The two-page letter of complaint was typed on crested letterhead. The words “utter disappointment” jumped off the page, bold-faced and caps-locked. “The doctors left me to bleed,” she wrote, banging on the exclamation key as if was the red button on an old Atari joystick. “I was hemorrhaging and they did nothing except pop in and tell me it would stop.” The tirade was directed toward me and the internist who admitted her. She’d never come back to our hospital again, she said. She’d never donate a cent, and she’d share her horror story with her friends.
***
It’s Saturday, early afternoon, and the Acute room is full of sick patients. There’s a mother of three who’s washed down a bottle of anti-depressants with a half-litre of vodka. She’s in restraints. Screaming. There’s a nursing home patient who fell, and then seized for two minutes, face-down. She has cuts around her eyes where her broken glasses forked her thin skin. There’s a fifty year old with pancreatic cancer and a fever of thirty-nine degrees. There are two twenty-somethings awaiting sedation – one who needs a broken wrist straightened, and one who needs a hemorrhoid shoved back inside. There are a pair of sixty somethings – one with a bowel obstruction, and one with a virus that has caused fluid to collect around her heart. In Acute 13, the curtain is drawn and the lights are down, but the bed is occupied.
Vivian Blue* is the first patient I see in Sub-acute. She’s forty-nine, a little overweight, but fairly healthy. Two years earlier, she was diagnosed with gallstones, and although they were small, she immediately booked an appointment and had her gallbladder removed. She’s jovial, and she jokes that gallbladder surgery was a better option than giving up pizza.
Weeks earlier, at her annual physical, she asked her doctor about screening for colon cancer. Although she has no family history, and no symptoms, she didn’t feel the recommended test – collecting a stool sample and checking for blood – was sufficient for ruling out cancer. She was sent to see a gastroenterologist, and on Tuesday morning, she’d had a colonoscopy. The specialist had found one tiny polyp, which she snared, removed, and sent for pathology. The next day, she was back to work, and the day after, she was back to her daily morning walk.
Hours before I’d met her – four days after her scope – she was sitting at a computer when she’d suddenly felt cramping in her lower abdomen. Seconds later, she was sprinting for the bathroom. When she let go, there was nothing but blood – bright red liquid, mixed with clots. She’d been told that this was possible – that bleeding, along with bowel perforation, were small but serious risks. Minutes later, she was back at the computer, sitting perfectly still, wondering if it would happen again. It did – two more copious, bloody stools over the next two hours.
At triage, her blood pressure was normal, but her heart rate was slightly high – one hundred and twenty beats per minute. She was sent to directly into the ER, and walked easily to a chair in the Sub-acute area.
I look over her vital signs as I finish taking my my history. “A little,” she says, when I ask if she’s dizzy or lightheaded. “And I feel like I might have another bowel movement at any moment.”
I examine her. Her pulse is still high, but her color is good. Her heart sounds are normal, and her lungs are clear. She’s smiling. Her abdomen is soft, but a little tender in all areas. I order an x-ray and hand her the requisition. She’s likely bleeding from the site of the snared polyp, but I want to make sure there’s no perforation – that the scope hasn’t inadvertently ruptured the bowel. I point to her IV line. “I’ve ordered some fluids and a medication to help stop the bleeding. We’ll see if we can find you a bed a soon as possible.”
“That’s it?” she says.
“For now,” I say.
“But I’m actively bleeding.”
“I know.” I reassure her. “Most of these types of bleeds resolve on their own. At this point, we’ll wait and see what happens. Just sit tight for now.”
This was a sticking point in her letter – that I barely did anything other than take her story, examine her, and order saline. And even after things went sour, I just “popped” in, and told her things would most likely settle by morning.
Three hours later, I’m with a teenager who’s downed a cup of Javex. She’s going to be okay, but she has severe esophageal pain and ammonia-laced belches. As I order morphine and tell her that vomiting will only make things worse, there’s a panicked page overhead. I rush back to Sub-acute where Vivian is slumped over in a chair. Two nurses are by her side. Her pants are maroon-soaked.
