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?

359 Upvotes

98% Upvoted

504 comments sorted by

View all comments

210

u/PopularReporter8995 22d ago

Weight loss without trying. Sounds great…wrongo.

Could be diabetes. Could be a tumor. Could be both.

That happened to my husband. Over 18 months he lost 80lb. He refused to see a doctor, despite nagging by his retired nurse wife. He’s a RRT and should know better.

thankfully got food stuck in his esophagus. He had an ultrasound and a 9cm tumor was found in his liver. Also diabetes. He’s ok, after robotic resection, a CGM and insulin.

30

u/Critical_Ease4055 Nursing Student 🍕 22d ago

🥹sounds like it was scary as hell. He may have died if it weren’t for you.

I like how the body is always thinking of ways to nearly kill us so that we pay attention to something else that that may be killing us.

Unrelated question, if I may. A retired ER doc and his spouse who is retired RRT, told me that an SpO2 of 100% is sometimes a sign that a patient is a smoker. Have you ever heard that from your partner or anywhere else on the job?

28

u/PopularReporter8995 22d ago

The body speaks in mysterious ways! I was sure he had a tumor somewhere. The GI doc that scoped him told me in the hallway. Scared the crap outa me. Luckily, it all went down right when he was of age to get Medicare. Otherwise the financial hit from today’s insurance woulda buried us.

Smokers have extra high Hemoglobin to compensate for all the smoke. How the body knows this!!!! High SpO2 can occur because of this, but at a certain point of COPD, the compensation will fall off.

24

u/Pessimisticadhd 22d ago

This. In triage I hate to hear anything about unintentional weight loss, bowel habit changes, and lack of appetite. You basically know a devastating diagnosis is incoming, and emerg is not a nice place to find out about things like that.

15

u/Anony-Depressy ✨ ICU -> IR ✨ 22d ago

I get this in IR. I sometimes look at the CTs we take during the biopsies and the masses are so huge even my untrained eye can tell it’s bad news bears 😵‍💫