Speak Life

I was scared and I was dying. I was in the first trimester of pregnancy, in the emergency room of a Sacramento hospital at 1:00am. The surgeon on staff was nowhere to be found as my stomach continued to fill with fluid and my abdomen grew. After twelve hours in the emergency room and no surgeon available, (the assigned surgeon was off on a drinking binge,) I heard triage say, “We’re losing her.” I panicked and begged the nurse on staff to save me. Since this nurse was not part of the nurses union working at this hospital he acted to save my life. He found a surgeon available at another hospital and called an ambulance to take me to where a surgeon could operate and discover why I was dying. I was drowning in fluid. My lungs were beginning to fill. After fifteen hours in hospital A, I was transported to hospital B.

The surgeon on staff at hospital B agreed to take me ahead of three previously scheduled surgeries. The surgeon discovered that I had a ruptured appendix. The appendix had ruptured three days prior. My abdomen was vacuumed of all fluid and I was put on strong antibiotics because my body was septic. This surgeon and the nurse who ordered the ambulance saved my life and I am very grateful for his gift.

The concerned surgeon came into my hospital room the next morning to check on me. He mentioned that I looked much better than when he saw me last. He was very concerned about his patient and with compassion in his voice stated that I had a 95% chance of miscarrying the child that was in my womb. He was very concerned about my ability to carry the child to term and recommended that I terminate the pregnancy if I did not miscarry the baby.

I was devastated and scared. My faith and belief in God was put to the greatest test I’ve ever experienced. I was faced with the choice of choosing between my life and the life of my child. I had seven days in the hospital to consider what the surgeon recommended. I heard, of course, all kinds of advice from many people who loved me and wanted to see me live a full and happy life with my husband and three children, free of the burden of bringing a special needs child into the world or worse yet, losing my own life and never fully recovering.

I realized for the first time in my life, I was not God and if I truly believed in what I thought that I believed in, then God’s will would be done and not my will. I believed that, no matter what the consequences, if I was obedient to the precepts and teachings of life as handed down by Christian Church teaching and the life of Jesus Christ with his sacrificial death on the cross then I could trust in the will of God. I needed to have some basis of truth to rest my life and the lives of my husband and children upon. I came to the conclusion that no matter what I am faced with in life, no matter how difficult, burdensome or painful, I knew that I could trust everything into the hands of God, the God that I believe in. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Father of Jesus Christ.

Today my daughter Danielle is alive and thriving at age 13 because I believed in God. She is alive because God desired for her to be on this earth to fulfill his Great plan. Even if that great plan is that you my reader are reading this story. I believe in life because every life has the exponential potential of touching other lives and fulfilling God’s great and glorious plan in our desperate world. I choose life, I choose to speak life and this November I will cast my vote for life. I will not be voting for a political candidate or a political party. I will be voting for life and the lives of all the Danielle’s in the world.