August 5, 2025 • 37 mins
What happens when the journey to giving life nearly ends your own?
For years, Dorie Nolt faced the quiet heartbreak of unexplained infertility, finally celebrating a miraculous pregnancy after a long, arduous wait. But the joy of childbirth quickly transformed into a terrifying fight for survival when, after a routine C-section, Dorie's body began to unravel. Faced with escalating pain, a worsening fever, and doctors who dismissed her concerns and even blamed her, Dorie found herself navigating a medical system that seemed determined to ignore her.
In this powerful episode of Alive Again, Dorie shares the harrowing details of her near-fatal postpartum ordeal. Her story exposes a startling truth: that "women are ignored by medical professionals, but also women ignore themselves". Despite being on the brink of death and desperately fighting to return to her newborn son and husband, Dorie's experience became a profound lesson in self-advocacy and a stark reminder of the systemic failures in maternal healthcare. This is a raw and urgent narrative of resilience, highlighting the vital importance of listening to your own body and fighting for your life, even when no one else is.
Story Producer: Kate Sweeney
* If you have a transformative near-death experience to share, we’d love to hear your story. Please email us at aliveagainproject@gmail.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psychopia Pictures
and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
My name is Dory Nolt, and when I was thirty eight,
I almost died after giving birth to my son. It
changed me in ways I could never have imagined. It's
very interesting how doctors talk around things because they don't
(00:36):
want to ever be quoted as saying, well, you almost
died because it was their fault. I was working so
hard to convince myself I was okay, that I was
going to be okay, and that I would see my son,
and that I would see my husband, and that I
wouldn't have essentially abandoned them.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Welcome to Alive Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous acounts
of human fragility and resilience from people whose lives were
forever altered after having almost died. These are first hand
accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes with death.
Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share these stories
(01:17):
to remind us all of our shared human condition. Please
keep in mind these stories are true and maybe triggering
for some listener. Discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
I really did not believe I was pregnant.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I had peede on so many pregnancy tests and none
of them were ever positive. So I was like, nope,
I'm not getting my hopes up. We tried for six years,
seven years almost The doctors called it unexplained infertility, which
is the most annoying diagnosis on Earth, because it's just
them shrugging at you, going there's no reason why you're
(01:57):
not pregnant, You're just not pregnant.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yet, and it's just like, what do you mean.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
We talked about doing are you why you know, the
Turkey Baser method I think is what they call it,
and then obviously IVF we were prepared to go the
full route. As we were talking about all these options,
I started this very intense job and that really shifted
for me.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
My focus.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
My period was late, and I was like, I am
just stressed out at work, and I actually went out
and had a drink with a friend and then picked
up the pregnancy test and then went home because I
was so convinced it was going to be negative, and
I was like, I need a little emotional lubrication to
take this pregnancy test. And I took it and it
(02:46):
was positive, and I was like, well, that's not right.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
So I took another one. It was also fos.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
I was like, nope, we're going to the doctor. I
really didn't believe it until the doctor confirmed it. So
my husband and I we always wanted kids the whole time.
The images I always had were of my husband and
whoever the kid was, and me like listening to indie
rock music because I was gonna be a cool mom
(03:11):
who didn't have to listen to kids bop. My kid
would love Steve John Stevens right, and you know reading.
We were constantly going to be reading books and he
was never gonna have screen time, and my kid was
gonna be a Bonniever fan. He's not just spoiler alert.
I didn't think if thing about if there was gonna
be issues.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I was healthy.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
It was actually a really easy, pretty textbook pregnancy.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I didn't mind it. I liked it.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
It was like weird to see my body doing things
that I was not causing.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
It just was doing its own thing.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
And it was fun to see my toes disappear as
my belly got bigger. I think for a lot of
pregnant moms, you don't really think about the birth that much.
You think it's gonna happen and you're gonna be done,
and then you're gonna keep going. You're gonna have a
kid and a family like you picture that after so
much more than you picture the actual birth itself. Even
(04:05):
though all the classes are about the birth, they don't
give you a lot of classes for the after stuff.
He was due May seventeenth, and on the morning of
May fourth, I went to the bathroom and my water
had broken, and so.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I woke my husband up.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
He was sleeping in another room because I was snoring
really loudly. I woke him up and was like, can
you come in here for a minute. And he's like,
you're being weirdly calm. What's going on? And I was like,
I think my water broke or my dula was like,
just hang out at home, relax.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Because I wasn't in labor yet, you know.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
I called the obi's and let them know them They're like, okay,
just get here when you can. And then around midday
we were like, okay, we're gonna go to the hospital now.
So this is a hospital that is it's known for
delivering babies.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
I just walked in and was like, hello, I'm here
to have a baby.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
They checked me and so They're like, Okay, we really
need to put you on potosin because your contractions haven't
started and your water's broken, which is a higher rate
for infection, so we like really need to like get
this moving.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
But I was like, okay, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
So they put me on potosin and I was excited
because it was made the fourth and I'm a big
nerve with my husband, so we're like, we're gonna have a.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Star Wars baby.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
All the Star Wars movies were on TV, so I'm
like laying in the hospital bed watching Star Wars.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
I was like, this is going to be the best.
We were so naive.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
People were texting me like what's going on, and I'm like,
nothing is going on, and.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
That's the problem. It was really not until late afternoon on.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
The fifth that my contractions actually picked up and I
started getting dilated. I pushed for two and a half hours,
which is a very long time to push, you know,
people holding my legs, lots of breathing and chanting, and
everything's on TV and he was not coming out the
(06:08):
OB And at this point I had had like four
different OB's because.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
You just get whoever's on call. She's like you have
to have a c section period.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I think the thing that I was so excited about
with the c section, even though it was a bummer,
to had worked that hard and that long to that
point and then to have to go through a sea section.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Once you're in there, you're gonna see your baby.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
So quickly, it was like a fifteen minute thing and
he was out, and that was just incredible to me.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
They said, he's here.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
They held him up and they unwrapped the umbilical cord one, two, three,
four times from his neck, which is exactly why he
wasn't coming out of me. The umbilical cord was around
his neck four times. Thankfully, they were able to rev
him up very quickly, turn him nice and pink. He
(06:56):
was breathing, doing well. So at that point they have
to get the listen to out. They also have to
put everything back together and sew you up as well.
So like, there's a lot of stuff that has to
happen once the baby is out that I just didn't
think about. So they had to really knock me out
for that part. There's this really great picture that my
husband snaps. It's a selfie my husband. He's got on
(07:19):
like the hat and the mask, and he's the scrubs
and then my son's all like snuggled up in a
little burrito baby blanket, you know, and.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
He's got his little hat on.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
And then I'm laying there and I'm kind of smiling,
but my eyes are closed, so I look so high.
I'm just like hey, But I kept trying to stay
awake so I could just look at him. And I've
been in labor for so long. I was so happy,
just like relieve, like we did it, We're through it,
we made it. Yay, we go home. And this this
(07:53):
is all a little blurry because I'm still on pain meds,
also exhausted, so sore, and everything hurt because I had
been fully dilated and pushed for so long. I had
the same sort of vaginal bruising and issues as well
as the.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Sea section, so I had like the best of both worlds,
if you will.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
My parents are with us, and we're just trying to
settle in to a regular routine as much as we can.
