Author:  Genine

     The day after my 35 week appointment, I began to feel sick, nausea and vomiting.  This was January and the flu seemed to be going around work, so I thought that's what I was dealing with (plus the fact that I had a normal doctor visit the day before).  I was already accustomed to having bad luck with this pregnancy since I had broken my ankle and needed surgery for that in my fourth month, so I thought the flu could not be that bad.  I was suppose to go out to dinner with some friends at 7, so me and my 3 year old daughter packed up to go so I could get some fresh air.  On the way to dinner I called my friends and told them I had to turn around and go home because by that point it hurt to hold my head up.  We went home and I laid down in bed.  I went to urinate, at which point I noticed blood in my urine on the toilet paper.  I called the doctor, who at this point wasn't sure what was going on, but told me that I should go the the emergency room to get checked out.  I called my husband at work and my mom at home, so my mom said she would send my sister.  I was thinking I would have driven myself but thank God I didn't.  My sister's boyfriend took my daughter to my mom's and me and my sister were on our way to the hospital.  During the drive I felt something was really wrong and told my sister she had to go through red lights, we are only a 10 minute drive from the hospital but it was not fast enough.  The last thing I remember is seeing the hospital and telling my sister that something was wrong, but the words were not coming out.  I woke up to voices and whispers that "she's awake," my nurse came to see how I felt and then my husband came over.  My husband told me that our son was able to be brought back but was on a ventilator.  He was not going to survive once they took him off, so they had been waiting for me to recover so I could see the baby before they took him off.  I was told that the time period was about 10 minutes that he went without oxygen before I had gotten there (so close, huh).  The nurses brought him to me so I could hold him, but at the time I could not grasp what was going on.  The doctors told me that I had eclamptic seizures and that my placenta had abrupted on the way to the hospital, my official diagnosis was hellp syndrome and they handed me some literature on it.  The doctors also told me that if my labs didn't get better, I was going to have to go on dialysis because at this point, I was very close (I assume my kidneys were shutting down when I noticed the blood on the toilet paper).  Everything did eventually come back to normal, my liver enzymes came down, kidney function back to normal and platelets back up, but I also left the hospital on blood pressure medicine.  
    The worst part was coming home and then going to the funeral home to figure out all of the arrangements for our only son to be buried.  They were great with everything and suggested that my husband drop off an outfit so they could have him dressed for us to hold him one last time.  The hospital grievance counselor was also amazing with all of the pictures that she took for us while he was alive.  The worst part is I thought that night I would go to the ER and they would give me some fluids, because I was probably dehydrated, and I would go home and everything would be normal. 
Since this I had one more pregnancy, fairly uncomplicated, 1 bloody nose, 2 high blood pressure scares and millions of high risk and regular doctors visits, but she was healthy born at 36 weeks due to my water breaking on its own.  We are finished now with our two girls and Daniel, who we will never see grow.