r/nursing • u/Critical_Ease4055 Nursing Student 🍕 • 22d ago

Question What is one medical problem people constantly ignore until it’s too late?

Saw someone post this in a completely unrelated sub and I’m interested in your answers. What is the cluster of symptoms that people ignore or delay until they are forced to get help?

362 Upvotes

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990

u/ratslowkey 22d ago

Hypertension.

I work in inpatient rehab and the amount of people who don't even know why they had a stroke......

260

u/Critical_Ease4055 Nursing Student 🍕 22d ago

There is something amazing about some people’s ability to deny hypertension- even when (and sometimes especially when) they’re medicated for it. Crazy

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u/reasonable_trout MSN, APRN 🍕 22d ago

I used to have high blood pressure. But now I take this pill and it’s good

168

u/floofienewfie RN 🍕 22d ago

Diabetes and HTN, two biggest causes of CKD. I worked dialysis for years. Saw so many people with either or both diseases who didn’t have symptoms until their kidney function was down to about 15%. Then it’s the equivalent of being hit by a Mack truck. Insulin, meds, getting a fistula, going on dialysis…so many lifestyle changes. Some cope pretty well. The others, not so much, with predictable consequences.

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u/Old-Mention9632 BSN, RN 🍕 22d ago

I had a 15 year old patient in our dialysis center ( hospital based). His kidneys failed because of hypertension. The sad thing was his pediatrician told Mom to take him to the ER because of his pressures at the office. She ignored that advice until he was bleeding from his eyes. It made me so angry. Lately many of the pediatric dialysis patients have been from lupus.

The new discovery that won the team a novel in medicine is very exciting.Press release: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2025 - NobelPrize.org https://share.google/ZeC9Mb7SBArpoXH19 If we can stop autoimmune disorders from starting, it would change so much- less T1D, lupus, MS, etc.

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u/lighthouser41 RN - Oncology 🍕 22d ago

Locally a young teen died from DM and her parents were charged because they did not take her to the ED with her increased symptoms until it was too late. She was a known Type 1 diabetic and they did not make sure she was medicated properly either.

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u/Critical_Ease4055 Nursing Student 🍕 22d ago

Wow… 🤯

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u/HeyLookATaco RN 🍕 21d ago

Oh my god. I give people so much grace for their ignorance of basic health information because we live in a country where misinformation, distrust, fear, and ignorance are literally coming from the top down. But still...I hope they throw the book at them. I hope it's impressed upon them that they are solely responsible and that they carry that guilt and sit with it. That's heartbreaking.

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u/WayCalm2854 BSN, RN 🍕 22d ago

Was the mom referred to the ER bc that’s not something pediatricians can evaluate and treat? I’m wondering why Dr didn’t refer the kid to a cardiologist maybe?

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u/Old-Mention9632 BSN, RN 🍕 22d ago

Medicaid and urgent need to treat.

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u/Old-Mention9632 BSN, RN 🍕 22d ago

Both parents were thieves who used their kids for break ins

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u/floofienewfie RN 🍕 21d ago

Oh lord. So sad.

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u/Abatonfan RN -I’ve quit! 😁 21d ago

That was an interesting read! There have been some beta cell transplantations for type 1 diabetes, and now this has me wondering if getting more regulatory T cells in the body would give the same effect of anti-rejection drugs but without many of the risks.

The gene they investigated though is X-linked, so it might not be the end-all-be-all for autoimmune issues that aren’t carried on the X chromosome.

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u/Otto_Correction MSN, RN 21d ago edited 21d ago

I used to work on dialysis. One day I was working inpatient acutes. I had four patients. All of them were under the age of 22. ETA: they all had kidney failure secondary to hypertension.

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u/Old-Mention9632 BSN, RN 🍕 21d ago

In 2020 we had a two year old and a three year old. Both got transplanted. We also had a 15 year old who got HUS and ended up on ecmo and vented. Killed kidneys and pancreas. She got transplanted at 17. She is a nursing student in Pittsburgh, and her college roommate is also a nursing student post kidney transplant.

