Using multiple value field in another field

So I have added a field in my view that has multiple values. I want to make a php field that takes 1 of the values and displays it when certain conditions are met.
When I use the available variable $row->my_multi_field_name it returns the node id. What should I do?

I've read about field_view_value (), but I don't want to invoke node_load on every row of my view. That is just wrong.