Everything felt weird and new, but also like, oh wow,
he's here. I can stare at his face. I was
just like, look at his little tiny feet, and yeah,
it was just a really lovely time. I've been home
(08:32):
at this point, like thirty thirty two hours, and I
start feeling weird. I had a low grade fever, very low,
like ninety nine one hundred, and I just feel strangely exhausted,
like exhausted above and beyond what you're is reasonable for
(08:54):
a new mom, which is exhausted. And I also noticed
a big red spot on my belly, an oval red spot,
and it kind of covered my whole belly from like
above my belly buttoned down to sort of my lower
belly area, and it was warm. It was really hot,
and I was like, I just feel so strange. And
(09:15):
I kept thinking, like, okay, I'm supposed to feel strange.
I went through a lot, I had a baby. But
we called our OB and whoever was on call called
me back and I was like, Hey, this is how
I'm feeling. She said, are you in a pain? And
I said not really, I just feel weird.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
And this was.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Probably midnight, and I said should we worry? And she's like, oh,
just go to the doctor. Like I had already scheduled
to check up the next day with my OB, like
a regular checkup, and so she's like, just go in
the morning to the office, and I said, okay, so
try to get some sleep. Still feeling really strange, starting
(09:56):
to have some pain. The pain is starting to build,
the fever's getting worse, and the spot on my stomach
is getting redder and redder, and my stomach is getting bigger,
like it starts expanding. The next morning, we're heading to
the doctor. It's me and my husband and my son
(10:17):
and my parents were like doing errands for us. And
at this point I'm having a hard time staying awake
and the pain is starting to get so much that
I can't sit comfortably or stand comfortably.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Nothing was comfortable.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
I was just having intense abdominal pain, and not the
kind you get like when you have like a stomach bug,
right like, this was like my whole abdomen hurt. And
so we get to the ob. The ob he took
one look at me, he saw I could not get
up on the table and said get back in the
(10:53):
car and go straight to the ear where you delivered.
And we're like, well, we're closer here to and he's like,
don't go to that ar, go to where you delivered him.
My husband is like clearly panicking. He gets my son
in the car seat, which we're not very good at,
so like it takes a lot of rigamarole. I'm having
such a hard time at this point. I'm sort of
(11:13):
in and out. We're in the driveway of the parking garage,
and I was like stop, and I opened the door
and I just vomit out in the parking garage.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
It's gonna get gross. Just FYI.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
At the same time I vomit, I could feel my
stitches in my C section incision loosen a little bit
in one section, and a lot of stuff came out
of me all over the car. My husband, he is
just like pedal to the metal, get to the er.
We pull into the er. They wheeled me in. They
(11:50):
took me back immediately. We're in a private bay, but
like a bay of an er. They're having to do
tests to figure out what's going on, and they could
see pot of infection throughout my abdomen, so they start
an IV and they put me on a bunch of
antibiotics and pain medicine.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
So I'm very woozy.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
I was cracking a lot of jokes because I wanted
everybody else to feel really comfortable. I felt like if
I worried them, and I could see the worry on
their faces, then it would.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Be real for me.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
We are just what feels like forever, just not getting
any information. The ob that's on call for the er
that day, this dude is he could not communicate with
us what was going on, and so the nurse kept
having to come in and like whisper to me.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Like okay, I'm not supposed to tell you this.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
But because the doctor just like wasn't giving us and
we're like, what is happening. At one point, this doctor
came into our bay, took his finger, stuck it in
my C section incision and like loosened a stitch and
like a bunch of more stuff came out, and then
(13:02):
he left and we were like, what the hell just happened?
Speaker 3 (13:06):
All the stuff is coming out of me? And so
the nurse comes.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
In, she's like, I'm so sorry, and like he hadn't
told us anything. He just did it and left, and
obviously it hurt like hell for him to do that,
but also then like we're like, what is this stuff?
We don't know anything that's happening. What do I do
with my son? Can I breastfeed him? You've just put
my own antibiotics. I probably shouldn't brestfeed him. Can you
bring a lactation consultant down from upstairs so I.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Can talk to them.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
That particular time when we just had no information for
me was the scariest because I like a plan. I'm
in that bay of the er for six or seven hours.
I think they said, you have an abdominal absess. It's
basically an infection in the cavity around all of your organs.
(13:53):
We don't know why, and so we need to admit
you and try and take care of the infection with
antibiotics and pain medicine. So they finally they admitted me,
put me on the surgical word, and my son cannot
stay with me. Very quickly, I looked at my mom
(14:14):
and I was like, I need you with me at
the hospital. John, you have to be at home with
Hugo and Dad. You have to support him. Like we
just like very quickly had to make a plan. And
I remember thinking like, I'm not going to see this kid,
and I don't know how long I'm gonna be here.
Oh gosh, I was so scared, more scared than I've
ever been in my life.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I didn't know anything that was happening. I missed my child.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
My body was doing weird stuff, not just because of
the infection, but because I was postnatal and I had
breast milk, and I was like, what do I do
with this? So I had to get a lactation consultant.
In the dactation consultant pushed me to keep pumping to
keep my supply up. I tried that for like a
day and then I just I remember looking at my
(14:57):
husband and I said, I can't. I can't focus on
getting better and also try and keep my milk supply
up for whenever I get out of here. So we
knew that meant when I got out, I likely would
not have enough milk to start breastfeeding. The infection was
getting worse, not better, despite all of the antibiotics. It
was during this period that the obs started blaming me
(15:22):
for what had happened. One of them told me it's
because my BMI was too high and that's the reason
I got the infection, and I said, I don't understand
what my weight has to do with an abdominal infection.
Another OB told me that I had insisted on laboring
too long and that was the reason the infection had happened.
(15:42):
The ob who didn't send me to the er, but
said just go to the office the next day. She
came in one day during this period and said, well,
you didn't tell me how much pain you were in,
and I said, well, I that's sure. I gave you
the information I had, and so it It's just every
day there was a new ob on rounds, and every
(16:03):
one of them blamed me for what had happened, to
the point where my mom actually chased one out of
the room and.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Said, do not come back in my daughter's room.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Again.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
I just I mean, I was crying. I was delirious
and so unhappy. And what they've been doing was guarding
against me suing them. They were trying to prevent being sued.
There's a three day period at this point. I don't
really remember. People have had to tell me what happened.
John and Hugo and my dad would come visit. I
(16:35):
couldn't hold Hugo more than five minutes without being exhausted
and having to hand him back. I would cry a lot.
And then finally, after the third day, John, my husband,
yelled at one of the nurses. He said that my
mom asked me how I was doing, and he said
I looked at my mom and said, Mom, I'm in agony.
(16:56):
And he said he could tell from the look on
my face that I was just very So he yelled
at a nurse and just said, you guys aren't fucking
doing anything, and she's getting worse.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Everything was different the next day with the medical team.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
My obs relinquished the case over to an infectious disease
doctor and a surgeon. That's when the other doctors were like, Okay,
we're doing surgery, let's get this done, let's fix it.
I felt like grown ups finally entered the room, and
so it's like as soon as my husband yelled, they listened.
