It waits 'til the last day!

Specialties School

Published

Specializes in Med Office, Home Health, School Nurse.

just sent a teacher to the emergency room via ambulance...haven't had to call 911 all year, and here it is the last full day of school and i had to call.....

female staff member in her 60's comes to the clinic about 30 minutes ago asking me to check her bp and pulse...bp was 134/82...pulse was 186....i was floored--what!? i put the oximeter on her finger and watched it bounce from 180-190 and back....she was calm and talking to me normally....she rested on the cot in the clinic for 15 minutes, while i closely monitored her. no change in heart rate. i called another school nurse and consulted with her and she suggested transporting by ambulance to the hospital, which had already crossed my mind. so, the ambulance came and picked her up. they started an iv and stuff in the ambulance and hooked her up to o2 and it hadn't dropped any when they left with her. she had no c/o pain or discomfort and was talking and acting normally.

20 minutes after she left, a 3rd grade girl comes in my office and stands at the end of my desk. i turned to her and she got a weird look on her face and started trying to tell me something about her wrist. next thing i know, she's on the floor, jerking and shaking all over with her eyes about to bug out of her head. after about 15 seconds, she came to, didn't remember any of it. said she had hurt her wrist outside and then dreamed it happened again. called the secretary down to sit w her while i called dad. her complaint was that her wrist hurt, she had perfect rom and movement, no swelling or bruising. dad came, kept exclaiming about how swollen her wrist looked (it looked identical to the other one!) and said he was going to have her wrist checked. i told him on the phone and in the office that i thought she had had a seizure or some sort of episode that needed to be evaluated. he said "she ain't never had no seizure before, she's fine, probably just excited about that broken wrist". and then he left with her....

what a day!

Specializes in School Nursing.

Holy cow! What a way to end the school year! I hope that parent at least takes the kid to the doctor (and mentions what you told him about the seizure episode). Yikes!

Specializes in School Nursing.

wow.....you really go out with a "bang" !! have a great summer break ! :yeah::yeah:

praiser

Specializes in School Nursing.

The seizure could have been a vaso-vagal sort of thing from being freaked about her wrist but anytime someone has seizure activity that has never had it before, they should be checked out by a doctor.

Specializes in School Nursing and Sports Medicine.

What a day! Good job on handling it well. :) Enjoy your break!

Specializes in Med Office, Home Health, School Nurse.

Well, both of my "patients" from yesterday are back....

The staff member said the doctor told her that she has a condition where the outer part of her heart was out of rhythm and this caused the tachy. She is now on medication to control it. They had to shock her heart back into a normal rhythm.

The 3rd grader is back....she has a broken radius! I was shocked to hear that! They said it was a clean fracture, and that was why she was able to move it. They did a CT scan, no evidence of seizure activity. However, her body temperature was quite low, so they think that with the heat, the pain, and the anxiety, she went into some form of shock which caused the seizure like episode. She's being watched closely for that as well.

Specializes in school nursing, ortho, trauma.

So naturally after a fracture and a seizure the child is FINE for school the next day. :smackingf

Specializes in Med Office, Home Health, School Nurse.

Go figure! She's here, running around playing like nothing happened...but she's also the child that would cry for 30 minutes over a scraped knee...argh!

All I can say is Document, Document, Document...then put the pen away and go have a nice summer!:p

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