This patient is septic, and immediate therapy should be directed at correcting her hemodynamic instability. Patients with sepsis require aggressive fluid resuscitation to compensate for capillary extravasation. This patient's vital signs suggest decreased effective circulating volume. Normal saline at 100 cc/h is insufficient volume replacement. The patient should be given a saline bolus of 2 L over 20 minutes, and then her blood pressure and clinical status should be reassessed. The elevated respiratory rate could be evidence of pulmonary edema or respiratory compensation for acidosis from decreased tissue perfusion. Even if the patient has evidence of pulmonary edema, fluid resuscitation remains the first intervention for hypotension from sepsis. She is more likely to die from hemodynamic collapse than from oxygenation issues related to pulmonary edema.Stress doses of hydrocortisone and intravenous norepinephrine are both used in patients with shock refractory to volume resuscitation but should be reserved until after the saline bolus. Vancomycin is a reasonable choice to cover enterococci, which can cause UTI-associated sepsis, but again would not address the immediate hemodynamic problem. If the patient does not improve, a central line (to measure filling pressures and mixed venous oxygen saturation) would allow the "early goal-directed" sepsis protocol to be used.