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After going through a Caesarean section, the last thing anyone wants is to also wake up without any legs, Right?
It was ‘due day’ for me to conceive my sixth child, my husband was out of the country but I was strong enough to drive to the hospital. On my way to the hospital, all I could think about was having the best moment of my life over again even though I already have five children with just one born vaginally (the rest were born through caesarean section) but I was hopeful that the one I was carry was going to be born naturally.
At the hospital, before the nurses could even say push, the doctor told me I was diagnosed with a condition called placenta previa, it is a condition that occurs when a baby’s placenta partially or totally covers the opening in the mother’s cervix. Placenta previa is one complication of multiple C-sections.
“The baby is fine, but you have to deliver the baby through a C-section,” the doctor said with an assuring look on his face.
However, once I was on the operating table, the doctors began to realize that my placenta had embedded itself deep into my uterine wall, resulting in a pregnancy complication called placenta accreta.
Placenta accreta occurs when the placenta attaches too deep in the uterine wall but it does not penetrate the uterine muscle. It is a serious pregnancy condition that can cause severe bleeding, premature birth and more.
The doctors successfully delivered my baby girl, but half an hour into the procedure, I began to lose too much blood due to the complication.
Doctors then performed an emergency hysterectomy which is a surgical operation to remove all or part of the uterus and in the process I had five blood transfusions. The doctors placed me into an induced coma and transferred me to intensive care. The doctors carefully monitored me for blood clots for the next 24 hours, as this is a common side effect of my complication.
During the coma, doctors discovered that my legs had lost circulation and at this point, I was rushed into the theatre where doctors made the decision to amputate.
But then my legs would have been saved if only the doctors had checked in on me six hours earlier. Unfortunately, it was too late because when they ‘remembered’ to check on me, clotting had already occurred in my legs and circulation had stopped, therefore starving my lower limbs of blood supply. They had no choice but to amputate my legs.
The horror stared right back at me when I was conscious, my world had crumbled. How was someone so full of life and active is reduced to this?, I mean I drove myself to this hospital for God’s sake!
Things have never been the same after I left the country, my husband rushed back to Nigeria after he heard about what had happened but that didn’t make any difference to me. I went from super- mom to I’m the helpless wheelchair-bound mom, I cried every single day praying for God to take my life.
My four-year-old son is not comfortable around me unless I’m covered up because he is scared, even my eldest child is failing in school. My life and that of my family was falling apart and there’s nothing to do about it because I’m helpless.
To think I might never be able to run after my children or stand next to them makes me sick to my stomach. No human being should ever have to experience this after it could have so easily been avoided.
The sacrifice I made for my baby girl.
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