And I don't know if there's cause and effect there,
(17:31):
but that in my memory, that is the thing that
changed everything. At this point, they're planning a laparoscopic procedure
and then fix the rest with medicine because it's getting worse,
it's growing, and they don't know what's causing it. Mother's
Day morning, I'm in ther prep room and my husband
(17:52):
and son come in and they give me flowers and
a card that I can't take back with me, and
I remember my husband cried and he never cries, and
he said, you're my person, You're it.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
So I knew he was really scared. I was really scared.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
I was also still on all that medicine, so I
was like really out of it. So I came out
of surgery, and I remember I woke up and I
just started crying because I felt so much better, immediately
felt better, like the difference. I couldn't believe how different
(18:34):
my body felt. You know, there was pain because I
had an incision, but it wasn't the kind of like
deep pain that I was having before. I felt lucid,
I felt awake. I felt like, oh god, I'm not
fading away. I'm not like drifting away into the darkness.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Now.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
They did war me that they could start laproscopically and
it could go into a general surgery.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
I didn't think that was gonna happen. Then is definitely
what happened.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
So I come out and I have an incision that
goes from above my belly button to almost my pubic area.
And when you have an infection, they can't just close
you back up because there's still infection in you. So
I have a wound back in the incision. The incision
is technically still open, but it's got packing around it.
(19:21):
And then I have like a little woundback machine that
is pulling infection out and it makes this weird like
sound constantly for days on end. It turns out it
was terrible.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
I hated that thing.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
So the surgeon came in and told us that she
had removed two big pockets of infection from inside my
abdominal cavity. That it had been caused by the futures
in my uterus coming loose in one spot, so everything
that was in my uterus from the berth had emptied
into my abdominal cavity rather than coming out Dada infection.
(20:07):
My c section decision was still not healed, and they
had had to redo some of that because there had
been a spot that that doctor had made with his
finger where things were still dicey. But she said, I'm
glad we caught it when we did, because you were
very very ill. I have the wound back for a week,
and then they take me back into surgery and sew
(20:29):
me up. After they sew me up, I'm in the
hospital another week because I keep spiking fevers and they
can't figure out why. And that is the most frustrating
thing about an infection like this. You think all day long,
no fever. Today, I feel great, I've got energy. I
actually walked down the hall. They had a pt come
in and work with me, try and go up and
(20:50):
down the stairs.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
I almost passed out from that. Like that was that
was a lot.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
But at this point, I feel like a caged animal
because there is no plan. I have no idea when
I'm to get out, and every evening I'm spiking a fever.
So eventually, the brilliant infectious disease doctor said, Okay, sometimes
when somebody has had so many antibiotics like you have,
(21:18):
your body just starts having a reaction to the antibiotics.
So what we're going to do is we're going to
try all new ones. I'm just like, please, I will
anything anything you were willing to try to get me home.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Yes, do it.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
He switched the antibiotics and the fever stopped. I was
just I was so ready to get out of there.
And my mom said she knew I was feeling better
because I started getting sassy with her, and I was like,
oh good, okay, well that's excellent mom. I remember I
(21:59):
got my discharge and my husband texted me. He was like, Okay,
I got the car. I'm downstairs and I'm just sitting
in my room, and I was like, can I just
can I leave?
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Can I go?
Speaker 2 (22:09):
So I just walked out, gone, get me the fuck
out of here. And it was so strange being at
home because my dad and my husband and my son
had established a little routine together, a little life, and
I had not been part of any of it. So
he was born on May fifth, and I was released
(22:30):
from the hospital on May twenty second. I knew nothing
about his feeding routine. I felt very distant from Hugo.
Not only distant from him, but I feel like an
alien to myself. I certainly don't recognize my body because
of how sick I was. I lost in two weeks,
like thirty pounds in the hospital, but it was basically muscle,
(22:52):
so I.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Was incredibly weak. It hurt to move around, it hurt
to hold him.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
I slept fourteen fifteen hours a day, So at that time,
I've not only felt like an alien to myself but
our relationship.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
I just didn't know him. I said, John, what's he like.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
I had been home a week and it was the
middle of the night and My husband was up with
my son and I came down the stairs and I said,
I feel weird, and he's like, you have said that before.
What do you mean you feel weird? And I was like,
I have significant pain and I don't feel good.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
My parents were still with us. This is what six days.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Seven days after we got home from the hospital, we
went right back to the er. It was incredibly scary,
especially being back at the hospital where all of this
other stuff had happened. All the hospital noises, and I
didn't realize home. Still to this day, some of those
noises trigger me. If I hear a similar noise, I'm immediately.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Back at the hospital.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Thankfully, it turned out to be a gallbladder attack, so
they were able to diagnose it and send me home.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
And so they were like, call your surgeon. She's like,
oh no.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
When she said, okay, well, here's the thing. You've had
too much abdominal surgery. I don't feel comfortable taking your
gallbladder out right now. I think you're going to need
to manage this with your diet. A year later, I
ended up having my gallbladder out. It's very interesting how
(24:43):
doctors talk around things because they don't want to ever
be quoted as saying, well, you almost died because it
was their fault. So they would talk around how close I.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Was to death.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
They would say things like, oh, it's really good that
we caught this when we did, or ooh you were
really sick, but they would never say like, oh, you
almost died. I had a doctor tell me later that
I almost died. And when I heard that, I mean,
it hits you like a ton of bricks, because at
(25:17):
the time I was working so hard to convince myself
I was okay, that I was going to be okay,
and that I would see my son and that I
would see my husband, and that I wouldn't have essentially
abandoned them. And to hear from a doctor like you
almost died. Looking back now I can see how close
(25:40):
I got. I can see how sick I was, but
at the time I was just trying my best to
muddle through it. But hearing it makes your stomach just drop.
To hear the words you almost died from a medical professional.
This changed how oh I saw my own mortality. As
(26:03):
it is with younger people, you see yourself as invincible
for so long, and I have always been a very strong, healthy, person.
And so when I was laid out by this infection
and when I almost died and I was so weak,
you know, I had to depend on so many other people,
(26:23):
it certainly made me see how fragile life actually is,
and my life especially, and it made me want to
take better care of myself coming out of it. You know,
it would have been easy for me to just be like, no,
I'm fine, Fuck those guys, I'm good, you know, and
(26:43):
just like keep sailing, which is how I probably would
have dealt with it.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
In the past.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
But that trauma, that PTSD comes back on you and
it decaps you. You can't do anything but deal with it.
And if you don't deal with it, it will come
back and come back and come back. I am still
doing the mental health work. Let's see, I have flashbacks.
I'm back in the hospital. I can smell it, I
(27:08):
can hear it, I can feel it, and I have
all these techniques that I've worked with my therapist on
for getting myself out of those flashbacks. Because they'll happen anywhere,
they usually only come in the spring, when we're leading
up to my son's birth. His birthday is a very
hard day for me. I've tried to make it all
about him. He does not know all of the mental
(27:29):
anguish that I still go through because of it. That's
not about him, that's about me and my experience. In
previous generations, moms who went through traumatic birth did blame
their kids, even if they didn't mean to, it happened,
and so I've very much wanted that cycle not to happen.
(27:51):
He's the best kid. He's so funny and kind and
empathetic and loud and opinionated. Our relationship is amazing. We
are a tight trio, the three of us. We had
always talked about having two kids, because I'm an only
child and I was lonely and I wanted my kid
(28:11):
to have at least one sibling, so we had always
talked about having two kids. It took us a long
time to get pregnant with Hugo, and then this traumatic
birth happened, and so we decided, Okay, we don't want
to make a second child, let's think about flustering or adopting.
