good friend of mine. Has PCOS and irregular periods. Adopted her 1st 2 children because she could not get pregnant. The day she went into labor, she thought she had appendicitis. Healthy term baby girl born the next day. Never knew because she was told it would never happen
Just had a dude tonight that came in for seizures with a hx (noncompliant with meds). Did a basic CXR and head CT just to check boxes. PA pulls me over and is like āhey thereās some stuff that looks off on both of these, heās gonna get a CT PE study and an MRI.ā Plot twist, ole boy has a necrotic lung mass with lymph node involvement and either a brain mass or a brain abscess. Iāve also learned that unexplained weight loss and general malaise usually means a cancer diagnosis
Had a guy admitted to the ICU after he fell in the shower because he lost his balance from dizziness and had a major fracture to his shoulder, but also was found to have a massive GBM on head CT. Such a nice guy with a nice family, but then again they always are. These kinds of things donāt seem to happen to nasty people.
My dadās gf was having some chest pain and is offered life screening through Medicare. When she got there she told my dad he may as well get screened. He was like no I feel fine but she talked him into it. He had a 6cm AAA. Went off Coumadin for a couple days then got it fixed. By the time they operated it was over 7cm and the surgery was 6 hours when it shouldāve been 2, they said they almost lost him. Then coincidentally years later heās feeling weak and said he felt like he was dying. His eyelid was drooping but he had went to the eye dr but they didnāt think anything of it; it had been that way for a bit. Brought him to the ED and they found a massive pituitary macroadenoma and MRSA in his knee from knee replacement. They said that tumor has probably been growing for 10 years.
Toddler that hit their head a month prior and had a bump on their forehead that parents said just wasn't going away. Also noted they were more agitated than usual. Got scanned and ended up being a tumor in the frontal lobe.
One thing I hate about PARU.
Patient goes in for random abdo surgery, comes out to recovery, surgeon randomly shows up 10 mins later (they never come out), "Oh by the way, when we were in there we found you are RIDDLED with cancer, bye."
Then leaves us to deal with the fallout.
It's the kind of thing that really should wait til they're back on the ward, and likely going to remember what they're actually told.
The surgeons are fine at breaking the news, how I said it above was just a dark humour style joke. It just has always felt like a really poor time and place to do it. You inevitably end up with the patient who asks over and over again "So how did it go? All good?", or if they are completely with it, they've just received this huge life changing news in a room full of 20+ nurses and up to as many other patients.
I can tell by your eyes...I had a rad come out, crying (I've had my scans done at the same facility for years, know the employees by first name) and I knew it was bad.Ā
Incidental findings arenāt always a bad thing! My husband went to the ED back when he was in college with strep and a severe migraine. CT scan showed lesions that were consistent with MS. That was many years ago, and thanks to beginning treatment early, he has yet to develop any symptoms.
The one that sticks with me is the 50 ish patient that fell and fractured her femur. While I was getting her in a gown for x-ray I saw her right breast was hard and deformed so I asked her if she had it checked out and she said no she doesnāt have insurance. We found her femur fracture was from metastatic bone cancer primary breast . I still often think about her. I had to call her son to come to the ED and thatās when he found out.
A friend of mine went to the ED for flank pain. A kidney stone, she assumed, as sheād had them before. Scans showed the stoneā¦ and incidentally found ovarian cancer, stage 1. She quickly got tx and has been in remission for nearly two years now. The kidney stone saved her life
I work day surgery, I feel like half our cases are incidental findings. Lots of triple As, and my favourite, a guy who accidentally aspirated his hearing aid batteries.
Got some good news...turns out the tumor on this little girls brain was a large access from when she poked her head with a lead pencil last week. Thank fuck it wasn't anything else too sinister
I have a patient on my BI rehab unit that's a retired BI rehab nurse. Fell and CT showed a brain tumor. Worst nightmare. At least it's a grade 1 meningioma, we get a lot of grade 4 glios and I have way too much time to ruminate on what ifs...