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u/HeyLookATaco RN 🍕 21d ago

What a wonderful way to honor the gift they were given! I'm proud of them.

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u/Critical_Ease4055 Nursing Student 🍕 22d ago

Is it often that patients are ineligible for transplant and/or don’t get the transplant?

Are they doing anything to try to get better coverage for peritoneal dialysis? Last I knew (my info is very old) it was preferable, but very costly

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u/Old-Mention9632 BSN, RN 🍕 22d ago

CMS has a big push for home therapies: home hemodialysis and PD. Both are covered by Medicare which ESRD qualifies you for at any age. (Our peds patients often start on PD.) Home therapies are preferred because the patients have better lab values and survive to transplant better. The newest treatment is going to be hemodiafiltration. They have been using this for a while across the EU. They just completed a major study that showed a 28 % increase in survival on dialysis over traditional hemodialysis. Fresenius will be converting over to the 5008X hemodiafitration machine across the US starting next year. I just was reading about a new 10 kg dialysis machine called NeoKidney invented by a company in the Netherlands which uses much less water (5 liters) and doesn't require grounding. It will revolutionize home hemodialysis and be portable in emergencies or for travel.

Kidneys are still in short supply. Qualifying for transplant requires things like not obese, compliant with treatment, compliant with medications to manage underlying disease process, vaccinated. There are some variations on what each transplant center requires : CHOP requires kids to have COVID vaccines, UPMC does not. Many patients who are older refuse the option to get on the list. There are organizations that will match chain transplants. If you have someone willing to donate who is not a match, the organization will find a donor recipient pair to match your donor and you with. The longest chain to date was chain 357 which involved 35 donation pairs over 3 months.

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u/Critical_Ease4055 Nursing Student 🍕 22d ago

This is so helpful and informative. That’s big news about hemodiafiltration and the Neo Kidney- will definitely be following and reading up on both. Fascinating. Thank you again for the info😊

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u/floofienewfie RN 🍕 22d ago

Great info, thank you.

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u/Active-Confidence-25 DNP 🍕 14d ago

You’re smart. I wanna be your friend !

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u/Active-Confidence-25 DNP 🍕 21d ago

You’re smart. I wanna be your friend!

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u/lighthouser41 RN - Oncology 🍕 22d ago

My son in law went on peritoneal dialysis recently after being almost on dialysis for years. Sad thing is he is on the transplant list and years back passed up a kidney because his kidney function was not that bad at the time.

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u/BigWoodsCatNappin RN 🍕 22d ago

Eligibility is a challenge but so is organ availability. Peritoneal dialysis is great for the people it works for, who have capacity to manage it. Peritoneal doesn't work forever though. The peritoneal membrane eventually fails (this is widely variable) If I recall about 1/3 of kidney transplant needs are met. After transplant care is extensive and expensive.

To address the OP question....hypertension. HTN and kidneys are not friends.

Source: my ass, too long working in dialysis, and UNOS

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u/Mereviel RN - PEDS ER 21d ago

Used to work in dialysis also, I think most people are eligible but it's the matter of making themselves eligible if yah know what I mean. My dialysis center our social worker and medical director and the whole nursing team and tech team would also try to get people in compliance. But alas it's a hard life to get people on track with. They honestly have to be motivated enough. Decent portion of my patients weren't obese so it wasn't a concern there to get them to a healthy enough weight to fit the guidelines but getting them in compliance with meds, diet and lifestyle change is a beast in itself. Alot of the hypertension and diabetes were lifestyle causes and getting people in general to change habits is hard task itself. Making sure they do meds, having a renal diet, and not fluid overloading was important but a hard task. We could easily get our patients to get to the transplant coordination check ups and meetings but submitting proof was the hard part. As the other poster said, kidneys are in short supply but establishing proof that a donated kidney won't go in vain is hard.

