May 2025
Maddie
Shumpert
,
RN
IICU
Prisma Health Baptist
Columbia
,
SC
United States
It was the fact that she remembered the unique details regarding how best to warm up my wife (i.e., the slow and low way) that impressed me the most.
After spending five arduous hours in the Emergency Department for fluid overload and nausea following AKI, at approximately 11:00 pm, my wife was wheeled up to her room in the IICU, where her nurse, Maddie, was awaiting us. (Maddie had taken care of my wife for a few days during a previous admission on the same floor six weeks earlier.). Calmly, but confidently, Maddie took charge of getting my wife settled and ready for bed, including, among many other things, obtaining and setting up a Bair Hugger to raise my wife's core temperature from 91 degrees Fahrenheit to her normal temperature. Amazingly (to me), Maddie remembered from that previous admission that my wife, due to her MS, has often been admitted with hypothermia, but also experiences extreme heat intolerance if warmed up too quickly or to too high a temperature. And so she set the Bair Hugger canister to the lowest setting and remembered that my wife's temperature goal should not exceed approximately 97 degrees. Maddie did many other things for my wife and me that night to make sure we were both comfortable (I slept in the room that first night), but it was the fact that she remembered the unique details regarding how best to warm up my wife (i.e., the slow and low way) that impressed me the most.