Another one I worry about, now that I've had a few days away

This guy was in the hospital with a pulmonary embolism and was diagnosed with diabetes really recently, so he was having a lot of sudden health issues. He was one of the youngest people I've seen on the cardiac/telemetry unit so far, and his teenage daughter was in the room hanging out with him. She was quiet and shy and told me she wanted to be a nurse.

The guy was so sweet, told me that he couldn't even feel it when I injected his insulin (I didn't tell him it was the first time I had ever done a subcutaneous injection outside the sim lab, so it made me so confident). He helped me stick him again when the first time I did so, I didn't get any blood for the blood glucose reading. He was so good natured about it and had the best sense of humor. He was to be discharged during my clinical shift, so I think he was excited and ready to go.

I went to get his insulin and headed back to his room, and he was in there with the other nurse, practically writhing in chest pain. They think he may have thrown another pulmonary embolism. He was in such intense pain and it was really the first time I have had such a dramatic case of a patient's condition changing during my shift. I really hope I did all right in handling it and didn't look too stupid. I had to run and get the vitals machine and help hook him up to his monitors again while my instructor went and got some tubing and a couple of other things and the other nurse gave him pain meds within seconds of all this happening. I feel like I must have looked shellshocked and stupid. His daughter looked so scared, she was the one who went to the nurses' station freaking out when he started having pain again.

Needless to say, they decided not to discharge him that night. They were going to do some scans and see what happened.

I hope he is home feeling a thousand times better by now, but I will probably never know.

I also wanted the chance to tell his daughter that she did the right thing and that she was taking good care of him, but by the time I got back there while it was on my mind, she was gone for the evening. I hope that she knows that and isn't too scared of all the stuff that was happening to her dad.