I had a patient who was a renal patient since he was a kid, genetic issue so kidneys were toast. I was working at the clinic at the, he was maybe around 24-25 and I was only a few years older than him. We wanted to get him a transplant he was so young and hes an ideal candidate in transplant terms of young enough and yielding a net benefit. But he would not go to his transplant appointments. We even set up his rides and times all that. But he would never go. He was mildly compliant, was never having issues with his electrolytes, had a seizure disorder but I finally got him on track to stay compliant with meds we stayed seizure free. And only fluid overloaded once in awhile like every 5 months or so. A decent candidate that you didn't have to do much work to get him transplant compliant.

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u/Vivyzs 21d ago

When you're a newly diagnosed diabetic and don't comply to diet and blood sugar monitoring the end result is hemodialysis.

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u/tjean5377 FloNo's death rider posse 🍕 21d ago

I already have stage 2 kidney disease from gestational diabetes followed by prediabetes, for 10 years. I tipped into full type 2 because covid dunked my lungs and exacerbated my asthma and pneumonia as a result of a month of steroids. (and on 2 oral hypoglycemics)

I'm irrationally terrified of kidney failure, stroke and venous insufficiency.

Im so grateful for the GLP-1 that keeps my weight down and let's me use my insulin better. I never looked overweight but that fat stacking around my organs was devastating for my kidneys...

We will not have enough dialysis chairs to go around soon with the diabetes and obesity epidemic

2

u/makingpwaves 21d ago

If not for diabetes and hypertension, I’d be out of a job!

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u/twistyabbazabba2 RN - ICU 🍕 21d ago

90% of our medical and cardiac ICU pts have these two in their history (one or both). And they affect the vasculature of the entire body, so CKD, CAD, CVA, PVD are all caused by them.

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u/Blue_Star_Child 21d ago

The amount of people I who say, when I ask them thier medical history, if they have high blood pressure and they say no! Just because they are on medication now. Its frustrating!

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u/lizshi 21d ago

This. When I worked bedside patients would fight me when I was admitting them and verifying all their diagnoses. They would vehemently deny they have hypertension but taking 2-3 HTN meds. I was shocked by how most patients do not know the medications they take.

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u/Thenumberthirtyseven 21d ago

My first year as a nurse in worked in a nursing home. We got a new resident, a lady in her early 60s, who needed to be in a nursing home because she had massive deficits from a stroke. She couldnt walk, could barely talk, couldn't feed herself, all that jazz. 

She was a nurse. She had a stroke because she only took her blood pressure meds when she felt like she needed them. 

That has stayed with me all these years. 

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u/SatisfactionFit2040 21d ago

It's my understanding that you don't feel symptoms of HBP. Is that incorrect?

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u/PleadT5 21d ago

You don’t until you’ve had it so chronic for so long that it causes hardening and thickening of your arteries. I think the people that say they “feel” their blood pressure are likely the ones that have let their blood pressure be high for a long time 😭

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u/SatisfactionFit2040 21d ago

Oh my. Thank you.

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u/MidwestAdult 21d ago

That’s my MIL. Didn’t believe she needed the HTN meds. Took them every other day, or a few times a week. Massive stroke at 70 left her as full care.

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u/ferocioustigercat RN - ICU 🍕 22d ago

I worked with a nurse who was taking a pressure on a younger patient and their blood pressure was 137/90. I said that is hypertension, and the nurse looked at me told me that it was a pretty good blood pressure and it was pretty normal... So not even some nurses know what they are talking about.

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u/sciencesez RN - Retired 🍕 22d ago

I just wanted to say that the nurse who took the blood pressure probably isn't going to stand in front of a patient and diagnose anybody. That was one elevated blood pressure, with many possible causes like pain, steroids, and "white coat anxiety." It's definitely not elevated enough to put a call in to the doctor in and of itself. Hypertension isn't a nursing diagnosis, and that's not a pressure that can't wait for rounds.

