My Dissection

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In 2012, I was 35 years old, with a 4 year old son, and I was 36 weeks pregnant with my daughter. I was admitted to the hospital with extremely high and uncontrolled blood pressure, toxemia, excruciating pain in my chest and across my shoulder blades, and loss of vision in my left eye. Doctors attributed it to my blood pressure and back pain from the pregnancy. I was continually told that once the baby was born my symptoms would resolve. I had an emergency c-section, but my symptoms got worse instead of better. I went from previous eclampsia to full blown eclampsia and my organs began shutting down. Finally a new doctor ordered an echo and saw that my aorta had blown out, right where the arch attaches to your heart. In fact, I had no arch left at all, my mitral valve was torn, and my into minute artery was torn from my carotid and my aorta. My chest cavity was completely full of blood, as I had been bleeding out for 2 days unbeknownst to anyone. I was rushed to surgery. My surgery was 9 hours long. Surgeons came out and told my mother to call it my family, that they didn't think they'd be able to close me up, and I wasn't going to survive the surgery. I was left on the O.R. table, chest open to "dry out". They said that was my only chance. Doctors were going to monitor the situation for a couple of hours and then try to close my chest. By the grace of God, they were able to do so. I then spent 3 days in a medically induced coma. I woke up in ICU, and spent 2 more weeks in the hospital trying to get strong enough to go home. I'm just grateful to have survived, as there are so many who dont.