I really doubt a nurse made the diagnosis, the legal issues would be a huge problem let alone the education and complexity required to make such a diagnosis. I would know, in 2 years I'll be the single guy on around 1 out of every 10 nights who would have to make that diagnosis and I work in one of the top 10 busiest ED's in the country.
She absolutely did make the diagnosis. She suspected it based on my pedal pulses, and other things, confirmed it via a CT scan, and got the surgery scheduled. It was like when the Wolf showed up in Pulp Fiction.
Now the truth is she wasn't a random nurse. She is an NP named Nathania Francis and she has some feeding monitoring patent and her own startup in the medical space (this is her bio on her company's staff page: http://www.gnftechnologies.com/gnf-management.php). No way I wasn't googling the person who saved my life.
The surgeon that night, Gustave Pogo, was great too. Turns out everyone in the NY/LI area knows of him.
But the three doctors who walked in, looked at me, and walked out, they didn't save my life. And this includes at least one specialist from the cardio-thoracic unit.
I am/was a fireman with the FDNY (past tense due to this surgery...), so have encountered a lot of emergency medicine in real life. My own medical training is limited (I always joke that "I know enough to watch someone die"), but I can definitely recognize when someone is going through the steps of diagnosing a problem.
Interesting, didn't sound like an ordinary nurse. Sorry if I came off somewhat arrogant in my earlier post.
Was she acting as a nurse or NP when she was taking care of you? The radiologist deserves some credit too in my opinion as they are the one to interpret the study. It is easy to include aortic dissection in differential along with other things that could kill you quickly (e.g. MI, pulm embolism, pneumothorax, etc ...) but harder to make the definitive diagnosis. Glad you made it.
>> Was she acting as a nurse or NP when she was taking care of you?
Don't know which one, I was focused on myself :). And definitely don't know other things you talked about (other than MI).
Well before I was scanned, she said suspected dissection based on pulses and some other monitors. Then the scan confirmed it. My 2 cardiologists (personal and fd ones) both say I'm lucky she was there.
