In June 2022, I found out I was pregnant with my second child. My husband and I couldn’t have been happier to welcome another beautiful child into our lives. I went for the standard OB visits and found out around 8 weeks that my baby’s heartbeat wasn’t strong and it was most likely not a healthy pregnancy. A week later, we found out we had lost our baby.

My OB gave me options to terminate the pregnancy. I could take medication, have the procedure done medically under anesthesia, or wait for my body to naturally pass it on its own. I chose to wait and let my body take its course. I needed to do bloodwork for the next few weeks to make sure my HCG levels were dropping. My levels never dropped, so after some time, I decided to take the medication to help with the process. The first round of pills was unsuccessful. I waited a week and took the pills again, but they also were unsuccessful. After another week, my doctor suggested more bloodwork to check my HCG levels. Then, another week later, I started to bleed heavily and began to feel unwell.

I started feeling very tired and lethargic. My body would go through waves of feeling extremely cold, where I would shiver uncontrollably for 30 minutes at a time, every muscle in my body shaking and tense. When it finally stopped, I would burn up and start sweating, feeling like I had just run a marathon. This went on for two days, along with other symptoms, before I decided to call my doctor. When I explained to my doctor that something didn’t seem right, he told me the pills might finally be working and my body was finally releasing the baby. So I dealt with my symptoms, regardless of how terrible I felt, in hopes that this would all be over soon.

The next night, I woke up and the room was spinning. I crawled to my bathroom and threw up. I screamed for my husband to call 911. I crawled back to my bed and slowly started to lose all the oxygen I felt I had left in my lungs. My breaths became shorter and shorter, and I said to myself, “Keep fighting!” I was going into cardiac arrest.

I was admitted to the hospital and in the ICU for weeks after experiencing septic shock. I ended up having a scar pregnancy that the doctors were unaware of, which led to sepsis in my uterus. I am lucky to be alive today.