When an unidentified man sat down to play poker at the Smoky Bones location in Kennesaw last fall, he didn’t realize how lucky he would be that night. While he didn’t win the big pot, he got a second chance at life.
Rich Costello, 55, is a nurse for WellStar Home Health Care. He was enjoying poker night at the restaurant when he noticed that a player who left the table had been gone for awhile. When Costello looked around, he saw the man sitting another table with his head in his hands.
“My nursing instincts picked up, so I went over to him and checked him out,” said Costello, who has been in his current job since 2009 and has worked for WellStar for almost 10 years.
The man was sweating profusely and complaining of a headache. Costello grabbed his medical bag, checked the man’s vital signs and discovered that his blood pressure was dangerously high. Costello asked the manager to call 911 while he attended to the patient. The nurse gave his assessment when paramedics arrived and he called the emergency room at WellStar Kennestone Hospital to prepare the staff to treat him.
Within an hour of arriving at the hospital, the man underwent surgery.
“He’d had an aneurysm and had they not operated when they did, he wouldn’t be alive today,” wrote Susan Logan, Costello’s supervisor. She nominated him for the award.
Costello’s 25 years of nursing experience in various care settings prepared him for the emergency.
“I had seen this type of thing before. I’ve worked in the ICU” and in other units, he said.
Costello got a pleasant surprise when he walked into Smoky Bones about a month after the incident. The man he saved was at the entrance, looking much healthier than the last time Costello had seen him.
“He was energetic. He was vibrant. He was ecstatic,” Costello said. “I was just glad that he was feeling well and that he was alive.”
Because he doesn’t work at Kennestone, Costello didn’t know the patient’s outcome.
“When he opened up and told me the story, I thought, ‘My God. This is like something you read about,’ ” he said. “It was a good feeling to know that there was a direct relationship between my actions and a positive outcome.”
The man offered to treat Costello to anything on the menu, but he politely declined.
“I didn’t want to cheapen the experience,” he said. “I didn’t want it to seem like he owed me. He didn’t.”
Costello doesn’t believe his presence at the restaurant was an accident.
“This was an intersection of life,” he said. “I think, sometimes, God has the right people in the right place at the right time.”
While Costello is grateful to be honored, he believes all nurses should share in the recognition.
“It’s humbling and it’s incredible, but others are equally deserving,” he said.
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