Hi everyone,
This is Kenny. Some of you have already heard that yesterday was a traumatic day for our family. We’ve been receiving lots of calls from friends who wanted to wish Erin well and who had questions about what happened so I decided to hijack Erin’s blog and let you all know what’s up.
Yesterday morning while I was downstairs I heard a scream from upstairs and ran up to our bathroom to find Erin hemorrhaging. She had Kole in her arms and handed him to me about 10 seconds before she fell on the floor and passed out. Her mom and I quickly called 911 and five minutes later about 10 paramedics were standing over Erin in our bathroom. They couldn’t stop the bleeding and Erin kept going in and out of consciousness so they ultimately threw her on a gurney and we headed to the same hospital that we had just left a week earlier when we had Kole — only this time to the emergency room.
Once we got to the emergency room the surgeon told us that she had already lost about half of the blood in her body and needed to go immediately into surgery or she would likely lose her life. As you can imagine, we were both extremely emotional learning the gravity of the situation. The doctor told us that he would try to do a simple D&C to stop the hemorrhaging but that given how quickly she was losing blood he might need to go directly to a hysterectomy if the D&C didn’t work. They then whisked her away to surgery.
After three long hours the doctor emerged from surgery and told me that the D&C hadn’t worked. They had determined that she was dangerously close to losing her life as a result of the hemorrhaging and had elected to perform the hysterectomy. The hysterectomy stopped the bleeding and, after giving her transfusions of an entire human body’s worth of blood, they had been able to stabilize her. That was the only news I needed to hear.
Erin is recovering in the hospital now. She’ll be here for the next several days and will be recovering at home for weeks after that. She can’t sit up yet and she is in a lot of pain but the worst is definitely behind her. She appreciates all of the thoughtful texts and emails she has received and all of the wonderful friends and family who always go out of their way to stand by her.
Experiences like these remind you never to take what you have — especially your health and the health of your family — for granted. The overwhelming sensation that has overcome us after having gone through the events of this weekend is complete and total gratitude.
We’re so grateful to our Heavenly Father for answering our prayers. We’re so grateful that Erin’s mom hadn’t left town yet (she was hours away from flying home) so she could be with our kids while I looked after Erin. We’re so grateful for the members of our Church and community who were so quick to reach out and offer to help. We’re so grateful that this hysterectomy didn’t happen until after we were able to have three healthy children. And I, for one, am extremely grateful that my beautiful wife is going to be around to grow old with me.
If I know my wife, she’ll be posting updates again as soon as the nurses unhook the 35 IVs and miscellaneous other tubes that would slow down her typing. She’s never been one to let a life threatening illness keep her away from a good blog post.
xoxo, Erin