Serena Williams on her near-death experience!
Serena Williams shared a shocking confession about a traumatic birth experience, imminent death, and a delayed medical reaction...
Serena Williams, although she seems invincible, has faced serious life challenges, and one of them is death…
Serena Williams shared a shocking confession about a traumatic birth experience, imminent death, and a delayed medical reaction... Only a day after the C-section, the situation began to get complicated, and Serena thought that there was no salvation for her, since no one took her calling for help seriously.
Serena Williams and her daughter Olympia are an inseparable tandem and often publish pictures in identical fashion combinations of the most famous brands. The four-year-old is already on her way to mastering her mother's tennis moves. Her childhood is happy and fulfilled, which also makes Serena immensely happy, however, in a personal confession published in "Elle" magazine, one of the best tennis players described in detail the painful, life-threatening experience she had during her daughter's birth.
Serena had a relatively flawless and carefree pregnancy, except for a few headaches and a "strange metallic taste" in her mouth. Even from the very beginning, when she first learned that she was pregnant, just two days before the Australian Open in 2017, the news did not stop her from winning seven matches, all in a row, in the weeks that followed. When it came time to induce Williams and receive an epidural, she refused because, as she claims, she enjoyed cramps and loved how she felt in her body, which was ready to push the baby.
By the next morning, the contractions were getting stronger and faster, leading to a drop in her baby's heart rate. Following the nurse's orders, Williams lay on her side to increase the baby's heart rate before she was ready to push again. Just as she was about to think about an epidural, the doctor came in and told her she was going to have an emergency C-section, which she did.
Due to a 2010 pulmonary embolism, a condition that can recur during pregnancy, Williams asked doctors to give her heparin to prevent clots from re-entering her lungs. The tennis player replied that she knew what she was talking about and that she needed a scan right away. Shortly after their conversation, Williams developed a cough that caused her severe pain and prevented her from breathing. No one really listened to what she kept saying. The opposition of the medical staff to her requests for further medical help left Williams with intense physical and emotional pain. Through the pain, Williams was persistent in convincing the nurses.
Finally, a nurse got a doctor, whom Williams then had to convince to do a lung scan. As she expected, the video showed blood clots in her lungs, revealing that her cough was the result of an embolism, a clot in one of her arteries. She also had a hematoma, a pool of clotted blood outside the blood vessels in her stomach. To treat the clots, doctors tried to insert a filter into her veins to break up the clots before they reached her heart, but since athletes have larger veins than most people, the process took longer than expected.
Serena's close friends and family, including her husband, were upset as they waited for it to be over. One week after giving birth and saving her own life by advocating for her medical needs, Williams underwent four surgeries - including an emergency C-section and was finally in an acceptable condition to leave the hospital with her newborn daughter.
For African-American women, mortality rates for women in childbirth are almost three times higher than for white women. To reduce these statistics, much of the work lies with health workers and the health system. After the traumatic experience, Williams says that she is grateful for all the moments she has been able to spend with Olympia since then.