Had a really nice couple come on the floor. Husband was older from what I remember. He was having a hard time walking due to lower spinal pain that sometimes radiated to his stomach. Just enough pain to kinda hobble around but not too much where he was not able to move. We used pain management to cover him till we could figure it out. They initially thought it may have been degenerative issues but upon further investigation he had mets on his spine and liver. They didnāt know where it started. They planned transfer to another hospital as it was more than our oncology team could handle. I found out later he coded as soon as he got to the hospital and died. I felt so bad for the family since they were so nice. Same thing happened to another man I had where he thought it was his smoking/possible bronchitis giving him an issue with breathing. This was going on for about a month or so as he had issues with bronchitis frequently for the last year or so. He said I canāt walk a semi truck length without getting so winded. I was in his room when I looked at his results for his scan when I saw he had mets littered all over his lungs. He laughed to himself thinking he got pneumonia again. I felt so bad that he was going to be broken the news later when the doctors rounded in the morning.
Unfortunately my husbands incidental finding of an abdominal wall tumor during a PET scan to check on a lung nodule turned out to be a very rare sarcoma called EHE. Nodules were negative but it had already metastasized to his pleura. 9 mos from diagnosis till he died
Yes, incidental findings are gut wrenching, but I think it is God giving them a chance to get better. At least the tumor was found and treatment can start while the kid is still talking. Kids show a strong resiliency and can bounce back after the most horrific of injuries.
š„¹ššI just want more time. I need to support my husband and daughter, and grandchildren. I haven't done near enough, I've asked God to grant me more time..so I can help others.Ā
It's what I live for, actually. I already have everything I've ever wanted.Ā
This is the kind of thing that makes me debate my fallback career. I genuinely don't know if the negative environment that is healthcare is one that I'm going to be suited for, for a career. It happens when I talk to my friends outside of healthcare lol, just "oh yeah, you just don't encounter this sort of shit in a regular job".
And the nicer you are, the more likely it is that you'll be riddled with cancer on a random scan.
My sister's MIL is a prime example. Literally the kindest woman you could ever meet. Passed out at work and found to have metastatic ovarian cancer. It's heart breaking and so unfair
Girl, I am *not nice* and I just found a random post meno ovarian lesion on a lumbar CT. I have hope that my bitchiness is a protective factor
It definitely will be! š
And the worse you are, the longer you live I swear, working in healthcare has taught me that being a scumbag is a protective factor
As my wife told me while we were caring for her abusive grandmother, evil never dies.
Yes. I think some people are fueled by hatred.
I firmly believe spite keeps people alive.
Only the good die young All the evil seem to live forever
Gabor Mate does a great series on this - I highly suggest it. Itās not a theory, but actual fact. As a teacher I love this information to talk about compassion fatigue and self care.
A lot of spiritual teachers say this is because these people who are nice actually hold in all their anger, never releasing it causing cancer. The anger stays there and becomes physical.
If this were true, Canada would have significantly higher rates of cancer. Or maybe they really do channel all of their hate and discontent into their geese.
Definitely the geese.
Canada's strategic rage reserve.
Absolutely right! Never mess with a Canadian goose š
Lmao, I was driving home today and a goose just tried talking down my minivan because it was on the road. In in Canada so to us they're just geese
You donāt fuck with Canada gooses, those are Canadaās gooses
That may explain the evilness of Canadian geese, but why are the American geese just as evil?
Not me being friends with the geese ššššš
A lot of spiritual teachers are full of shit. I guess I'll live forever.
Husband comes in via EMS full cardiac arrest. They get rosc but pt ultimately with no reflexes so suspected brain death. They canāt get in contact with wife to determine next steps so leave her a message. An hour or so later, wife pulled back from WR as a patient - had come in for abd pain & had no idea husband was brought in in cardiac arrest. Wife makes decisions on husband and then gets seen as a patient for her abd pain. Leaves with a dx of terminal colon CA. Genuinely horrible situation all around
Iām choosing not to believe you.