And then the pandemic hit. Just I'm forty four, my
(28:35):
husband's fifty one. Our time has passed like we're past
the point where it makes sense for us to adopt
a second child, and I still get very sad when
I think about it, because I do know how lonely
it can be to be an only child. So, you know,
my whole life, I had this vision of two little kids.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Running around, and that's gone and feels like it was taken.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Also, he's a really great kid, so I feel like
if we made another one, that kid would also be
really great, And it's hard to not have two of
them because he's so cute. But really, the truth is
it hurts to admit it. I always get to know
(29:27):
somebody before I tell them what happened. I don't want
to be known as the person who had this insane experience,
and I certainly don't want to tell pregnant women the
ins and outs of it because I don't want to
scare them. Friends of mine who know what I've gone
through in the past and they get newly pregnant, they
will ask me. I never offer, but they'll ask me like, hey,
(29:50):
do you have any words of advice? You know ways
to prevent going through what you went through? And I
always tell them, you have to listen to your body.
Research tells us every one women are ignored by medical professionals,
but also women ignore themselves.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
We ignore the.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Signs because we just think, oh, this is just what
it's supposed to be, like, I'm just supposed to be
in pain, I'm supposed to be miserable. I'm supposed to
pass out because that's what you do when you have
a baby. And most of that is just not true.
Don't let anyone tell you, oh, it's normal for you
to feel that way because you just had a baby.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
You know when something is not right.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Listen to your body and you will be fine.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Welcome back, This is Alive again. Joining me for a
conversation about today's story are my other Alive Against story
producers Kate Sweeney, Nicholas Takowski, and Brenta And I'm your host,
Dan Bush.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
So I know Dorry, I know her socially, but I
didn't know ever that this happened to her. I could
tell right away it was a very vulnerable story, and
I just felt really grateful that she would choose to
share it with me and with us.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
She says that women are ignored by medical professionals, but
also women ignore themselves. I have my own experiences with
when we gave birth to our two children, and we
honestly had a very similar experience. The audacity of the
doctors during that experience for my family was pretty horrific,
(31:41):
and the way they treated my wife was also indescribable.
I mean, and I think it's a pervasive thing. I
think it really is something that happens a lot in
our society and in the medical world, in America in particular.
Speaker 4 (31:57):
I mean, I mean, you're right, Unfortunately, I'm I mean,
maternal health issues aren't rare in this country, and it's
actually kind of shocking. I mean, one thing I learned
doing this story is that the United States, the United States,
is the only country with high resources with a consistently
rising mortality rate like USA where we live, right, and
(32:21):
disparities for women of color are truly stark. And you know,
of course, what all this points to is, you know,
it comes down to, as you said, Dan, as you know,
a person in the world with evolva dealing with the
medical system consistently, you know, not being taken seriously, not
(32:42):
being listened to.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
It speaks to this this idea that we are all
so ready And this is my own sort of showbox.
I'm not going to go too far on it. But
we're all so ready to just give away our autonomy
when in the presence of somebody in a white coat. Absolutely,
and especially you know, to give away your your autonomy
as a mother when you're giving birth, because we're all
trained somehow that this that they know better, they are
(33:07):
the professionals. Don't listen to your own body. Listen to me.
I know when to put you on potocin. I know
when to you know, to take you down the different path.
And we're so ready to just hop on board with
that and don't. I don't know why that. It's just
a fascinating phenomenon to me about our culture in particular.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
But I think you're right.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
You know, we are trained to you know, we see
the white coat, as you say, and we you know,
we want to just sort of okay, whatever you say,
I will do and at you know, sort of as
she says there near the end of the story, like
trust yourself, listen to your body, and basically like don't
(33:45):
shut up when they tell you to shut up.
Speaker 5 (33:47):
A friend of mine had cancer and same thing she said.
I was a thirty three year old woman and they're like, oh,
there's nothing wrong with you. You're fit and she's like, well,
I'm vomiting blood. I'm But then we also have a
society it's becoming more and more paranoid and conspiratorial. So
it's like, where do you balance the We have to rely,
(34:09):
we have to put some trust on experts, but we
also have to maintain some of our own control. And
when my own wife was pregnant, she wanted to have
a natural childbirth, and you look at the cost of
the hospital makes money by moving people through the room
as quickly as possible. If it's not happening, let's stick
that padul in there and let's get it going. Let's
go for a C section, because then we can get
(34:29):
the doctor off the clock on time, and we can
move the next patient in. I mean, maybe that's a
cynical way of looking at it, but I think those
are the sort of things that are driving some of
these decisions under precision.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
I had that experience. I don't know if you had
that experience, but we got there at the wrong time
and we wasted probably twenty four hours, which set up
a whole series of events that of undermining Caroline's autonomy
as a mother in this process and the birth that
she wanted to have and the narrative of what was happening.
Speaker 5 (34:58):
And you don't want to make the wrong choice in
that situation because and it's the first time you've been
presented with this.
Speaker 6 (35:04):
I also feel like doctors are kind of trained twice.
I think that doctors are trained by their medical schools
and by their experiences, but then they're also trained by
the money people in the hospital, and I think that
those people are as powerful.
Speaker 7 (35:21):
Yeah, we're more powerful.
Speaker 5 (35:22):
I think it's not even training, it's just you're dealing
with two masters. Your sincere desire to help the patient
and then the demands of whatever profitability that the hospital
has to maintain.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Next time on a Live Again, we meet Nicholas Bradley,
a former US Air Force staff sergeant. His vehicle was
struck by a remote detonated ID during a mission in Afghanistan.
Left unconscious in a ditch, he will blind, paralyzed, and
unsure if rescue would come.
Speaker 8 (35:53):
I tried to get my gun out of the holster,
just in case I needed to defend myself. I couldn't
get the gun out of the holster, but I'm trying
to stay calm. You don't want to go into shock
because then you'll start bleeding faster. The day before I left,
I was hanging out with my daughter. I just made
a promise to her that no matter what happens, Daddy.
Speaker 7 (36:08):
Would come home. And in that moment, she handed me
this little flower and I had it in my pocket,
and that was the only thing that I could grab
a hold of in that situation while I was laying
in that ditch.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
His journey of recovery through immense physical and emotional challenges
led him to rediscover purpose and hope. Our story producers
are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney, Brent Die, Nicholas Dakowski, and
Lauren Vogelba. Music by Ben Lovett, additional music by Alexander Rodriguez.
Our executive producers are Matthew Frederick and Trevor Young. Special
(36:41):
thanks to Alexander Williams for additional production support. Our studio
engineers are Rima El Kali and Noames Griffin. Our editors
are Dan Bush, Gerhartslavitchka, Brent Die, and Alexander Rodriguez. Mixing
by Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez. I'm your host, Dan Bush.
Thanks to dory Nol for sharing her story. Alive Again
(37:03):
is a production of i Art Radio and Psychopia Pictures.
If you have a transformative near death experience to share,
we'd love to hear your story. Please email us at
Alive Again Project at gmail dot com. That's a l
i v e A g A I N P R
O j e c T at gmail dot com.