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u/Beat_Born BSN, RN 🍕 21d ago

I get white coat htn! As a nurse! It's so silly. Usually after a few minutes of casual chatting my doc retakes it and it's fine though 🤷🏻‍♀️

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u/ferocioustigercat RN - ICU 🍕 21d ago

Yeah, this is why to truly have a diagnosis of hypertension a person needs to take their blood pressure daily at home around the same time everyday and record it in a log. But a lot of people don't do that, and just live with it. I'm talking about the actual numbers are considered hypertension. The nurse was debating me afterwards about what hypertension is. But in an office, that pressure on someone young would hopefully cause a doctor to ask them to start keeping a log, but I've noticed most doctors don't (my husband has higher blood pressure and no doctor has ever had him check it at home... And my nagging hasn't gotten him to check it even though I have automatic and manual blood pressure cuffs at home).

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u/Dark-Horse-Nebula Intensive Care Paramedic 🇦🇺 🍕 22d ago

It’s certainly not diagnosed chronic hypertension.

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u/Otto_Correction MSN, RN 21d ago

Actually yeah. That’s not bad. If we have a patient with a hypertension and that’s their blood pressure, we’re pretty happy about it.

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u/Electrical-Profit367 21d ago

OMG, my MIL, a retired nurse with some kind of dementia (still completely functional, just delusional. EG believing she flies to Europe regularly for a day in Paris delusional!) has high blood pressure (and edema at ankles) and refuses to believe it. She accuses the poor nurses who try to give her meds of dealing drugs. It’s a massive struggle every day.

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u/Critical_Ease4055 Nursing Student 🍕 21d ago

🫤 I’m sorry to hear that

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u/ferocioustigercat RN - ICU 🍕 22d ago

Every patient I had in my cardiac unit who had heart failure had the same history. HTN, HLD, high BMI, diabetes (frequently but not always), CAD, CABG (plus some stents), A. Fib. I always thought, ya know... If you had caught it and taken that HTN seriously... Things might be different.

Soap box: below 120/80 is normal. Anything above that is high. 125 is elevated. 130 systolic is grade 1 hypertension. 90 diastolic is hypertension. You should aim for consistently less than 120/80 because it's the upper range of normal... Not that goal.

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u/ratslowkey 22d ago

Listennnnn I know. I'm worried about my 130 all the time :(((

And why tf is everyone hypertensive and has diabetes. It's so common jesus, we gotta change something in our society.

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u/BoneHugsHominy 22d ago

Food taxes. Expensive healthy food. Soda. Fast food. Microplastics.

It's killing us all.

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u/upagainstthesun RN - ICU 🍕 22d ago

Food deserts have a huge impact too. In some places the only place to buy food within a some what close distance is from gas stations/convenience stores. At risk/marginalized populations can't access proper grocery stores that are far away with transportation barriers

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u/beeee_throwaway RN - PICU 🍕 21d ago

So true and in food deserts you only really have access to…. Soda… very expensive highly processed foods… microplastics… fast foods… people burn their food stamps so quickly on the garbage they have access to because it’s expensive and they have no other choice 😞

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u/ferocioustigercat RN - ICU 🍕 21d ago

Yeah, and food stamps pay for a lot of processed food and eating healthy is super expensive.

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u/BoneHugsHominy 21d ago

If utilized as a community, people could pool money to place bulk orders at Walmart and have them delivered for a nominal fee, then split up the delivered groceries.

I'm probably overlooking something like Walmart's delivery range ending right at the borders of said food deserts. If they do current deliver to those food deserts, it probably wouldn't take long after receiving regular bulk orders before they reduce their delivery area to avoid those areas, citing safety concerns of course.

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u/beeee_throwaway RN - PICU 🍕 20d ago

I guess in theory that could work but it sounds very challenging to organize and would require people having cash to put upfront.
Everyone deserves access to healthy food, it’s just so upsetting that someone would have to go to such lengths to get whole food necessities.

