Callie Colwick, now 30 years old, was pregnant for the second time when tragedy befell her at the age of 27. She is still living an inspiring life.
For many women, becoming a mother and expanding their family is a joyful experience. They want to bring children they will love into the world. However, sometimes, things go awry and the dreams you had for the future fall apart. We might try our best but we can't control everything.
When one young Texan mother became pregnant with her second child, she was joyful and hopeful. But, what happened to her was unfortunate and tragic. However, she didn't lose hope and is still doing her best.
Callie Colwick, 30, of McKinney, became pregnant for the second time in November 2016 but at 15 weeks pregnant, she realized that something was not right. She experienced heavy bleeding because of placenta accreta, a high-risk pregnancy complication that is known to lead to irreparable damage, according to Fox News. Mayo Clinic says that it "occurs when the placenta grows too deeply into the uterine wall." Apart from this, her body also went through sepsis that risked her life.
Usually, the placenta detaches from the uterine wall after childbirth, but in Callie's case it stayed attached. It can cause "severe blood loss after delivery" and premature birth.
When she felt sick, Callie was taken to the hospital, where she was told her unborn child, whom she named Quinn, will be arriving any moment now. Unfortunately, he was not going to survive. "They put me in the pregnancy wing. Here we were in this room, surrounded by women giving birth and babies crying and we were told that Quinn had no chance of survival and we were just waiting to give birth to him," she told the British news agency South West News Service (SWNS). “It was a solemn few weeks."
"It was a terrifying few weeks with nothing to do in the hospital but just wait," she added.
The experience didn't end with the prospective loss of her child. When the doctors induced labor, her son was born weighing just half a pound. "They broke my waters and he was born. Quinn was too tiny to survive — he went straight to heaven," she said. "I was fading in and out of consciousness [after the stillbirth]. I wasn’t responsive, my eyes would roll to the back of my head and I was burning up. My fever had spiked way too high and they were packing ice onto me," she said.
There were multiple complications in Callie's case and the hemorrhaging uterus was only one of them. "Doctors were pumping blood into me as soon as it was flowing out. My husband [Kevin] was stuck between mourning the loss of his son and making all these medical decisions," she added.
Callie wasn't even well enough to mourn her loss. She went into septic shock and the infection escalated. "My world went black. That infection overrode my entire body,” she said. “They had to take out my uterus. The sepsis shut down my kidneys and my lungs so I was on a breathing machine.”
It spread to her limbs, which led to her legs being amputated below the knees. Her left thumb and index finger were also removed. "My legs were black and shriveled up, my toes looked like raisins,” she recalled. “I remember coming to, in extreme pain and confusion. My husband had to explain what happened. I had everything minus my uterus and my feet."
Imagine the pain of waking up from weeks of sleep to realize that your body is not whole anymore. While it was a terrifying ordeal for her, the young mother didn't lose hope. She spent a year in the ICU and in March 2018, she could finally return home.
Even after returning home, she had to fight for her medical expenses to be covered by the insurance company, which finally gave the green light for prosthetics in April 2019. She wanted to get a custom wheelchair as she couldn't push the standard one by herself. The insurance company further denied the claim for more, and then, it was a stranger who gave her hope. An anonymous fundraising campaign on GoFundMe went viral, giving her the money she needed for the wheelchair that would make her life easier.
Callie shares her story now to "help and inspire others... I was 27 when this happened — no one expects a 27-year-old mom to die. I truly feel like I am living on borrowed time now."
References:
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/placenta-accreta/symptoms-causes/syc-20376431