You're listening to Alive Again, a production of Psychopia Pictures
and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
My name is Dory Nolt, and when I was thirty eight,
I almost died after giving birth to my son. It
changed me in ways I could never have imagined. It's
very interesting how doctors talk around things because they don't
(00:36):
want to ever be quoted as saying, well, you almost
died because it was their fault. I was working so
hard to convince myself I was okay, that I was
going to be okay, and that I would see my son,
and that I would see my husband, and that I
wouldn't have essentially abandoned them.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Welcome to Alive Again, a podcast that showcases miraculous acounts
of human fragility and resilience from people whose lives were
forever altered after having almost died. These are first hand
accounts of near death experiences and more broadly, brushes with death.
Our mission is simple, find, explore, and share these stories
(01:17):
to remind us all of our shared human condition. Please
keep in mind these stories are true and maybe triggering
for some listener. Discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
I really did not believe I was pregnant.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
I had peede on so many pregnancy tests and none
of them were ever positive. So I was like, nope,
I'm not getting my hopes up. We tried for six years,
seven years almost The doctors called it unexplained infertility, which
is the most annoying diagnosis on Earth, because it's just
them shrugging at you, going there's no reason why you're
(01:57):
not pregnant, You're just not pregnant.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Yet, and it's just like, what do you mean.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
We talked about doing are you why you know, the
Turkey Baser method I think is what they call it,
and then obviously IVF we were prepared to go the
full route. As we were talking about all these options,
I started this very intense job and that really shifted
for me.
Speaker 3 (02:22):
My focus.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
My period was late, and I was like, I am
just stressed out at work, and I actually went out
and had a drink with a friend and then picked
up the pregnancy test and then went home because I
was so convinced it was going to be negative, and
I was like, I need a little emotional lubrication to
take this pregnancy test. And I took it and it
(02:46):
was positive, and I was like, well, that's not right.
Speaker 3 (02:49):
So I took another one. It was also fos.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
I was like, nope, we're going to the doctor. I
really didn't believe it until the doctor confirmed it. So
my husband and I we always wanted kids the whole time.
The images I always had were of my husband and
whoever the kid was, and me like listening to indie
rock music because I was gonna be a cool mom
(03:11):
who didn't have to listen to kids bop. My kid
would love Steve John Stevens right, and you know reading.
We were constantly going to be reading books and he
was never gonna have screen time, and my kid was
gonna be a Bonniever fan. He's not just spoiler alert.
I didn't think if thing about if there was gonna
be issues.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I was healthy.
Speaker 2 (03:34):
It was actually a really easy, pretty textbook pregnancy.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
I didn't mind it. I liked it.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
It was like weird to see my body doing things
that I was not causing.
Speaker 3 (03:42):
It just was doing its own thing.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
And it was fun to see my toes disappear as
my belly got bigger. I think for a lot of
pregnant moms, you don't really think about the birth that much.
You think it's gonna happen and you're gonna be done,
and then you're gonna keep going. You're gonna have a
kid and a family like you picture that after so
much more than you picture the actual birth itself. Even
(04:05):
though all the classes are about the birth, they don't
give you a lot of classes for the after stuff.
He was due May seventeenth, and on the morning of
May fourth, I went to the bathroom and my water
had broken, and so.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I woke my husband up.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
He was sleeping in another room because I was snoring
really loudly. I woke him up and was like, can
you come in here for a minute. And he's like,
you're being weirdly calm. What's going on? And I was like,
I think my water broke or my dula was like,
just hang out at home, relax.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Because I wasn't in labor yet, you know.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
I called the obi's and let them know them They're like, okay,
just get here when you can. And then around midday
we were like, okay, we're gonna go to the hospital now.
So this is a hospital that is it's known for
delivering babies.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
I just walked in and was like, hello, I'm here
to have a baby.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
They checked me and so They're like, Okay, we really
need to put you on potosin because your contractions haven't
started and your water's broken, which is a higher rate
for infection, so we like really need to like get
this moving.
Speaker 3 (05:18):
But I was like, okay, let's do it.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
So they put me on potosin and I was excited
because it was made the fourth and I'm a big
nerve with my husband, so we're like, we're gonna have a.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
Star Wars baby.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
All the Star Wars movies were on TV, so I'm
like laying in the hospital bed watching Star Wars.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
I was like, this is going to be the best.
We were so naive.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
People were texting me like what's going on, and I'm like,
nothing is going on, and.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
That's the problem. It was really not until late afternoon on.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
The fifth that my contractions actually picked up and I
started getting dilated. I pushed for two and a half hours,
which is a very long time to push, you know,
people holding my legs, lots of breathing and chanting, and
everything's on TV and he was not coming out the
(06:08):
OB And at this point I had had like four
different OB's because.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
You just get whoever's on call. She's like you have
to have a c section period.
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I think the thing that I was so excited about
with the c section, even though it was a bummer,
to had worked that hard and that long to that
point and then to have to go through a sea section.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
Once you're in there, you're gonna see your baby.
Speaker 2 (06:27):
So quickly, it was like a fifteen minute thing and
he was out, and that was just incredible to me.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
They said, he's here.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
They held him up and they unwrapped the umbilical cord one, two, three,
four times from his neck, which is exactly why he
wasn't coming out of me. The umbilical cord was around
his neck four times. Thankfully, they were able to rev
him up very quickly, turn him nice and pink. He
(06:56):
was breathing, doing well. So at that point they have
to get the listen to out. They also have to
put everything back together and sew you up as well.
So like, there's a lot of stuff that has to
happen once the baby is out that I just didn't
think about. So they had to really knock me out
for that part. There's this really great picture that my
husband snaps. It's a selfie my husband. He's got on
(07:19):
like the hat and the mask, and he's the scrubs
and then my son's all like snuggled up in a
little burrito baby blanket, you know, and.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
He's got his little hat on.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
And then I'm laying there and I'm kind of smiling,
but my eyes are closed, so I look so high.
I'm just like hey, But I kept trying to stay
awake so I could just look at him. And I've
been in labor for so long. I was so happy,
just like relieve, like we did it, We're through it,
we made it. Yay, we go home. And this this
(07:53):
is all a little blurry because I'm still on pain meds,
also exhausted, so sore, and everything hurt because I had
been fully dilated and pushed for so long. I had
the same sort of vaginal bruising and issues as well
as the.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Sea section, so I had like the best of both worlds,
if you will.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
My parents are with us, and we're just trying to
settle in to a regular routine as much as we can.
Everything felt weird and new, but also like, oh wow,
he's here. I can stare at his face. I was
just like, look at his little tiny feet, and yeah,
it was just a really lovely time. I've been home
(08:32):
at this point, like thirty thirty two hours, and I
start feeling weird. I had a low grade fever, very low,
like ninety nine one hundred, and I just feel strangely exhausted,
like exhausted above and beyond what you're is reasonable for
(08:54):
a new mom, which is exhausted. And I also noticed
a big red spot on my belly, an oval red spot,
and it kind of covered my whole belly from like
above my belly buttoned down to sort of my lower
belly area, and it was warm. It was really hot,
and I was like, I just feel so strange. And
(09:15):
I kept thinking, like, okay, I'm supposed to feel strange.