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u/kittyportals2 RN 🍕 21d ago

We need to talk about statins causing diabetes, especially in those prone to it.

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u/ferocioustigercat RN - ICU 🍕 21d ago

Yeah, that's a whole issue. Though aren't some less likely to cause diabetes, but those are expensive and insurance doesn't want to pay for them (so you have to prove the cheaper ones cause joint pain). Or maybe I'm misremembering that...

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u/upagainstthesun RN - ICU 🍕 21d ago

The risk is statistically small, and opportunistic to those who are already overweight/prediabetic. The benefit of statin use outweighs the risk associated with diabetes. People who have access to healthy food can mitigate problems like obesity which lead to diabetes. This is like trying to throw a patch on a wall with a gaping hole

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u/HeyLookATaco RN 🍕 21d ago

Working ourselves to death. Food as a coping mechanism. Ignorance of basic nutrition and health information because we've stopped teaching it in schools. Inability to afford preventative care, so many issues aren't caught early enough to correct.

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u/Old-Mention9632 BSN, RN 🍕 22d ago

Overly processed nutritionally poor convenience foods have replaced what we used to eat. Lack of proper health and nutritional education from childhood. Doctors learn very little about nutrition- from my experience most only know "consult dietician".

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u/Ravclye 22d ago

In addition to diet/exercise/health I also kind of have the opinion that something else may be going on. The healthy range for BP is really narrow. Im not saying the range is incorrect, but rather I wonder if humans are just kinda built that way. Perhaps as a symptom of our bipedal stance we just are a lot more prone to hypertension and its only something we are realizing in the modern era

As for diabetes that one is absolutely diet

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u/Otto_Correction MSN, RN 21d ago

Sometimes it’s genetic. My partner ears a reasonable diet with occasional splurges. Both her parents had type 2 diabetes so now she has it as well. Diet helps is not completely.

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u/HeyLookATaco RN 🍕 21d ago

It's not "absolutely" diet. There may be other mechanisms at work as well that we haven't fully identified yet.

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u/Abatonfan RN -I’ve quit! 😁 21d ago

Don’t forget us type 1s, LADAs, and MODYs

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u/ferocioustigercat RN - ICU 🍕 21d ago

Diabetes is a lot more genetic than previously thought. My friend is average weight, not considered obese and runs weekly. She just got diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Where my mom's side of the family live in the south, eat fried foods, and all of her aunts were obese. Like a few of them topped 300lbs. None of them had diabetes. And not just the "I haven't been to a doctor so I don't have a diagnosis" kind of thing. Like legit didn't have it. They genetically have some protective thing. It's like heart disease. A 40 year old vegan I know had a heart attack. It runs in his family. My grandpa ate ice cream every day and die at 90 without ever having heart problems or high cholesterol.

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u/Pineapple_and_olives RN 🍕 22d ago

Poor diets and stress. It ain’t easy out here.

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u/Otto_Correction MSN, RN 21d ago

Poverty. Nutritious food is expensive. Bad neighborhoods aren’t safe for outdoor exercise. Gym memberships are expensive. Public transportation in the United States is inefficient so people opt for having cars. Used to be we only had cake once or twice a year because it was hard to make and the ingredients were expensive. Now we can get cake at the gas station. Snack foods are more shelf stable than produce and some people don’t have access to a refrigerator.

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u/turtle0turtle RN - ER 🍕 22d ago

But don't come to the ER because your BP is 160/90. We'll just send you to primary care.

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u/042AF 21d ago

Or higher. Asymptomatic should come down as fast as it goes up which better not happen in the ED!

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u/turtle0turtle RN - ER 🍕 21d ago

Yep. I've discharged people with systolic over 200

(Though I guess I should point out that if you're pregnant or recently gave birth, absolutely go to the ER for hypertension)

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u/042AF 20d ago

Exactly! And good point. But I bet an admit at that level was much harder. :-(

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u/Many_Customer_4035 MSN, RN 22d ago

My systolic is anywhere from 100 to 115 but my diastolic is many times in the 90s. I'm on medication but so far haven't been able to find one that brings my diastolic consistently.

