Grace Flannery - Blog 1

 Today was my first day shadowing in the ICU at Dartmouth-Hitchcock hospital in Hanover NH and it was super interesting. The nurse I shadowed was only assigned one patient instead of two for the day because of how critical of condition her one patient was in. Her patient was a 37 year old female who went into liver failure a month ago. She has Jaundice due to her liver failure which makes her skin yellow including her eyes. Her stomach is very large due to all of the fluid in her stomach and lungs, and she is not able to urinate or poop so she has a colostomy bag. When she first arrived at the hospital a month ago they had her in a lot of sedation, but she is almost completely off of sedation now. Also while I was there the ICU I was in was getting a new patient who had overdosed and gone into cardiac arrest. This man was only 36 years old. They got a pulse back after awhile but his heart rate was in the low 30's upper 20's when I left and the nurses and doctors predicted he would not make it through their shift due to the scans and his vitals. It was a lot for only being there for 5 1/2 hours but it was a super cool experience.