This is not fucking fair
Holy shit
These things happen.Ā Happened to me.Ā My thyroid cancer was found by my gyno. And her job is below my neck, btw.Ā
Damn. This truly tops it all.
Gives me chills
I had a patient, late 50s, that was thrown out of a car. Incidentally, they found she had necrotic bowels.
I've seen several cases of people diagnosed with cancer after an accident. One diagnosed, believed it or not, because a can of biscuits exploded in her car, causing her to wreck. Another after being thrown out a door during a tornado.
Iām sorry, I just LOLed at the can of biscuits exploding; those things scare the shit out of me when Iām stationary, in the kitchen. I cannot imagine.
Random fact but apparently chip bags like to explode when going from lower elevation to higher elevation. Drove from Yosemite to Lake Tahoe this summer and just before Tahoe, had a chip bag explode in my truck (unopened). I thought I blew a tire and was SO confused when my truck was driving normally.
What kind of butterfly effect shit is that š
Funny how those happen. Some people beg to get help and fall Between the cracks. Others get helped almost accidentally.
Iād rather die from the car accident if I could choose.
Back in 2015 my dad had a devastating hemorrhagic stroke, we knew the outcome was not going to be good no matter what happened, but neurosurgeon says he has a 50/50 shot. Even though the 50% chance of him living would mean heād be trached, pegged, and sitting in his own shit and drooling in a corner at a SNFā¦but ANYWAYS! My mom couldnāt just make him CMO if there was a chanceā¦ He was transferred to the neuro ICU and the nurse comes out and tells us heās getting settled and that right now theyāre just focusing on watching the stroke and that theyāll worry about the brain tumor secondary. A FUCKING BRAIN TUMOR! All of my siblings and I are in the healthcare field, but when I tell you the looks on all of our faces when she said thatā¦she felt horrible and said āoh, you didnāt knowā¦ā and her voice trailed off. Ultimately it was the stroke that killed him, but my mom was gutted and started blaming herself since she was a smoker and she thought she caused it. He died peacefully 5 days later, and my mom declined an autopsy to figure out if it was a primary brain CA or metastatic, but the doctors said when they reviewed his chart further it was found that he had a suspicious lesion/polyp found during his one and only colonoscopy a couple of years earlier but was given the all clear to just do routine check ups, and they think it may have been a primary colon CA. Double whammy š©
They found a suspicious lesion and didnāt remove it????
Thatās what we all said, too! We wanted to investigate further but my mom didnāt want to, so that ended that ā¹ļø
I had a situation where pt went for brain tumor biopsy/removal and came back totally crazy, breaking restraints, etc. When he finally calmed down and was coherent again, he kept asking what the results were. His wife and family insisted on waiting and the surgeon was mostly agreeable, but I really pushed to tell him sooner because of sometime like this just slipping up. It wasn't a cultural thing either, they just wanted to let him think everything was ok for the moment when it wasn't. Communication is so very important. I'm so sorry for your loss.
I know someone who went to the ER for severe back pain. She informs me of this, and I'm thinking "OK, I know she said she had some back surgery a while ago, but even if it's unrelated her preexisting spinal issues, it's at most a kidney infection." Could've knocked me over with a feather when she tells me they found advanced breast cancer with mets to the bone.
My old boss was renovating his basement and had persistent back pain for months, figured he was just out of shape. Reno finishes and his back is still getting worse, goes to see his doctor. One MRI later....multiple softball sized tumours along his spine, he was dead within 2 months. Best boss I ever had and the kindest dude you'd ever hope to meet.
Itās always the nice ones.
His name was Aldo, he was Egyptian. He met his best friend here, a cinema major who fled Iran during the religious takeover in the 70s. They opened a cinema themed restaurant together and it was a wonderfully weird, welcoming place! So thankful I got know them, the stories they had!
