E-mail: Stephanie@highwall.com
Intuition told me I would die. No one believed it would save my life.
I was pregnant with my second child and at 20 weeks pregnant I was diagnosed with a placenta previa. At that time I told my husband, who is a PHD economist from University of Chicago, that I have a bad feeling about this. He told me to calm down and said, ‘Let’s not jump to conclusions here.’ From that moment on, I had detailed visions about the birth. I saw that I would hemorrhage, need a hysterectomy, the baby would be fine, I would have organs combine, I would need to be put under general anesthesia and I would die. I told everyone. The visions were incessant and anyone who would listen to me, I would tell them. I spoke to my doctors, had ultrasounds, blood work and even sought out specialists to help save my life. I was panicked. I spoke to gynecologist/oncologist and said I am going to need a hysterectomy. I believe my placenta previa will turn into an accreta. Accreta is where the placenta embeds itself too deeply into the uterus. The doctor thought I was a little neurotic but he did an MRI to calm my nerves. The MRI was negative for an accreta. In fact, EVERY test was negative. My husband thought I was crazy. My doctors thought I was hormonal. My friends were scared to bring up the subject. I was running out of people to tell my crazy foreboding story to so I posted it on Facebook to see if anyone had my blood type. I wrote and sent out goodbye letters.
One of my last ditch efforts came when I had a phone consultation with an anesthesiologist. The doctor answered the call and I told her all of my premonitions. She said that she had never heard a patient speak like this before. Especially one who had a baby before and who sought out specialists to help save her life. Unbeknownst to me, she flagged my file and incorporated extra blood monitors and a crash cart in the operating room at the time of delivery. And then D-Day came. When I was 36 weeks pregnant, I was wheeled into delivery. I delivered a healthy and happy baby boy and three seconds later, I was dead. Because of the crash cart and blood, I was brought back to life 37 seconds later. That one phone call to the anesthesiologist saved my life.
I had suffered an amniotic fluid embolism. This condition is rare; 1 in 40,000 risk of amniotic cells getting into the mother’s bloodstream. If the mother happens to be allergic to the amniotic cells, they go into a type of anaphylactic shock. In most of these cases, the women do not survive. I flat lined for 37 seconds. They resuscitated me and then I started to go into disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC). My kidneys failed, the lungs collapsed; I had a cardiac arrest and and my bladder collapsed. I was given 60 units of O Negative blood. They called in the gynecologist/oncologist who I met with 2 months before. He performed a hysterectomy. The pathology on the uterus showed an accreta had started to form that was invisible to the MRI, leaving a microscopic hole, and allowing the amniotic cells to enter the bloodstream. I was put under general anesthesia, the baby was perfect and I had died. ALL of my premonitions came true.
At the time of delivery I could not remember anything, let alone the the subsequent medically induced six day coma. But I ended up doing regression therapy to take me back into those moments that I was dead. I videotaped those moments and I talk about everything I saw happening in the operating room AFTER my eyes were taped shut. The doctors and my husband were shocked. It was accurate down to what the doctors were THINKING, but not saying at the time. I was in shock. And then more opened up. I understood I had help from the other side. I understood why I had weird cravings of cigarettes during this pregnancy, especially when I have never smoked a day in my life. I understood that I could not have possibly known that many details of the future without help.. and it all ended up pretty clear after I finished my therapy.