The Choice

I experienced my first floor nursing clinical yesterday at the hospital. What an experience! The patient I want to share with you wasn't my patient, but another student's. He was 44, a lifelong smoker with Buerger's Disease. Here is a link to an explaination of what exactly it is. But, in basic terms, it is a vascular disease that slowly involves the amputation of your extremities. This man was what they termed a "frequent flyer." Plus, the term "noncompliant" floated through the air. A whil ago, he was given a choice: Your limbs or your smoking.

He chose smoking.

So now, he has lost the bottom of his left leg, they just removed the rest of his right toes, and he has two fingers on his right hand and a finger and a half on his left. Post surgery, we waited to hook up his Vancomycin due to the fact he was downstairs smoking.

And to think, at one point we were told smoking was not addictive....