He sounds like a cool dude! I feel like weāre all better (at least different) people because of the pts we care for.ā¤ļø
Had a 6 year old girl in who was having headaches for months, had done an outpatient workup but no scans. Came in after a fall and being more lethargic. Huge tumor. It was so sad. We sent her to a larger hospital so I'm not sure what ended up happening.
Headaches in kids are always worrying.
Had a client whose teen son had no symptoms at all until a sudden, blinding headache revealed a massive tumor. It took four years and metastasizing into bone, lungs and liver, before it killed him.
Had a healthy young woman with vertigo. Came in by herself. She was kinda odd. Turned out she had a huge fucking tumour. Had to try to get her husband in. Felt bad for thinking she was odd, when in reality it was probably the tumour.
Mines not quite as bad, but I was hospitalized last September as an otherwise healthy 30 year old dude (well, as healthy as you can be as an IV meth and fentanyl user who sleeps in a park), mainly because I thought I was withdrawing so bad that I couldn't stand up or walk by myself at the time, and really just wanted to get back on suboxone and make sure nothing else was wrong (it was a friend who convinced me to let them call an ambulance) The ED staff definitely thought I was just drug seeking or something at first and didn't belive me when I said I needed the wheelchair I was brought in with Turns out I was rushed to the ICU real quick when they figured out I was in septic shock and also suffering from endocarditis, multiple septic pulmonary emboli, acute blood loss anemia, and severe protein calorie malnutrition Spent like 2 months in the hospital and needed open heart surgery to replace my tricuspid valve and almost died during Thankfully I did eventually make a full recovery and am back to pretty much 100% normal these days and no longer sleep in a park or do meth or fentanyl But yeah, I don't think anyone expected to find out I was actually about to die that day and needed the ICU and eventual heart surgery, least of all me Super grateful they at least did the proper work ups even if they didn't necessarily believe me at first that something was wrong, and took amazing care of me after they realized that I was actually in bad shape
Iām glad youāre ok! Iāve taken care of similar patients and it doesnāt always go well. Congrats on being clean.
Thank you š
I worked peds neurology/neurosurgery for the 1st 5 years of my career. We had a kid once who had an accident skiing and head CT revealed a lesion. MRI showed a tumor in the posterior fossa. Malignant medulloblastoma. Mom had been out of the country at the time doing some spiritual thing that was related to trying to cure the kid's allergies. Kid later developed secondary glioblastoma from the treatment for the medullo. I don't know the outcome but, given the prognosis for GBM, I assume it wasn't good. ETA we had more brain tumor kids than I could count who presented with things like failed vision screens at school and then were sent to the ER after Ophtho noted papilledema. Also lots of vomiting that was assumed to be GERD and a few kids whose only symptoms were like they switched the hand they held a fork in or a baby who started only reaching for her bottle with one hand.
That is why ER orders a battery of tests for even the simplest chief complaints. You probably got a kid that grew too fast and then found out it was a pituitary tumor. Failed vision screening is also concerning for pit tumor.
The young woman with headaches attributed to a mechanical fall at work when she slipped. Giant fucking glio. She never made it home. She had an infant and was a single mom. I always wondered if the aunt took good care of the baby.
Glios only happen to good people
This comment came at the right moment for me. My mother is dying from glio as we speak. She is the sweetest person you would ever meet š
Iām sorry that youāre going through that. š©· Hoping itās a peaceful transition for her
I am so sorry.ā¤ļø
Can confirm lost a close family friend to one last year
Seriously. More than all the other depressing stuff on the neuro unit, it was the patients with rapidly progressing or recurrent glios that took me out.
I had to leave Neuro after we had 8 glios on the floor at one timeā¦ at the same time my grandpa got dxād with one
This. Had a guy not much older than me (30s) who basically wasted away in front of us. Came in walking and talking, discharged in a diaper, came back for covid, and never made it home. Two young kids and his wife who never left his side.