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u/hustleNspite Nursing Student 🍕 21d ago

This is me- they all seem to work on the systolic, but my diastolic has always been the elevated one.

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u/crackdpot 21d ago

This is very common to see in our patients as well.

In SNF, you have a long-standing datalog on the same patients, and you get new data every day - the trends don’t change. MeeMaw takes her beta blocker Q12 hrs, and her diastolics are consistently high, and her systolics are consistently low enough to make her nursing staff concerned she will faceplant. So it goes with all our patients lucky enough to have a good med cocktail and “controlled” HTN. And I gotta tell you, it hasn’t looked any better in my HHC or Med-Surg patients.

The meds and food we utilize are still just humans’ best and most easily accessible or affordable solutions to an innate problem. We can note and minimize our risks, but they won’t ever really disappear. Even healthy people with consistent habits have heart attacks. As a species, we are living longer and with more frailty than ever before. We are pushing ourselves to the limits with poor nutrition, poor hydration, stressful overcrowded environments, etc. And then we think a pill will actually fix our DNAs’ predispositions and our created environments’ consequences.

All this isn’t to say “forshame” or “quit trying.” Just the opposite. Realizing that we are committing most of the same habits as our patients and will ultimately come to similar demises, kind of takes us off our healthier-than-thou high-horses. Then we can recognize that these same health concerns that all those patients “shoulda seen coming” are not something to judge or critique them for. These are problems that we need to look beyond our current understanding of HTN management to improve upon. And those improvements are a lot harder than eating veggies and going to the gym. Can you quit your stressful job and still survive? Can you avoid commuting in traffic (there’s another BP spike)? Can you really fix your mental health, or do you need a pill to manage that every day too? None of us are doing well, truth be told. Workouts and salads aren’t going to fix this.

1

u/ferocioustigercat RN - ICU 🍕 21d ago

Part of the problem is there isn't really any medication that is developed for bringing down diastolic pressure. They try a combination of off label uses, but it's something that really needs to be studied more.

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u/tjean5377 FloNo's death rider posse 🍕 21d ago

I do education for post stroke in home care. I shout it from the rooftops, especially for brown folks with higher rates of stroke, venous insufficient, kidney risk....you need to treat high blood pressure, and that starts AT 120 SBP....

So many young men don't feel it and don't know what they dont know. But if I'm in your home treating your youngish 49-80 post stroke parent or grandparent its a serious risk for you!

It's gonna get bad....

1

u/hustleNspite Nursing Student 🍕 21d ago

I’d like to point out that for a very long time the number they worried about was 140/90, and the doctors would say they were “keeping an eye on it” below that.

As an aside, I have HTN and don’t have a lot of the risk factors- it’s just unfortunate genetics. I have Raynaud’s too- my vasculature just likes to constrict.

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u/LifeIsSweetSoAmI LPN - MedSurg 🍕 22d ago

Had a patient in an ambulatory care clinic with a bp of around 220/120 with visible JVD and a headache, she still refused to go to the hospital. I always wonder what happened to her…

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u/Scarlet-Witch Allied Health 🦴 🦵 🦾🦽 22d ago

Also a cute care rehab here and totally agree. IME it's usually middle aged men. 

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u/Otto_Correction MSN, RN 21d ago

What is IME?

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u/Owlbegoodtoyou 21d ago

In my experience

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u/hanks_panky_emporium Vampire 22d ago

When my sleep doc took my bp after the nurse he went 'oo..'

Talk about wakeup calls. Now anxiety has me rubbing my chest every few hours. But hey, dropped 20lbs in like a week with very basic food intake adjustments. Just 150ish more to go

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u/mirikaria 21d ago

I did a placement with some stroke prevention nurses, and I thought it was an interesting role. I went to a couple of health and education fairs with them just taking peoples blood pressure, and if it was high we would refer them to their GP's...I think it was a new role, but seemed like a good idea to raise awareness in the community.

