Lauren Rossetti | staff writer

After falling ill with the flu which was circulating through her family in December 2024, Duquesne University nursing student Ainsley Flynn wound up hospitalized because of inflammation of the heart and subsequent cardiogenic shock.

“It started off with a really bad headache,” Flynn said. “I was very achey, I could barely get out of bed.”

Her condition worsened to the point of breathing difficulty and delirium through the new year, when she went to MedExpress, which immediately referred her to the hospital.

“The day that she ended up in St. Clair Hospital, she had come down to me from her bedroom and said, ‘Something’s really wrong, I need to go to the doctor right now,’” Flynn’s mother Erin Weber said.

Upon arrival at the hospital, Flynn lost consciousness, and doctors found a fluid buildup around her heart, diagnosing her with viral myocarditis.

While staying in the step down unit, a hospital ward that helps the transition out of the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) into discharge, Flynn’s blood pressure and heart rate spiked, alerting doctors and nurses.

“As they’re wheeling me into the [catheter] lab, all of these alarms were going off, they were calling for more help,” Flynn said. “The doctors didn’t know what to do, so I was freaking out a little bit.”

She was then transported to Allegheny General Hospital’s Cardiovascular ICU.

“They were not sure at that point if they were going to be able to save her,” Weber said.

Flynn was put on VA-ECMO, a type of life support that takes over the function of her heart and lungs, and an Impella heart pump.

It is inserted through an artery in the shoulder rather than the groin, improving patient mobility, comfort and recovery.

After two to three days unconscious, Flynn pieced together what happened to her. Her viral myocarditis had caused her heart to swell up to the point of failure.

“My ejection fraction, which is a measurement of how well your heart is able to pump blood, was less than 5%, and the normal range should be between 55% and 70%,” Flynn said.

After returning home from the hospital in late January 2025 following 15 days spent in hospitals, 11 in Allegheny General, Flynn had about two months of bedrest and many doctor appointments.

Flynn said that during that time, she was too weak to hang out with friends or go to a restaurant.

After the overwhelming experience, she wasn’t sure she could continue her nursing studies.

“At that point, going back to nursing school, it was a little bit traumatizing for me,” Flynn said.

“I was having a hard time seeing myself being able to work in a hospital again after what I went through.”

Following her health scare, Flynn has been working at the Allegheny General Hospital as a patient care technician in the cardiac ICU, the same unit where she was treated.

“Once I got my job, that allowed me to process it in a better way rather than just being scared of going back to school or working in a hospital again,” Flynn said.

The full-circle moment of her care and career was coincidental, as she applied to numerous hospital positions.

“I went through the same interview process as everyone, same application process, same training orientation,” she said.

Working full-time at the hospital over the summer, Flynn was able to see her cardiac surgeon Candice Lee and other familiar staff.

Weber said that it was helpful for Flynn to be able to relate to her patients.

“There are a lot of folks on that floor who are very depressed because they feel nobody can understand what they’re going through, especially being on life support,” Weber said. “She’s able to say ‘I can understand what you’re going through, I do know how it feels physically, and you can recover.’”

Flynn has returned to Duquesne this fall to start her junior year, and is continuing her job at the hospital part-time to accommodate her nursing studies.

Odessa Baker, her roommate and close friend, said that she is confident Flynn will be able to succeed in the nursing field, using her cardiac arrest experience as motivation.

“She is a very dedicated student and pushes herself to succeed at everything she puts her mind to,” Baker said. “She is one of the most resilient people I know, and I’m so insanely proud of her for how far she’s come and how she has used her story to inspire others.”

While developing viral myocarditis and other life threatening ailments from the flu is rare and usually happens to elderly people, Flynn warns that it can happen to anyone.

“If you have the flu and you decide not to do anything about it and you just continue to feel worse and don’t wanna
go to the hospital, there could be something truly wrong,” she said

Lauren Rossetti can be reached at rossettil1@duq.edu