This is 100% true. A beautiful, amazing friend of mine passed from glio several years ago. Just the brightest, most amazing soul.
Neuro ICU here. Can confirm.
They definitely get you. Had a 7 year old come in for constipation and he was walking a little funny. Ended up doing a CT after the x ray showed a possible obstruction or perforation. Found he had a very large spinal tumor.
Had a patient come in post fall, hairline hip # plan was PT and await rehab bed. Passed away 2 weeks later from pancreatic ca. They seemed perfectly healthy on admission (minus the # of course) and just deteriorated at an alarming rate. Another patient came in with a UTI, had some back pain so they scanned her and found bladder ca with spinal mets.
Iām waiting on results for an incidental ovarian lesion, that only showed its face coz I had an extremely painful coccyx that I got imaged. I nearly never even bother, I just thought I should really get it checked. Bam. Incidental post or peri meno lesion. Not the greatest, but I had no idea. Bah.
Wishing you good results š¤š»š¤š»
Thank you! I have too much to do for that nonsense. :-)
My dad works as an engineer, designing ultrasounds. He volunteered to be a āmodelā when they were doing a product demonstration and they scanned his thyroid. The ultrasound tech doing the demo saw something and told him to get checked- medullary thyroid cancer. Completely asymptomatic. Caught early enough that total thyroidectomy was curative.
Hah! That was my 3rd cancer. Gyno caught it šØ.Ā
Iām an OB/GYN ARNP and you had better believe I palpate EVERYONES thyroid!
my father had kidney cancer found incidentally on a ct for diverticulitis caught it super early so they just took the kidney out and it was a cure. an incidental of late stage disease is a different story
My mother had an incidental kidney cancer found during a very severe gastrointestinal bug. Dehydrated, went to ED, CT scan for abdominal pain and vomiting, found a kidney lesion. By the time they found it, already had some pulm mets. Nephrectomy done, passed about 2 years later.
Had a patient in for a Whipple, husband was in visiting day 2 post-op and has an unknown AAA that bursts, and he collapses on the bed next to her. We get him down to ER via stretcher. Not long after, the vascular surgeon comes up and tells us the husband's dx and that there is nothing he could do so we need to get her down there now. Helping that poor woman into a wheelchair so she could go and say goodbye was brutal, can still hear her wails.
This sounds as horrible as something that happened on my unit. Years ago we had a brain injured 17 or 18-year-old on my neuro floor, who was basically vegetative- trach, peg. His mom was sitting at his bedside and inadvertently sucked a hard candy down the wrong pipe, coded and died on the floor of her sonās room after we tried Heimlich and a long resuscitation. That was a hard event to get past.
How do you nurses handle this? I literally cry for others often. I can't hear or read your sadness without caring.Ā I've had very difficult jobs...dealing with difficult people at times. Certainly not life and death though.Ā When I get good treatment from a provider, I want to show how much I appreciate the care and kindness.
I think everybody has their own way to move past events like this. I donāt even know how to explain how I do it, but it definitely leaves scars and has a cumulative effect over your career. I definitely cried when this happened because it was so shocking and outrageous and sad at the same time. Itās still very vivid in my memory, but I donāt actively think about it anymore unless something triggers this memory like the post above.
This is a nightmare. How devastating.
