Count Your Blessings
14 February 2004
My name is Beth, and I am a 25 year old wife and mother of two beautiful children, Caleb 3, and Ella 4 months. I am a stay at home mom and I love it. My Husband is in the Navy, whom I have a new found appreciation for, while I was recovering from a ruptured splenic artery aneurysm. We had a couple of rough weeks. It's amazing how it all happened.
I was about 37 1/2 weeks pregnant, and I felt a HUGE sense of urgency to get my labor started.....at first I thought it was just the normal excitement of expecting a new baby, completing our lovely little family, or simply just the uncomfortableness of the last weeks of pregnancy. We would soon come to find out why I felt so led to get things "started" so to speak.
On October 17, 2003, at about midnight, I went into labor with my daughter, after doing everything short of drinking caster oil, I began having regular contractions. They literally went from a contraction here or there a couple times a day, to every 3 minutes. We rushed to the nearest Naval Hospital, which was about 45 minutes away. Once we got there, they made me sit in the waiting room filling out paperwork for about 30 minutes still having contractions about 2 minutes apart. Needless to say I was in a lot of pain and new time was sensitive, because I was GBS positive (Group B Strep, which can cause serious illnesses in babies during birth if the mother is not treated with at least two doses of antibiotics during labor) and needed the two doses of antibiotics before the birth. My son was born in 6 hours after going into labor, so I knew I may not have time.
They started the antibiotics and the the epidural, as soon as the finished the triage procedures, and got me into a room. The epidural was botched and I began leaking spinal fluid, which caused "spinal headache". Once they got it right they had to watch the dose for fear they would numb me up to my neck. After receiving both doses of the antibiotic I was still at 5cm, so they broke my water and I went from 5-10 in 30 minutes.....a surprise to everyone working with us the morning....I began to feel a lot of pressure, like I needed to push, so I told the nurse and she said "oops, your epidural ran out" and checked me and said "whoa!!!! we need to get the doc in here".
No time for anymore epidural drugs, I began to push. I think I was so pissed about having to feel all of the pain that I push so hard that after about 4 pushes, Ella was born at 8:00 a.m. But she was not well. She was having trouble breathing. I only held her for just a minute before they took her to the observation nursery to see if she would get any better. Later that morning they moved her to the NICU, diagnosed with pneumonia, probably caused by the GBS.
She had been the NICU for 6 days, and we had been going back and forth from the hospital to the hotel (we didn't want to be too far away) we stayed at after they released me, to home to get more clothes and things we needed, and Caleb's preschool. It was October 23, and we had gone during rounds at the NICU because we were unable to be in there during them, to take Caleb to preschool. He had a Pumpkin party at school that day, and parents were invited, so both my husband I went. After that, we went home to grab clothes and make a few phone calls. One to the NICU to see how Ella was doing.....and she was improving greatly and said she would likely go home that weekend, and that they had taken her off of the ventilator (PRAISE GOD).
I took a phone call to give a reference for a friend for a job they had applied for. As soon as I hung up the phone, I felt the worst pain in my abdomen, that I had ever felt. Like someone was stabbing me and just twisting a knife inside me. My husband had just walked into the room and saw the painful look on my face and was frantic on what to do. We thought it had something to do with my recent delivery or the complication of the epidural mishap and the two blood patches it took to repair the leak in my spinal fluid.
He called the L&D ward at the hospital where Ella was born, to see what to do....hearing my screams over the phone they told him to take me to the emergency room, or better yet call 911, so that he did. He called 911, then carried a sleeping Caleb to the neighbor's house, he called my mother at work who rushed home and actually beat the ambulance.
I was taken to the nearest hospital, not the one where Ella was. I don't remember much of the ER visit because I was in and out of conscienceness, I was hypotensive (60/40 and below) after a regular ER preliminary check they did a CT scan to discover a large amount of blood collecting in my abdomen.
A surgical team was called in, 3 surgeons, because they were not sure exactly where the bleeding was coming from. They cut me open from the base of my sternum to right above my pelvic bone, they discovered a 6cm ruptured aneurysm of the splenic artery. They removed my spleen and tied off some stuff(not really sure what) to stop the bleeding, which they were having a hard time doing. I think I got 13 units of blood in all, 1 before surgery, 10 during, and 2 after. They closed me up and then had to do an x-ray to make sure they had removed all the clamps and instruments, because my blood pressure was so low and I was becoming hypothermic. Good thing they didn't leave anything in there!
Anyway to close up this long story, I spent about 4 days in the ICU and then 3 in a regular room and then was released to go home to be with my family, including Ella who had been released 2 days after I was admitted. There is no other way to describe the situation than "count your blessings"....yeah some aspects of it are far from ideal but I'm alive, yes with an 11 inch scar on my abdomen, but yet alive and my sweet baby Ella is alive (94% fetal/mother mortality rate for rupture of a splenic artery aneurysm during pregnancy) My 11% survival rate came through for me.
It's been a long road of recovery, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now....things are finally getting somewhat back to normal. I am regaining energy little by little and the painful scar, that has ruined my nearly perfect 25 year old body (ha ha, yeah right), gets a little less painful each day.
I write this story to inform people of SAAs and how precious life is....it can be taken from us at anytime, so make your days the best they can be, and hold tight your children and your husbands and your wives and tell them how much you love them everyday! Make your life worth living. God gave me an overwhelming sense of urgency to get my labor started, so I did, and that saved both my daughter and myself. God is the only one who deserves the glory for that! God gives us all feelings and choices and all we can do is follow our heart and his lead and his plan will fall into place.
Discussion, comments, or questions: Beth Huck
© Copyright 2004 Beth Huck
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