WOMEN WHO INSPIRE
Near-Death Experience Takes
Young Mother by Surprise
S
ettling in to the routine of a new family of three, Rachel
D’Souza-Siebert and her husband, Brian, had no thoughts
of life-threatening health problems just eight days after their
son, Cameron, was born.
After all, D’Souza-Siebert was only 28 years old, and though
the birth had been by Caesarean section, there were no complications.
She and Cameron had just had their first good breastfeeding session. All
was right with the world.
Suddenly, she was hit from behind. She thought she had literally been
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struck with something hard as the worst pain she could ever imagine
started in her back, traveled around her chest to her sternum and radiated
down the backs of her upper arms.
“It sounds strange, but I felt like it was in my ears, too,” she said. “There
was this sound I can’t explain.”
She called to her husband, who was in the backyard, and they rushed
to the emergency room at St. Mary’s Health Center, new baby in tow.
Nobody suspected a heart attack. She didn’t fit the mold. She was
young; she exercised and ate reasonably well. Her family had no history
of heart disease.
When no other cause for the pain became evident, and a blood clot from
the C-section was ruled out (that’s what she kept thinking it must be), a
cardiologist was called. Tests found she had a blockage in her left anterior
descending coronary artery, often referred to as the widow maker. She was
diagnosed with spontaneous coronary artery dissection, which causes a
tear inside the artery. Blood then pools between the artery layers and forms
a clot. More than 70 percent of those with this condition do not make it to
the hospital. It occurs mostly in women; many in their 40s and 50s, but a
good number are even younger and have given birth in recent weeks.
D’Souza-Siebert was lucky. She had literally been having a heart attack
for about six hours, but after being taken to emergency surgery where
the cardiologist did a cardiac catheterization to open up the area and
place two stents (mesh tubes that hold open clogged arteries), she is now
relatively unscathed.
Not to say her life hasn’t changed – physically, mentally and emotionally.
“I will be on medicines for the rest of my life,” she said. “And if I forget
to take them, I feel bad. I watch what I eat, I watch my blood pressure and
make sure to exercise. I have to be careful, but overall, I feel good.”
Sometimes she gets scared. A near-death experience changes you, she said.
It’s now been six years, and some of the memory has faded, along with
some of the risks for another attack.
“My cardiologist said if I went five years without another one, it was a
good sign,” she said.
She had the courage to have another child since then, while working
closely with a maternal-fetal medicine specialist and her cardiologist.
Their daughter, Emelia, now 2, was also delivered by C-section, with no
subsequent heart complications for mom.
By Vi c k i B e n n i n g t o n