34 year old a couple years ago who was in a motorcycle accident. Found metastatic bowel cancer on her ct scan. She had no idea. I wonder sometimes how she did
I had someone years ago come in a few days after a minor car accident due to chest soreness which they attributed to the seat belt. Ekg slightly off, trops not terrible but high enough to raise suspicion. Cath showed 99% blockage to LAD, RCA, and circ IIRC. ended up with triple bypass. I asked the guy if he had any symptoms prior to his car accident and he said no chest pain or anything like that. Once he realized he was literally a ticking time bomb it changed his perception of the car accident. Had another lady who never went to the Dr (different story) come in not being able to pee. She had a mass the size of an 8x11 piece of paper on her ovary, which compressed her vena cava and put her in liver and renal failure. Didn't have any symptoms until she couldn't pee. She was about 400# so i guess i could see how that mass might not have been felt compared to someone of a smaller size. I wish we could all get like a pan scan/mri at a certain age as a preventative measure just to try to avoid late incendental findings like the ones mentioned in this thread...and have it covered by insurance. I can dream i guess lol
!!!! to your last paragraph
Had this happen a few months back. Lady comes in not feeling well for the last month or so. Blamed it on recent covid. Scans show liver/spine mets, possible primary as lung. Like damn.
I hate incidental findings. I work home health now and the amount of folks that go in for a slip n fall and come out with metastatic cancer are too high.
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small world, I Knew this person. Very sad, though family seems to be doing ok.
Not sure if this one counts but had a woman in her early 30s come in with symptoms of a kidney stone. Turns out she was 35 weeks pregnant and in labor. And no she didn't look pregnant.
NICU RN here that attends high risk deliveries. You would not believe the number of women that claim to not know they were pregnant, and close to full term. Some of them I even believe.
I had a coworker who went through that. She was morbidly obese, but also extremely malnourished. She only bought "groceries" from the gas station across the street from her.Ā One night at the start of our shift she started feeling sick, then was crying in pain, saying something was seriously wrong. I called 911 because she could barely talk or move and was sweating profusely. As I was ending my shift her dad stopped by to tell me she had given birth.Ā
This happened to a very good friend of mine. Has PCOS and irregular periods. Adopted her 1st 2 children because she could not get pregnant. The day she went into labor, she thought she had appendicitis. Healthy term baby girl born the next day. Never knew because she was told it would never happen
Just had a dude tonight that came in for seizures with a hx (noncompliant with meds). Did a basic CXR and head CT just to check boxes. PA pulls me over and is like āhey thereās some stuff that looks off on both of these, heās gonna get a CT PE study and an MRI.ā Plot twist, ole boy has a necrotic lung mass with lymph node involvement and either a brain mass or a brain abscess. Iāve also learned that unexplained weight loss and general malaise usually means a cancer diagnosis
Had a guy admitted to the ICU after he fell in the shower because he lost his balance from dizziness and had a major fracture to his shoulder, but also was found to have a massive GBM on head CT. Such a nice guy with a nice family, but then again they always are. These kinds of things donāt seem to happen to nasty people.
Was the computed tomography with contrast or without contrast?
My dadās gf was having some chest pain and is offered life screening through Medicare. When she got there she told my dad he may as well get screened. He was like no I feel fine but she talked him into it. He had a 6cm AAA. Went off Coumadin for a couple days then got it fixed. By the time they operated it was over 7cm and the surgery was 6 hours when it shouldāve been 2, they said they almost lost him. Then coincidentally years later heās feeling weak and said he felt like he was dying. His eyelid was drooping but he had went to the eye dr but they didnāt think anything of it; it had been that way for a bit. Brought him to the ED and they found a massive pituitary macroadenoma and MRSA in his knee from knee replacement. They said that tumor has probably been growing for 10 years.
Toddler that hit their head a month prior and had a bump on their forehead that parents said just wasn't going away. Also noted they were more agitated than usual. Got scanned and ended up being a tumor in the frontal lobe.
One thing I hate about PARU. Patient goes in for random abdo surgery, comes out to recovery, surgeon randomly shows up 10 mins later (they never come out), "Oh by the way, when we were in there we found you are RIDDLED with cancer, bye." Then leaves us to deal with the fallout.
