MU/360°
FA I T H
mission week 2017 The theme, Racial Justice: Black, White and the Call of the Church, calls the Marquette community to explore racial disparity and injustice through the lens of the Catholic Church, which challenges us to live the Gospel through love, atonement and redemption as we seek to treat each human being with dignity, respect and deep care. All events are open to the public. Visit marquette.edu/ missionweek-2017 for the full slate of events.
S TAT S
freshman snapshot Marquette’s enrollment of 11,294 students includes 8,238 undergraduates. This year’s freshman class is 2,002 full-time, first-time students, with 29 percent students of color, 55 percent women, and 22 percent firstgeneration students.
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NURSING
rising up Nicole Grehn lost control of everything when her heart stopped. She’s taking it back now. B Y J O N I M O T H S M U E L L E R
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ad she been in a car accident or running a marathon Nicole Grehn says it might be easier to understand. But she was standing — literally — in a gas station in Minocqua, Wis., when she collapsed. Her heart had suddenly stopped beating. Then a collection of lucky coincidences fell into line: the gas station attendant recognized the emergency and called 911; an ambulance driving past at that exact moment was empty; and Howard Young Medical Center stood directly across the street. Grehn was swept up and placed in the hands of ER doctors within minutes. That was just the beginning. She was flown to regional magnet Aspirus Wausau Hospital, where she coded 40 times. From there she was rushed by ambulance to Milwaukee’s Froedtert Hospital adult trauma center, where she flatlined 30 times. Her body began shutting
down, her organs failing, sepsis spreading and her legs dying. Doctors hoped to save her life with bilateral above-the-knee amputation of her legs. It worked. Almost immediately her heart responded. Four days later, she woke from an induced coma. “For two days I didn’t know my legs had been amputated,” she says. “Then I lost it.” Just nine days had changed everything. It took nearly four months to figure out what went wrong for the seemingly ultrahealthy 24-year-old. It was catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia or CPVT, with a mutation doctors hadn’t seen before. But that’s the past, maybe fewer than two years in calendar days but light years ago in Grehn’s mind. Now she’s at Marquette in the generalist entry master’s program for non-nursing graduates. She’s going to be a nurse, a darn good one. She knows it because she saw the best nurses do their best for her. Of course it took her some time to arrive here. “I thought I’m never going to be able to do anything again. I’m screwed,” she says of the early days of