Seconds earlier, the nurses tell me, Vivian called out for help. She had to use the bathroom, but couldn’t get up. Her skin blanched, her head dropped, but she didn’t lose consciousness.
A stretcher is wheeled over, and Vivian is taken to the empty trauma bay where her pants are peeled off and she’s cleaned. The morgue has called for Acute 13, so soon, she’ll have a room. The internist on call overhears the commotion and joins us. He knows that I have my hands full, and offers to take over Vivian’s care. “I’ll order a repeat blood count,” I say.
“That’s it?” Vivian yells. “I told you that I was bleeding and you’re still not doing anything?”
She thinks we’re conspiring together when the internist reassures her. “Most of these bleeds resolve on their own.”
‘The second doctor was as negligent as the first,” she said in her letter. “I saw him once, and then only four hours later, after he noticed my blood pressure had dropped to dangerous levels.”
In her letter, Vivian is right about one thing. Both the internist and I were in and out of her room, and we only saw her briefly. We didn’t stop moving, however, as we juggled sick patients on an unusually busy day. But not once did we leave her alone. All the while, she was cared for by medical experts. She doesn’t mention them at all in her letter – nurses – the skilled professionals who looked after her from the moment she walked into the ER.
Vivian arrived to the E.R. at 3:00 pm that Saturday afternoon. At 3:15 Nurse A took her story at triage, and noted that her heart rate was slightly high. Because of this, she was led directly into the E.R., where Nurse B took Vivian’s vital signs a second time. By 3:20, Nurse B had drawn blood work, and inserted an IV line. She sent vials of blood for a hemoglobin count, clotting measures, and antibody screening – wisely anticipating the need for a blood transfusion. Ten minutes later, when I met Vivian, there was little for me to do, other than order saline, medication, and send her for an x-ray. When she collapsed, Nurse B was by her side, as well as Nurse C, who had come to her aid even though she had several patients of her own to look after. These were the nurses who asked a clerk to page me overhead, and these were the nurses who helped her onto a stretcher, rushed her to the Acute area, and then cleaned her and changed her.
As I transferred care to the internist, I ordered one unit of red blood cells. And because of Nurse B’s quick thinking earlier, it was matched and ready for transfusion in less than ninety minutes. From that point, Nurse D took over. She inserted a second IV line so that blood and fluid could be infused concurrently. And it wasn’t just coincidence that the internist returned three hours later when Vivian’s blood pressure tanked. Nurse D had been watching Vivian like a hawk; She took her vital signs thirteen times over three hours, and she was the one who called the internist the moment Vivian’s blood pressure dipped below the threshold of normal.
Over the next twelve hours, many other nurses looked after Vivian. They hung a second unit of blood and kept a third on hold just in case. They monitored her vital signs, and drew a second, then a third hemoglobin level, ensuring her blood counts stabilized. They helped her onto a commode for two more bloody bowel movements, and then, a third movement that was back to normal.
When the gastroenterologist saw her the day after her arrival, he told her that the normal bowel movement was reassuring – that the bleeding had likely stopped. He told Vivian that they could watch her for another day and if she didn’t bleed, she could go home. But Vivian felt that after being completely unattended since her arrival to hospital, it was about time that a doctor did something. She insisted on a colonoscopy, and, as predicted, the bleeding had stopped. A fourth blood test showed no further drop in her blood levels.
Vivian hadn’t been left unattended at all. Thanks to the clinical skill and expertise of the nurses who cared for her, Vivian was back home within forty-eight hours. In Canada, National Nurses week always cuts through May 12th, the date of Florence Nightingale’s birth. The next time you’re in the E.R., take a moment to acknowledge the great care these medical professionals give to their patients day in, and day out.
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The Overhead Page 
Nurses are outstanding. I’ve used the health care system to have an ASD repaired, a TIA looked after, a gangrenous appendix that almost killed me, broken bones and many other times I can’t recall right now. The nurses were incredibly dedicated. However this elevates dedication and caring to a whole new level. My wife had a miscarriage with twins at 21 weeks and I will always be grateful to the nurse who came in to work on her day off to spend time with my wife, simply to talk. Incredible. We were devastated and my wife was despondent and would only open up to this nurse. I don’t know her name but she is very special.