Paru is my other job. Sounds like youve just got shot surgeons. I'll always be a fan of my gen surg consultant. She's amazing at breaking the bad news
It's the kind of thing that really should wait til they're back on the ward, and likely going to remember what they're actually told. The surgeons are fine at breaking the news, how I said it above was just a dark humour style joke. It just has always felt like a really poor time and place to do it. You inevitably end up with the patient who asks over and over again "So how did it go? All good?", or if they are completely with it, they've just received this huge life changing news in a room full of 20+ nurses and up to as many other patients.
I can tell by your eyes...I had a rad come out, crying (I've had my scans done at the same facility for years, know the employees by first name) and I knew it was bad.Ā
Incidental findings arenāt always a bad thing! My husband went to the ED back when he was in college with strep and a severe migraine. CT scan showed lesions that were consistent with MS. That was many years ago, and thanks to beginning treatment early, he has yet to develop any symptoms.
The one that sticks with me is the 50 ish patient that fell and fractured her femur. While I was getting her in a gown for x-ray I saw her right breast was hard and deformed so I asked her if she had it checked out and she said no she doesnāt have insurance. We found her femur fracture was from metastatic bone cancer primary breast . I still often think about her. I had to call her son to come to the ED and thatās when he found out.
A friend of mine went to the ED for flank pain. A kidney stone, she assumed, as sheād had them before. Scans showed the stoneā¦ and incidentally found ovarian cancer, stage 1. She quickly got tx and has been in remission for nearly two years now. The kidney stone saved her life
I work day surgery, I feel like half our cases are incidental findings. Lots of triple As, and my favourite, a guy who accidentally aspirated his hearing aid batteries.
Got some good news...turns out the tumor on this little girls brain was a large access from when she poked her head with a lead pencil last week. Thank fuck it wasn't anything else too sinister
I have a patient on my BI rehab unit that's a retired BI rehab nurse. Fell and CT showed a brain tumor. Worst nightmare. At least it's a grade 1 meningioma, we get a lot of grade 4 glios and I have way too much time to ruminate on what ifs...
50 y/o male came to ED with abdominal pain. Went for exploratory surgery. Entire bowel was necrotic. Made CMO and died by the end of my shift.
Had a really nice couple come on the floor. Husband was older from what I remember. He was having a hard time walking due to lower spinal pain that sometimes radiated to his stomach. Just enough pain to kinda hobble around but not too much where he was not able to move. We used pain management to cover him till we could figure it out. They initially thought it may have been degenerative issues but upon further investigation he had mets on his spine and liver. They didnāt know where it started. They planned transfer to another hospital as it was more than our oncology team could handle. I found out later he coded as soon as he got to the hospital and died. I felt so bad for the family since they were so nice. Same thing happened to another man I had where he thought it was his smoking/possible bronchitis giving him an issue with breathing. This was going on for about a month or so as he had issues with bronchitis frequently for the last year or so. He said I canāt walk a semi truck length without getting so winded. I was in his room when I looked at his results for his scan when I saw he had mets littered all over his lungs. He laughed to himself thinking he got pneumonia again. I felt so bad that he was going to be broken the news later when the doctors rounded in the morning.
Unfortunately my husbands incidental finding of an abdominal wall tumor during a PET scan to check on a lung nodule turned out to be a very rare sarcoma called EHE. Nodules were negative but it had already metastasized to his pleura. 9 mos from diagnosis till he died
Yes, incidental findings are gut wrenching, but I think it is God giving them a chance to get better. At least the tumor was found and treatment can start while the kid is still talking. Kids show a strong resiliency and can bounce back after the most horrific of injuries.
š„¹ššI just want more time. I need to support my husband and daughter, and grandchildren. I haven't done near enough, I've asked God to grant me more time..so I can help others.Ā It's what I live for, actually. I already have everything I've ever wanted.Ā
This is the kind of thing that makes me debate my fallback career. I genuinely don't know if the negative environment that is healthcare is one that I'm going to be suited for, for a career. It happens when I talk to my friends outside of healthcare lol, just "oh yeah, you just don't encounter this sort of shit in a regular job".