I went through a lot, I had a baby. But
we called our OB and whoever was on call called
me back and I was like, Hey, this is how
I'm feeling. She said, are you in a pain? And
I said not really, I just feel weird.
Speaker 3 (09:32):
And this was.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
Probably midnight, and I said should we worry? And she's like, oh,
just go to the doctor. Like I had already scheduled
to check up the next day with my OB, like
a regular checkup, and so she's like, just go in
the morning to the office, and I said, okay, so
try to get some sleep. Still feeling really strange, starting
(09:56):
to have some pain. The pain is starting to build,
the fever's getting worse, and the spot on my stomach
is getting redder and redder, and my stomach is getting bigger,
like it starts expanding. The next morning, we're heading to
the doctor. It's me and my husband and my son
(10:17):
and my parents were like doing errands for us. And
at this point I'm having a hard time staying awake
and the pain is starting to get so much that
I can't sit comfortably or stand comfortably.
Speaker 3 (10:31):
Nothing was comfortable.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
I was just having intense abdominal pain, and not the
kind you get like when you have like a stomach bug,
right like, this was like my whole abdomen hurt. And
so we get to the ob. The ob he took
one look at me, he saw I could not get
up on the table and said get back in the
(10:53):
car and go straight to the ear where you delivered.
And we're like, well, we're closer here to and he's like,
don't go to that ar, go to where you delivered him.
My husband is like clearly panicking. He gets my son
in the car seat, which we're not very good at,
so like it takes a lot of rigamarole. I'm having
such a hard time at this point. I'm sort of
(11:13):
in and out. We're in the driveway of the parking garage,
and I was like stop, and I opened the door
and I just vomit out in the parking garage.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
It's gonna get gross. Just FYI.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
At the same time I vomit, I could feel my
stitches in my C section incision loosen a little bit
in one section, and a lot of stuff came out
of me all over the car. My husband, he is
just like pedal to the metal, get to the er.
We pull into the er. They wheeled me in. They
(11:50):
took me back immediately. We're in a private bay, but
like a bay of an er. They're having to do
tests to figure out what's going on, and they could
see pot of infection throughout my abdomen, so they start
an IV and they put me on a bunch of
antibiotics and pain medicine.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
So I'm very woozy.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
I was cracking a lot of jokes because I wanted
everybody else to feel really comfortable. I felt like if
I worried them, and I could see the worry on
their faces, then it would.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Be real for me.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
We are just what feels like forever, just not getting
any information. The ob that's on call for the er
that day, this dude is he could not communicate with
us what was going on, and so the nurse kept
having to come in and like whisper to me.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Like okay, I'm not supposed to tell you this.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
But because the doctor just like wasn't giving us and
we're like, what is happening. At one point, this doctor
came into our bay, took his finger, stuck it in
my C section incision and like loosened a stitch and
like a bunch of more stuff came out, and then
(13:02):
he left and we were like, what the hell just happened?
Speaker 3 (13:06):
All the stuff is coming out of me? And so
the nurse comes.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
In, she's like, I'm so sorry, and like he hadn't
told us anything. He just did it and left, and
obviously it hurt like hell for him to do that,
but also then like we're like, what is this stuff?
We don't know anything that's happening. What do I do
with my son? Can I breastfeed him? You've just put
my own antibiotics. I probably shouldn't brestfeed him. Can you
bring a lactation consultant down from upstairs so I.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Can talk to them.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
That particular time when we just had no information for
me was the scariest because I like a plan. I'm
in that bay of the er for six or seven hours.
I think they said, you have an abdominal absess. It's
basically an infection in the cavity around all of your organs.
(13:53):
We don't know why, and so we need to admit
you and try and take care of the infection with
antibiotics and pain medicine. So they finally they admitted me,
put me on the surgical word, and my son cannot
stay with me. Very quickly, I looked at my mom
(14:14):
and I was like, I need you with me at
the hospital. John, you have to be at home with
Hugo and Dad. You have to support him. Like we
just like very quickly had to make a plan. And
I remember thinking like, I'm not going to see this kid,
and I don't know how long I'm gonna be here.
Oh gosh, I was so scared, more scared than I've
ever been in my life.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
I didn't know anything that was happening. I missed my child.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
My body was doing weird stuff, not just because of
the infection, but because I was postnatal and I had
breast milk, and I was like, what do I do
with this? So I had to get a lactation consultant.
In the dactation consultant pushed me to keep pumping to
keep my supply up. I tried that for like a
day and then I just I remember looking at my
(14:57):
husband and I said, I can't. I can't focus on
getting better and also try and keep my milk supply
up for whenever I get out of here. So we
knew that meant when I got out, I likely would
not have enough milk to start breastfeeding. The infection was
getting worse, not better, despite all of the antibiotics. It
was during this period that the obs started blaming me
(15:22):
for what had happened. One of them told me it's
because my BMI was too high and that's the reason
I got the infection, and I said, I don't understand
what my weight has to do with an abdominal infection.
Another OB told me that I had insisted on laboring
too long and that was the reason the infection had happened.
(15:42):
The ob who didn't send me to the er, but
said just go to the office the next day. She
came in one day during this period and said, well,
you didn't tell me how much pain you were in,
and I said, well, I that's sure. I gave you
the information I had, and so it It's just every
day there was a new ob on rounds, and every
(16:03):
one of them blamed me for what had happened, to
the point where my mom actually chased one out of
the room and.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Said, do not come back in my daughter's room.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Again.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
I just I mean, I was crying. I was delirious
and so unhappy. And what they've been doing was guarding
against me suing them. They were trying to prevent being sued.
There's a three day period at this point. I don't
really remember. People have had to tell me what happened.
John and Hugo and my dad would come visit. I
(16:35):
couldn't hold Hugo more than five minutes without being exhausted
and having to hand him back. I would cry a lot.
And then finally, after the third day, John, my husband,
yelled at one of the nurses. He said that my
mom asked me how I was doing, and he said
I looked at my mom and said, Mom, I'm in agony.
(16:56):
And he said he could tell from the look on
my face that I was just very So he yelled
at a nurse and just said, you guys aren't fucking
doing anything, and she's getting worse.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Everything was different the next day with the medical team.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
My obs relinquished the case over to an infectious disease
doctor and a surgeon. That's when the other doctors were like, Okay,
we're doing surgery, let's get this done, let's fix it.
I felt like grown ups finally entered the room, and
so it's like as soon as my husband yelled, they listened.
And I don't know if there's cause and effect there,
(17:31):
but that in my memory, that is the thing that
changed everything. At this point, they're planning a laparoscopic procedure
and then fix the rest with medicine because it's getting worse,
it's growing, and they don't know what's causing it. Mother's
Day morning, I'm in ther prep room and my husband
(17:52):
and son come in and they give me flowers and
a card that I can't take back with me, and
I remember my husband cried and he never cries, and
he said, you're my person, You're it.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
So I knew he was really scared. I was really scared.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
I was also still on all that medicine, so I
was like really out of it. So I came out
of surgery, and I remember I woke up and I
just started crying because I felt so much better, immediately
felt better, like the difference. I couldn't believe how different
(18:34):
my body felt. You know, there was pain because I
had an incision, but it wasn't the kind of like
deep pain that I was having before. I felt lucid,
I felt awake. I felt like, oh god, I'm not
fading away. I'm not like drifting away into the darkness.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Now.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
They did war me that they could start laproscopically and
it could go into a general surgery.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
I didn't think that was gonna happen. Then is definitely
what happened.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
So I come out and I have an incision that
goes from above my belly button to almost my pubic area.
