Dr Jared Wilson and his 27-year-old wife, Caitlyn, excitingly arrived at the hospital where he works in Buffalo, New York, for a planned induction on December 12 last year before returning home
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A doctor held his newborn baby in his hands after his wife had just given birth – before heartbreakingly giving the signal to turn her life support machine off.
Dr Jared Wilson and his 27-year-old wife, Caitlyn, arrived at the hospital where he works in Buffalo, New York, for a planned induction on December 12 last year before returning home to care for their one-year-old son, Lincoln. That night the anaesthesiologist returned to the hospital and was confident everything was going “really, really well.”
The following morning a health official broke Caitlyn’s waters when, tragically, the baby’s arm came out into the birth canal and the cord became stuck between his neck, head and the wall of the uterus as the fluid drained out. The mum was rushed to the operating room for an emergency caesarean after she suffered a dangerous called uterine cord prolapse, which has a “really, really high mortality rate [for the baby] because he immediately starts to suffocate”, according to Dr Wilson.
“Things were happening really fast. At 2.02am I texted both sets of parents to pray for Caitlyn because she was leaving the room to be wheeled down the hallway into the operating room,” he told People. “At 2.17am the surgeons came back to me with pictures dated at 2.12am that Gabriel was out, he was healthy, he was screaming, all signs looked good.” But as medics needed to give Caitlyn a general anaesthetic before surgery, it came with added risks. “One of the risks of general anaesthesia always is significant aspiration of stomach fluids and contents to go back down into her lungs,” he revealed.
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“That’s increased for trauma in emergency situations, particularly in a pregnant woman who’s been drinking water all day and has a big giant baby pushing up on her stomach and her lungs”, Caitlyn’s husband said. “When they intubated Caitlyn, she had cups and cups of fluid, both water and stomach acid, come up and go down into her mouth. As they suctioned it out and placed the tube, the concern was how much of that ended up in her lungs”. he added.
After the two-hour operation, she seemed normal, according to Jared, but he soon noticed she was coughing “really, really hard.” She was given antibiotics to ensure she didn’t get pneumonia from the fluid in her lungs and was expected to recover. However, over the next ten days, she developed complications and was in “obvious significant pain”, her heart rate was high and swelling appeared in her lower legs. She was transferred to the intensive care unit and put on the “maximum support as far as oxygen goes that was non-invasive.” But on December 21, a decision was made to intubate Caitlyn due to inflammation in her lungs and it would allow her to have the machine do the breathing for her.
This plan, however, caused other problems and doctors discovered blood clots in her legs and she was also in septic shock. Just twelve hours later, she went into cardiac arrest on December 22 at 6.56am. Doctors tried to save her but her organs were being damaged. A heart breaking call was made by her husband after medics spent three minutes trying to save her. “I walked into the room as they were providing compressions to Caitlyn and I asked them to stop, and I called the code,” Dr Wilson said. “They turned off the machines and then they left as I held Caitlyn. And that was it.” He thanked the “angels and heroes” who tried their best to save Caitlyn and gave her the “best of care”. He said his grief would be worse without his medical training, which helped him come to terms with Caitlyn’s tragic death.
