Blake:
At first, being in the ICU was not as terrifying as it sounds. The whole time we were there, I kept thinking we would be going home in a matter of hours. In the ER when they first gave her saline, I thought that would be all that was needed. Then, when they gave her blood, I thought it was a bit intense but that it would be all she needed. Then, when they said they were moving her to the ICU, the doctor said that she wanted Jen to have a dedicated nurse monitoring her blood pressure. I thought going to the ICU was a bit intense, but, hey, if that’s the only way to have someone keep an eye on her, so be it. I was convinced we’d be going home first thing in the morning. All I was concerned about was making sure I could get home for a bit to put the girls to bed somewhat close to their normal bed time. Once Jen seemed to be getting some rest, I called our pastor’s wife/resident supernurse Suzanne to come sit with Jen while I ran home. I think I ended up getting to the house sometime around 9pm. I tucked in the girls, and returned to the hospital to find around a dozen of our friends from church waiting in the chapel/waiting room outside the ICU.
Jen was awake and able to converse. Over the next couple hours I brought in one of the ladies from church in at a time to see Jen. Always considering others above herself, Jen asked how each of them was doing and she apologized for various things to them (e.g., not praying for their ministry enough). Jen’s mom and step-dad arrived around midnight. Jen’s mom is a nurse, and she quickly mastered all the data relevant to Jen’s condition. I gave Jen some time with her parents, and I visited with the remaining folk from church. I returned to the ICU, and Jen’s mom and I stayed with Jen in the ICU. The medical staff informed us that they were going to perform a DNC on Jennifer once they got her blood pressure to a stable level.
Sometime after 1am Friday morning, Jen began to feel a lot of pain. Shortly after, she began to bleed much more. Her blood pressure dropped significantly (60/19), and she teetered on unconsciousness. At this point, I have no idea how many nurses and doctors swarmed the room (maybe 8?), but I can tell you that it was terrifying. They pumped Jen with fluids and oxygen, and I’m sure they did other medical things that I did not catch. When they got her more stable (but not what anyone would call “stable” normally), they pulled me aside to tell me that Jen needed emergency surgery. Considering that they had already told me that her blood pressure was way too low to do any sort of procedure, I knew that this was a true emergency. The doctor explained to me that she was going to perform a DNC, and if she could not stop the bleeding, she would perform an emergency hysterectomy. This was completely shocking to me. I had, as of yet, not considered this possibility. But I was faced with my wife crashing and flirting with death, I knew there was no option. With a pit in my stomach, I signed the consent forms.
As we waited for the surgical team to arrive at the hospital around 1:45am, I spent as much face-to-face time with Jen as possible. We told each other “I love you” more times than I can count. Jen—always considering others—began to give me remarriage advice, saying, “Blake, I want you to remarry for the girls. I want you to marry someone like _____, ______, or _____ [three of our godly married friends]. They’re married…so you’ll have to marry someone like them.” Then, I played videos of the girls for Jen to watch as they made the final preparations for the surgery. As they rolled her out, Jen said, “Whatever happens, remember that God is good.”
Jen:
I should note that at this point I lost feeling in my limbs and experienced a creeping heaviness over my body and up my spine. I told Mom and the staff what was happening. They knew immediately that my body was shutting down, shunting my blood away from my limbs and vital organs to the most vital, my heart and brain. I was cold and afraid and yet there was a sense of clarity that ran over me. I knew that God was faithful and that whatever happened, whether I was ushered home to Heaven or my life was preserved here a while longer, God was good and we would all be ok. I didn't want to leave my family yet. I wanted Blake to be assured of God's goodness and not give way to bitterness, to instill that knowledge and faith in our children's minds and hearts. I didn't know what the surgery would entail as they rushed me toward the O.R. I remember the table being cold. They placed the mask on my nose and mouth and I welcomed the warmth of sleep.
Blake:
Jen’s mom, step-dad, and I followed Jen’s bed down the hall, until we were ushered into the OR waiting room between 2:00-2:15am. I immediately went to the far corner and called my parents to tell them what was happening. As soon as I heard their voices I began to weep. I got out the words “emergency surgery…possible hysterectomy” and a few other things. We told each other “I love you,” and I hung up. Jen’s dad wrapped his arm around me, and I lost it. Then, I sat down and texted almost everyone in my contacts list asking for prayer. I began to worry. How was I going to tell the girls if Jen died? Lily’s only concept of death was that Jesus died and then came back three days later. How would I explain that it doesn’t work like that for the rest of us?
A few friends were awake to text back that they were praying. One of my dear friends from church came and sat with us through the surgery. We got a couple updates throughout the surgery telling us of Jen's progress. After the surgery, her doctor came to tell me that Jen had made it through the surgery well. She had performed the DNC (a procedure to clean out a miscarriage), and then monitored Jen's bleeding for a while. Without giving the gory details, she then did something to put pressure on the bleeding, which seemed to significantly slow it down. She said that it was a possibility that Jen might not need another surgery, but we would be watching her closely for the next 12 hours. By this point, Jen had been given 7 units of blood (from what I'm told, that is about the equivalent of the amount of blood someone Jen's size has in their entire body). Shortly afterwards they wheeled Jen back to the ICU, I had to wait 15-20 minutes to see her.
It was such a relief to see Jen back in the ICU (which is probably the weirdest sentence I've ever typed). She was weak and tired, but she was alive (and she had her uterus!). She seemed stable enough for Jen's parents to go to a hotel to sleep for a bit (as they had been up for 24 hours and driven 4.5 hours at this point). Within 30-45 minutes, however, Jen complained that she felt like she was bleeding again. The nurse examined her and realized that she was indeed bleeding just as much as before. The doctor came in and explained that Jennifer was diagnosed with D.I.C. (You can google it, but basically it means that she was bleeding to death and bleeding for such a length of time that her body would lose the ability to clot), and that a hysterectomy was the only solution. Otherwise her major organs would start to fail, beginning with her kidneys and liver. I called Jen's parents, but they were in no condition to drive back to the hospital. Once again, I signed consent forms, told Jennifer I loved her, and followed her bed down the hall until I was ushered into the O.R. waiting room again.
This time I did not have the O.R. waiting room to myself. It was around 6am, and all the general surgery folk (tonsils, hernias, etc.) were milling about in the waiting room. I felt so alone. No one in there knew worry like I did at that moment. I called and talked with my sister for a while, and then, thankfully, friends from church began to file in. Waiting during this surgery was considerably less terrifying. Early on in the surgery they called me to tell me that her blood pressure had risen into the triple digits for the first time in a long while once they had clamped off the uterus. From then on, we waited, prayed, and talked. I am thankful for the friends that came that allowed me to talk and even laugh with them as I tried to take my mind off the hell we were living through.
Around an hour or an hour and a half after they took her back to surgery, Jen's doctor came and got me. We sat and talked in a room off the O.R. waiting room. She was exhausted and I was exhausted, but we could both relax knowing that Jen was out of the woods. Her blood pressure was much closer to normal, and the source of the bleeding was gone. With this surgery Jen was moved from a life-and-death case to a recovering-from-major-but-semi-routine-abdominal-surgery case.
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