And when you have an infection, they can't just close
you back up because there's still infection in you. So
I have a wound back in the incision. The incision
is technically still open, but it's got packing around it.
(19:21):
And then I have like a little woundback machine that
is pulling infection out and it makes this weird like
sound constantly for days on end. It turns out it
was terrible.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
I hated that thing.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
So the surgeon came in and told us that she
had removed two big pockets of infection from inside my
abdominal cavity. That it had been caused by the futures
in my uterus coming loose in one spot, so everything
that was in my uterus from the berth had emptied
into my abdominal cavity rather than coming out Dada infection.
(20:07):
My c section decision was still not healed, and they
had had to redo some of that because there had
been a spot that that doctor had made with his
finger where things were still dicey. But she said, I'm
glad we caught it when we did, because you were
very very ill. I have the wound back for a week,
and then they take me back into surgery and sew
(20:29):
me up. After they sew me up, I'm in the
hospital another week because I keep spiking fevers and they
can't figure out why. And that is the most frustrating
thing about an infection like this. You think all day long,
no fever. Today, I feel great, I've got energy. I
actually walked down the hall. They had a pt come
in and work with me, try and go up and
(20:50):
down the stairs.
Speaker 3 (20:51):
I almost passed out from that. Like that was that
was a lot.
Speaker 2 (20:54):
But at this point, I feel like a caged animal
because there is no plan. I have no idea when
I'm to get out, and every evening I'm spiking a fever.
So eventually, the brilliant infectious disease doctor said, Okay, sometimes
when somebody has had so many antibiotics like you have,
(21:18):
your body just starts having a reaction to the antibiotics.
So what we're going to do is we're going to
try all new ones. I'm just like, please, I will
anything anything you were willing to try to get me home.
Speaker 3 (21:29):
Yes, do it.
Speaker 2 (21:32):
He switched the antibiotics and the fever stopped. I was
just I was so ready to get out of there.
And my mom said she knew I was feeling better
because I started getting sassy with her, and I was like,
oh good, okay, well that's excellent mom. I remember I
(21:59):
got my discharge and my husband texted me. He was like, Okay,
I got the car. I'm downstairs and I'm just sitting
in my room, and I was like, can I just
can I leave?
Speaker 3 (22:08):
Can I go?
Speaker 2 (22:09):
So I just walked out, gone, get me the fuck
out of here. And it was so strange being at
home because my dad and my husband and my son
had established a little routine together, a little life, and
I had not been part of any of it. So
he was born on May fifth, and I was released
(22:30):
from the hospital on May twenty second. I knew nothing
about his feeding routine. I felt very distant from Hugo.
Not only distant from him, but I feel like an
alien to myself. I certainly don't recognize my body because
of how sick I was. I lost in two weeks,
like thirty pounds in the hospital, but it was basically muscle,
(22:52):
so I.
Speaker 3 (22:52):
Was incredibly weak. It hurt to move around, it hurt
to hold him.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
I slept fourteen fifteen hours a day, So at that time,
I've not only felt like an alien to myself but
our relationship.
Speaker 3 (23:07):
I just didn't know him. I said, John, what's he like.
Speaker 2 (23:15):
I had been home a week and it was the
middle of the night and My husband was up with
my son and I came down the stairs and I said,
I feel weird, and he's like, you have said that before.
What do you mean you feel weird? And I was like,
I have significant pain and I don't feel good.
Speaker 3 (23:38):
My parents were still with us. This is what six days.
Speaker 2 (23:42):
Seven days after we got home from the hospital, we
went right back to the er. It was incredibly scary,
especially being back at the hospital where all of this
other stuff had happened. All the hospital noises, and I
didn't realize home. Still to this day, some of those
noises trigger me. If I hear a similar noise, I'm immediately.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Back at the hospital.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Thankfully, it turned out to be a gallbladder attack, so
they were able to diagnose it and send me home.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
And so they were like, call your surgeon. She's like,
oh no.
Speaker 2 (24:19):
When she said, okay, well, here's the thing. You've had
too much abdominal surgery. I don't feel comfortable taking your
gallbladder out right now. I think you're going to need
to manage this with your diet. A year later, I
ended up having my gallbladder out. It's very interesting how
(24:43):
doctors talk around things because they don't want to ever
be quoted as saying, well, you almost died because it
was their fault. So they would talk around how close I.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Was to death.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
They would say things like, oh, it's really good that
we caught this when we did, or ooh you were
really sick, but they would never say like, oh, you
almost died. I had a doctor tell me later that
I almost died. And when I heard that, I mean,
it hits you like a ton of bricks, because at
(25:17):
the time I was working so hard to convince myself
I was okay, that I was going to be okay,
and that I would see my son and that I
would see my husband, and that I wouldn't have essentially
abandoned them. And to hear from a doctor like you
almost died. Looking back now I can see how close
(25:40):
I got. I can see how sick I was, but
at the time I was just trying my best to
muddle through it. But hearing it makes your stomach just drop.
To hear the words you almost died from a medical professional.
This changed how oh I saw my own mortality. As
(26:03):
it is with younger people, you see yourself as invincible
for so long, and I have always been a very strong, healthy, person.
And so when I was laid out by this infection
and when I almost died and I was so weak,
you know, I had to depend on so many other people,
(26:23):
it certainly made me see how fragile life actually is,
and my life especially, and it made me want to
take better care of myself coming out of it. You know,
it would have been easy for me to just be like, no,
I'm fine, Fuck those guys, I'm good, you know, and
(26:43):
just like keep sailing, which is how I probably would
have dealt with it.
Speaker 3 (26:46):
In the past.
Speaker 2 (26:48):
But that trauma, that PTSD comes back on you and
it decaps you. You can't do anything but deal with it.
And if you don't deal with it, it will come
back and come back and come back. I am still
doing the mental health work. Let's see, I have flashbacks.
I'm back in the hospital. I can smell it, I
(27:08):
can hear it, I can feel it, and I have
all these techniques that I've worked with my therapist on
for getting myself out of those flashbacks. Because they'll happen anywhere,
they usually only come in the spring, when we're leading
up to my son's birth. His birthday is a very
hard day for me. I've tried to make it all
about him. He does not know all of the mental
(27:29):
anguish that I still go through because of it. That's
not about him, that's about me and my experience. In
previous generations, moms who went through traumatic birth did blame
their kids, even if they didn't mean to, it happened,
and so I've very much wanted that cycle not to happen.
(27:51):
He's the best kid. He's so funny and kind and
empathetic and loud and opinionated. Our relationship is amazing. We
are a tight trio, the three of us. We had
always talked about having two kids, because I'm an only
child and I was lonely and I wanted my kid
(28:11):
to have at least one sibling, so we had always
talked about having two kids. It took us a long
time to get pregnant with Hugo, and then this traumatic
birth happened, and so we decided, Okay, we don't want
to make a second child, let's think about flustering or adopting.
