Answers for Lauren

The past 6 1/2 years have been a roller coaster of emotions.  I would have bet a million dollars that I would never be part of this club, the club of bereaved mothers.  The emotional highs and lows have been excruciating. The toll they have taken on me and my family physically and emotionally seem insurmountable.  I had a stroke (which forced me to leave a 30+ year successful career in corporate America), I have AFIB, high blood pressure, anxiety and depression as well as PTSD.  Before this I was very healthy.

Flash back to May 23, 2012.  My beautiful 24 year old daughter made the announcement that she was having a baby boy, a dream for her that was going to come true.

While pregnant, at 6 months she was diagnosed with systemic lupus.  Her rheumatologist advised that no treatment would be necessary until after her son was born.  He felt that removing her gal bladder at that time would resolve things.

She began swelling quite a bit at about 7 months along.  Her doctors assured her this was normal.

At her August 29th prenatal appointment she was found to have very high blood pressure.  Her doctor sent her to the hospital. She was not in the labor and delivery ward.  Since she was showing signs of difficulty she was in a unit that had more frequent checks on patients. Having no luck controlling it and believing she had preeclampsia the doctors advised they would need to deliver her son, 4 weeks early. She was showing signs of depleted platelets so she could not be given an epidural. She was also having difficulty breathing so she was on oxygen 24  hours a day. She was induced and, at 2 am on August 30th she gave birth to a beautiful baby boy.  The doctors assured us that she would quickly improve.  She did not.

We kept asking why she was having difficulty breathing and why her swelling was not going down.  We were again assured this was “normal”.  Although she had lupus and showed signs of some kind of blood disorder no hematologist or rheumatologist was ever consulted.

Her platelet count continued to plummet and she was given several rounds of platelets over the next few days.  Not only did she not get any better she got worse to the point that she was sent to the ICU.  Her son was able to go home with his Dad while they continued to treat her with platelets and oxygen.  She kept asking “what’s wrong with me?” but our continued questions to the doctors got brushed aside or completely ignored.  They suggested the cause might be HELLP syndrome but they were not 100% sure.

The morning of September 3rd, 2012 we received a call from that hospital that we needed to get there quickly.  I asked why and was told “she is very sick”.  That’s all they would tell me.  I got in my car and drove like a maniac to get there.

When I got there I sprinted down the hall of the ICU and was stopped by a Chaplain trying to prepare me for what I was about to witness.  He said there were a lot of people “working on her”.  As we got to her room there were 12 doctors, nurses and ICU staff doing chest compressions.  She had gone into cardiac arrest.  They were working so hard they had to work in teams to continue efforts to resuscitate her.  Every time they stopped she flat lined.  After 90 minutes they asked her Dad and I when we wanted them to stop.  We told them to stop when it was hurting her and there was no hope.  My beautiful baby girl was pronounced dead at 11:00 am, when her son was just 4 days old.

How the hell do we process this?  Her viewing was that Thursday and it was standing room only.  I was still numb.  Her sister (who also lost a half brother to leukemia) did her eulogy.  There was not a dry eye there.  The following day we had her funeral.  I went home thinking “what do I do now?”

One of her doctors called me (I recorded the call) saying this never should have happened.  Really????  They still had no idea why she died.

We were contacted by attorneys who filed a wrongful death suit against the OBGYN practice that treated her. It ended up she had TTP, a rare blood disorder. This was confirmed in her autopsy as a contributing factor that caused her death. The doctors weren’t sure what to do because although this was suspected they never had a patient with her combination of symptoms. The first judge threw it out (we were informed he threw out the majority of medical cases that came across his desk because he had doctors in his family).  It went up for a bench hearing which was again denied because they could not prove that any other doctor would have offered additional treatment over and above what she received.  All the way to the NC Supreme Court no one would hear the case.  We were advised that if it were in another state the chances of a positive outcome in the lawsuit would have been much more promising.  Wow.

How does this happen in this day and time?  A woman should not die due to complications from childbirth.  How do I go on?  Some days I don’t want to, but we have her beautiful boy to raise and we have so many other that love us very much. I personally  am ruined financially and emotionally.

We don’t want to give up.  We can’t give up.  We WON’T give up.  We don’t want any other families to go through the hell we had to endure and will continue to endure for the rest of our days on earth.

As a mother I need answers for Lauren.