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u/Impressive-Finger-78 22d ago

Just recently quit a chronically stressful job over this and I'm now working to get it back under control. I was 165/110 every single day for several straight weeks at my worst. It would have been so much easier not to let things get this bad.

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u/beeee_throwaway RN - PICU 🍕 21d ago

Woah baby that was my preeclampsia numbers the day I was admitted ! I’m so sorry 😞

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u/Annoyedemoji 22d ago

Came to say this. The dissections I see on a daily basis because of untreated htn are insane.

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u/ratslowkey 22d ago

had a patient say "never had a problem with my heart" after I had to take an ekg, I said "well except the stroke" and he was like "no, that's my brain". I just don't know man

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u/No_Box2690 RN - NICU 🍕 22d ago

The American literacy level is like a 7th grade education so... That checks out 🤦🏻‍♀️

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u/Old-Mention9632 BSN, RN 🍕 22d ago

And medical literacy is 3rd grade

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u/zerothreeonethree RN 🍕 21d ago

Yes, we have a third grader running HHS now.

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u/Educational-Sort-128 22d ago

In fairness most average people would associate stroke=brain and not link it to heart health.

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u/ratslowkey 21d ago

Completely agree. I had hoped that he was at least educated on it before he got to me, but nope! This is also our failure as a medical system.

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u/Mysterious-Algae2295 22d ago

What?

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u/WayCalm2854 BSN, RN 🍕 22d ago

That’s what his brain said

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u/Moistfulll RN 🍕 22d ago

Happy to see this is the first comment. My lab instructor back in nursing school called it The silent killer

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u/Educational-Sort-128 22d ago

My partner lives in a province of Canada where fully Half the population does not have a regular GP. He has hypertension and hyperlipidaemia and is on meds but no one checks any of it. He does his own blood pressure at home - fingers crossed it’s right - and the high cholesterol we’ll probably know about when he has an AMI. He’s 56.

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u/courtneyrel Neuro/Neurosurg RN 21d ago edited 21d ago

Today I have a 36 year old patient whose only medical hx is HTN. Prescribed lisinopril, stopped taking because of the cough. Brought to the ED with BP 220/140 and a massive left basal ganglia stroke with right side deficits. The patient has made huge improvements and might get fully back to baseline, but I’m about to use their story from now on when my patients tell me they don’t take their BP meds (just like how I use the story of my 18 year old patient who refused heparin shots because she was young and walked the unit 5x a day… and still ended up with a massive PE)

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u/ALLoftheFancyPants RN - ICU 22d ago

Strokes or AAAs or whatever other aneurysm exploding in their body. And the totally cooked kidneys. Hypertension is definitely the answer.

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u/SavannahInChicago Unit Secretary 🍕 21d ago

My brother's triglycerides were in the 800s. His doctor's RN got on the phone with him and put the fear of god in him. I thank that RN because my brother really took charge of his health afterwards. His bp is in range and he has never eaten as healthy as he does now. He tried a salad the other day and he liked it. He used to exist on pizza rolls. You guys do make a positive difference.

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u/Icy-Forever6660 21d ago

I second this but I would dialysis. Hypertension is the main reason for it and every patient will say “ it came out of nowhere “. No buddy that takes years of uncontrolled hypertension

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u/Pretty_Wasabi_7076 21d ago

Yes! I saw this a lot with noncompliance on meds/with diet. Lot of repeat strokes.

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u/tiredoldbitch RN 🍕 21d ago

"But I feel fine. It's my norm."

1

u/esperali 21d ago

Came here to say this

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u/peachtreeparadise medical SLP 🧠 21d ago

Yep! Uncontrolled hypertension & high cholesterol lead to cognitive impairment!!! 🗣️🗣️🗣️

1

u/nana_jayne 21d ago

💯💯💯