Ohhhh sticky situation...Just remember that sometimes it takes a few "knocks to the noggin" for someone to catch your seriousness...it sounds like this gentleman needs a few more, it wouldn't be surprising if he does get in serious trouble one of these days and you're strong words of encouragement will come back to haunt him...until then you can only suggest and hope people listen, we can't really force them especially when they are completely with it.
Hope more people listened to ya

Lets just hope that your words will stay with him. It might just be that he is not yet ready to hear the words.

It is kind of frustrating that our tax dollars are being used to save people such as this though.

__________________
'Think not of yourself as the architect of your career but as the sculptor. Expect to have to do a lot of hard hammering and chiselingand scraping and polishing. - BC Forbes'

Holy cow! Well, my grandmother always told me that you can't cure stupid. She was right. You did the best that you could to convince
Mr. "I'm in denial" that he was a walking time bomb.

MJ

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Sanity is madness put to good use. George Santayana.

http://nurse-ratcheds.blogspot.com

How odd. Perhaps he thinks since it's typical for him that it's normal?

When I read this it makes me cross, I have seen media reports that criticise health care systems for failing to prevent disease. Well hello, what more could you do? I totally agree with grandma that you can't cure stupid and I suspect that he is from the "not taking responsibility for ones self" tribe too. My question is am I wrong in wanting to shock him out of his complacency. Would it be unethical to say something like " have you ever seen some one paralised from a stoke, can't walk, talk or wipe their own butt, having to live in a home? We'll thats likly to be where you end up. See if that might wake him up. In a way its about informed concent, people getting the information given in a way they can understand and he didn't understand/or care about the gravity of the info. People are just strange. Im not saying Stella, that I think you should have said my silly sugestion or that I think you didn't do enough. It's him thats at fault but he'll likely pay a very high price.

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we don't know how lucky we are
Jacqui Bee

What about all the nurses who smoke and have over weight? It is well accepted that smoking is a lead cause of stroke, nurses work with stroke victims, yet they still smoke and do little about their own health!

__________________
'Think not of yourself as the architect of your career but as the sculptor. Expect to have to do a lot of hard hammering and chiselingand scraping and polishing. - BC Forbes'

OH..MY...GOD! That stuff drives me nuts. I can't stand seeing overweight nurses pig out on junk food at the nurses station. And it really makes me crazy when I see those same nurses outside smoking cigarettes. Why in the world would anyone take these nurses seriously when they tell people that they need to start taking better care of themselves. I just don't get it.

MJ

__________________
Sanity is madness put to good use. George Santayana.

http://nurse-ratcheds.blogspot.com

+1 for MJ's comment. You *can't* cure stupid.

The guy came in out of idle curiosity, not real concern. And Denial is an especially common disease among men, as well as the #1 sign of a male with an MI.

Having said that, don't forget that this guy 'may live there'. His individual physiology may be such, that if you were to quickly lower his BP to a normal range, or the same for his BGL, he might actually get symptomatic for hypoglycemia or poor cerebral perfusion. Of course, in the ER the treatment would be over hours or likely he would be admitted for a few days.

I'm not saying he should stay that way; he is indeed a ticking time-bomb. But he probably really does feel fine right now, and doesn't see how or why it would be different. Folks like that only get convinced by a forced trip to the ED, not a voluntary one, I'm sorry to say.

So, how are the colors? Any leaves still on the trees, or all gone? The aspens here have turned gold, but that's about all we get. We miss the New England fall colors.

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Mordechai Y. Scher
ER nurse, SVRMC, Santa Fe, NM USA
Flight Paramedic, MedFlight Air Ambulance, ABQ, NM USA