And then the pandemic hit. Just I'm forty four, my
(28:35):
husband's fifty one. Our time has passed like we're past
the point where it makes sense for us to adopt
a second child, and I still get very sad when
I think about it, because I do know how lonely
it can be to be an only child. So, you know,
my whole life, I had this vision of two little kids.
Speaker 3 (28:56):
Running around, and that's gone and feels like it was taken.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Also, he's a really great kid, so I feel like
if we made another one, that kid would also be
really great, And it's hard to not have two of
them because he's so cute. But really, the truth is
it hurts to admit it. I always get to know
(29:27):
somebody before I tell them what happened. I don't want
to be known as the person who had this insane experience,
and I certainly don't want to tell pregnant women the
ins and outs of it because I don't want to
scare them. Friends of mine who know what I've gone
through in the past and they get newly pregnant, they
will ask me. I never offer, but they'll ask me like, hey,
(29:50):
do you have any words of advice? You know ways
to prevent going through what you went through? And I
always tell them, you have to listen to your body.
Research tells us every one women are ignored by medical professionals,
but also women ignore themselves.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
We ignore the.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
Signs because we just think, oh, this is just what
it's supposed to be, like, I'm just supposed to be
in pain, I'm supposed to be miserable. I'm supposed to
pass out because that's what you do when you have
a baby. And most of that is just not true.
Don't let anyone tell you, oh, it's normal for you
to feel that way because you just had a baby.
Speaker 3 (30:24):
You know when something is not right.
Speaker 2 (30:27):
Listen to your body and you will be fine.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Welcome back, This is Alive again. Joining me for a
conversation about today's story are my other Alive Against story
producers Kate Sweeney, Nicholas Takowski, and Brenta And I'm your host,
Dan Bush.
Speaker 4 (31:03):
So I know Dorry, I know her socially, but I
didn't know ever that this happened to her. I could
tell right away it was a very vulnerable story, and
I just felt really grateful that she would choose to
share it with me and with us.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
She says that women are ignored by medical professionals, but
also women ignore themselves. I have my own experiences with
when we gave birth to our two children, and we
honestly had a very similar experience. The audacity of the
doctors during that experience for my family was pretty horrific,
(31:41):
and the way they treated my wife was also indescribable.
I mean, and I think it's a pervasive thing. I
think it really is something that happens a lot in
our society and in the medical world, in America in particular.
Speaker 4 (31:57):
I mean, I mean, you're right, Unfortunately, I'm I mean,
maternal health issues aren't rare in this country, and it's
actually kind of shocking. I mean, one thing I learned
doing this story is that the United States, the United States,
is the only country with high resources with a consistently
rising mortality rate like USA where we live, right, and
(32:21):
disparities for women of color are truly stark. And you know,
of course, what all this points to is, you know,
it comes down to, as you said, Dan, as you know,
a person in the world with evolva dealing with the
medical system consistently, you know, not being taken seriously, not
(32:42):
being listened to.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
It speaks to this this idea that we are all
so ready And this is my own sort of showbox.
I'm not going to go too far on it. But
we're all so ready to just give away our autonomy
when in the presence of somebody in a white coat. Absolutely,
and especially you know, to give away your your autonomy
as a mother when you're giving birth, because we're all
trained somehow that this that they know better, they are
(33:07):
the professionals. Don't listen to your own body. Listen to me.
I know when to put you on potocin. I know
when to you know, to take you down the different path.
And we're so ready to just hop on board with
that and don't. I don't know why that. It's just
a fascinating phenomenon to me about our culture in particular.
Speaker 3 (33:23):
But I think you're right.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
You know, we are trained to you know, we see
the white coat, as you say, and we you know,
we want to just sort of okay, whatever you say,
I will do and at you know, sort of as
she says there near the end of the story, like
trust yourself, listen to your body, and basically like don't
(33:45):
shut up when they tell you to shut up.
Speaker 5 (33:47):
A friend of mine had cancer and same thing she said.
I was a thirty three year old woman and they're like, oh,
there's nothing wrong with you. You're fit and she's like, well,
I'm vomiting blood. I'm But then we also have a
society it's becoming more and more paranoid and conspiratorial. So
it's like, where do you balance the We have to rely,
(34:09):
we have to put some trust on experts, but we
also have to maintain some of our own control. And
when my own wife was pregnant, she wanted to have
a natural childbirth, and you look at the cost of
the hospital makes money by moving people through the room
as quickly as possible. If it's not happening, let's stick
that padul in there and let's get it going. Let's
go for a C section, because then we can get
(34:29):
the doctor off the clock on time, and we can
move the next patient in. I mean, maybe that's a
cynical way of looking at it, but I think those
are the sort of things that are driving some of
these decisions under precision.
Speaker 1 (34:40):
I had that experience. I don't know if you had
that experience, but we got there at the wrong time
and we wasted probably twenty four hours, which set up
a whole series of events that of undermining Caroline's autonomy
as a mother in this process and the birth that
she wanted to have and the narrative of what was happening.
Speaker 5 (34:58):
And you don't want to make the wrong choice in
that situation because and it's the first time you've been
presented with this.
Speaker 6 (35:04):
I also feel like doctors are kind of trained twice.
I think that doctors are trained by their medical schools
and by their experiences, but then they're also trained by
the money people in the hospital, and I think that
those people are as powerful.
Speaker 7 (35:21):
Yeah, we're more powerful.
Speaker 5 (35:22):
I think it's not even training, it's just you're dealing
with two masters. Your sincere desire to help the patient
and then the demands of whatever profitability that the hospital
has to maintain.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
Next time on a Live Again, we meet Nicholas Bradley,
a former US Air Force staff sergeant. His vehicle was
struck by a remote detonated ID during a mission in Afghanistan.
Left unconscious in a ditch, he will blind, paralyzed, and
unsure if rescue would come.
Speaker 8 (35:53):
I tried to get my gun out of the holster,
just in case I needed to defend myself. I couldn't
get the gun out of the holster, but I'm trying
to stay calm. You don't want to go into shock
because then you'll start bleeding faster. The day before I left,
I was hanging out with my daughter. I just made
a promise to her that no matter what happens, Daddy.
Speaker 7 (36:08):
Would come home. And in that moment, she handed me
this little flower and I had it in my pocket,
and that was the only thing that I could grab
a hold of in that situation while I was laying
in that ditch.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
His journey of recovery through immense physical and emotional challenges
led him to rediscover purpose and hope. Our story producers
are Dan Bush, Kate Sweeney, Brent Die, Nicholas Dakowski, and
Lauren Vogelba. Music by Ben Lovett, additional music by Alexander Rodriguez.
Our executive producers are Matthew Frederick and Trevor Young. Special
(36:41):
thanks to Alexander Williams for additional production support. Our studio
engineers are Rima El Kali and Noames Griffin. Our editors
are Dan Bush, Gerhartslavitchka, Brent Die, and Alexander Rodriguez. Mixing
by Ben Lovett and Alexander Rodriguez. I'm your host, Dan Bush.
Thanks to dory Nol for sharing her story. Alive Again
(37:03):
is a production of i Art Radio and Psychopia Pictures.
If you have a transformative near death experience to share,
we'd love to hear your story. Please email us at
Alive Again Project at gmail dot com. That's a l
i v e A g A I N P R
O j e c T at gmail dot com.
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