"I know those statistics would be different if the medical establishment listened to every Black woman’s experience," Serena Williams writes in her essay.
Trigger Warning: This story mentions traumatic childbirth and racial discrimination that may be disturbing for readers.
Serena Williams gave birth to her daughter, Olympia in 2017, with her husband Alexis Ohanian by her side. However, for Williams, giving birth was far from easy. The tennis star has been open about the life-threatening medical complications that she faced after childbirth, which forced her to have four back-to-back surgeries in the space of a week.
Williams said she developed life-threatening blood clots in her lungs after her C-section in a recent essay for Elle magazine. She detailed her experience from pregnancy through birth and postpartum, only to highlight how Black women are often unheard and neglected in maternal healthcare.
"Giving birth to my baby, it turned out, was a test for how loud and how often I would have to call out before I was finally heard," Williams wrote in her essay.
Williams had a successful C-section, and she remembers holding her newborn baby and admiring her before falling asleep. The next thing she knows, she woke up in excruciating pain.
"In 2010, I learned I had blood clots in my lungs—clots that, had they not been caught in time, could have killed me. Ever since then, I’ve lived in fear of them returning. It wasn’t a one-off; I’m at high risk for blood clots. I asked a nurse, “When do I start my heparin drip? Shouldn’t I be on that now?” "
"The response was, “Well, we don’t really know if that’s what you need to be on right now.” No one was really listening to what I was saying. The logic for not starting the blood thinners was that it could cause my C-section wound to bleed, which is true. Still, I felt it was important and kept pressing," she wrote.
When she insisted on a CAT scan, the nurse's response was, “I think all this medicine is making you talk crazy.” It took multiple pleading attempts with different nurses and doctors for Williams to finally get the lung scans that ultimately saved her life. "Lo and behold, I had a blood clot in my lungs, and they needed to insert a filter into my veins to break up the clot before it reached my heart," Williams wrote.
She had to undergo more surgeries, and as expected she was exhausted. However, she caught the clots in the nick of time which prevented further complications. Expressing her disappointment with the doctors and nurses, Williams shared, "Many of these deaths are considered by experts to be preventable."
"In the U.S., Black women are nearly three times more likely to die during or after childbirth than their white counterparts," says Williams and also per the CDC. "Being heard and appropriately treated was the difference between life or death for me; I know those statistics would be different if the medical establishment listened to every Black woman’s experience."
No matter how harrowing this time and experience was for Williams, she is not someone to give up easily. She writes, "I’ve learned to dust myself off after defeat, to stand up for what matters at any cost, to call out for what’s fair—even when it makes me unpopular."
References:
https://www.elle.com/life-love/a39586444/how-serena-williams-saved-her-own-life/
https://www.cdc.gov/healthequity/features/maternal-mortality/index.html
Cover Image Source: Getty Images | Photo by Marco Bello
