Today in History: August 26, AIDS patient begins school via phone hook-up

Your patient is pale, cold, confused, hypotensive, and tachycardic. They were “just sick” with a fever yesterday — now they’re crashing. This is decompensated distributive shock What’s Happening Inside the Body? Sepsis starts with infection, but the body’s overreaction is what causes the damage. In early (compensated) shock, the body is fighting but it starts to spiral. Vasodilation drops the blood pressure Capillary leak causes third-spacing of fluids Tachycardia starts to try to maintain cardi