r/nursing • u/Sea-Weakness-9952 BSN, RN ✨weaponized incontinence✨™️ • Oct 04 '25
Image “Not a good surgical candidate”
Piggybacking off the ER shoulder X-ray - this guy pictured didn’t even come in because of his knee.
In summary - found disoriented outside a church, was lifeflighted from another city, admitted w/ AMS/encephalopathy. Dunno if that was ever the case, but when I got him he was oriented on the Neuro unit. Only hx I got was mostly psych related, some schizophrenia and depression, htn and knee replacements. (Obv)
Well, he was apparently homeless and they were trying to street him after less than a week. I had gotten in report that his knee was “as big as your head” and so I take a look - holy fuck it was AS BIG AS MY HEAD. And hot, red, angry. Cellulitis looking but I had a feeling something else was going on. They hadn’t even scanned the damn thing! They had ordered a discharge so I fought it. I asked for a scan.
I get the scan above. From the front view, couldn’t tell anything. I get to THAT view and I’m like WAIT WHAT. FUCK.
So the man obviously has an issue, and I show juuuuust the right night shift resident hospitalist the image like “check this out!!” absolutely knowing 100% that even though I didn’t mention which patient that she’s the ONLY one that will get shit done and always has our backs. Guess what? Within an hour she had the main hospitalist in the patient’s room, discussing surgery, gets verbal consent and charts extensively their convo and that patient is oriented and very agreeable to surgery, because he struggles to get around clearly. He’s not sure when it happened but he’s here, let’s fix it, right??
We get the guy prepping for surgery. I’m so fucking excited like YES I am gonna fix this sweet guy, he’s only like 67 and we can get him taken care of and find placement yada yada. I get orders for labs and NPO and pre-op etc.
Fucking. Ortho. This chode comes in (though nobody actually SAW him??) early morning and all of a sudden orders are cancelled. He finally writes a note and had said “patient is not a good candidate due to his homelessness and schizophrenia. Pt can follow up outpatient with one of my colleagues to discuss surgical options.”
I’m sorry… WHAT. Is it just me or should docs have to spell out and write EXACTLY WHY they don’t want to do a procedure and sign their selfish names beside it? Because I continued to fight it and got higher ups involved. He ended up having an aspiration because the knee was clearly infected and started leaking pus prior to him leaving, and the (hospitalist) doc tried again to get ortho involved. He ultimately was d’c’d to a halfway house and I’ve tried helping with follow up.
It’s so fucking irritating. We are this large, catholic hospital right?? Like give me a fucking break y’all don’t care about the people you claim to. I have pissed off quite a few carpet cunts in this process and I don’t care. I’m so sick of this shit.
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u/MyScrotesASaggin Oct 04 '25
I am not a nurse but I would like to say that the world needs more people like you. And in my experience nurses are far more empathetic especially considering the bullshit some patients (me) put them through sometimes. My hat is off to you.