An unvaccinated pregnant Texas woman survived Covid-19, a heart attack, and three strokes to give birth to her child and is now urging others to get vaccinated.
Diana Crouch was 18 weeks into her pregnancy in August last year when she tested positive for Covid-19 and was taken to hospital with low levels of oxygen.
“On a daily basis, we were having to review whether it made sense to continue keeping the baby inside of her or did we need to deliver the baby. That discussion got particularly challenging when she had those strokes and the heart attacks and was on medications for seizures and in a coma for several days,” the medical director of adult congenital heart inpatient care at Texas Children’s Hospital, Dr Cameron Dezfulian, told NBC’sToday. “At that point, it was a really tough discussion.”
Ms Crouch managed to give birth at 31 weeks, with both mother and son now being at home. During her hospital stay, she was put on ECMO – a heart-lung bypass apparatus.
“It’s pretty miraculous,” Dr Dezfulian said. “The reality is there’s a limited number of hospitals in the country who are able to provide ECMO support and care for pregnant women.”
After returning from a trip to Las Vegas in July, Ms Crouch suffered from headaches and exhaustion. Neither she nor her husband Chris Crouch had been vaccinated, but Ms Crouch had previously recovered from the virus.
“I honestly didn’t think I would catch it again,” the 28-year-old from Kingwood, Texas, told Today. “I didn’t think much of it at the time because in pregnancy you just get tired.”
She visited her obstetrician, who recommended that she go to the emergency room after she developed a low fever.
“We were worried at that point because we didn’t know if it would be affecting the baby,” Ms Crouch said. “I went to the ER. I tested positive for Covid and they told me just to monitor my oxygen levels.”
They went back to the ER two days later on 6 August.
“I still didn’t think anything of it because even people that I knew at work that went to the hospital were just put on oxygen for a few days and they went home,” Mr Crouch, 37, told Today. “I thought we’d be back home after five days. Unfortunately, it turned into 139 days.”
Ms Crouch was on oxygen for the first three days, and doctors wanted to put her on a ventilator.
“She said, ‘I’m not going on a ventilator,’ and I remember the nurse saying, ‘Well I’m trying to save your life,’” Mr Crouch said. “Then they put her on a BiPAP machine shortly after that, which is a little ... stronger flow of oxygen.”
She was eventually put on a ventilator. “I didn’t think it was going to get that serious,” Mr Crouch said. “I didn’t know what to do. I was just really scared.”
Dr Dezfulian said Ms Crouch’s condition started “dwindling”.
“ECMO was the last resort,” Mr Crouch explained. He said doctors told him that “‘this is her best chance at survival and the baby’s best chance.’ So I prayed about it”.
Mr Couch asked his wife’s parents for their opinion. “They still said, ‘We trust your decisions. Just bring our daughter home,’” he said.
About a month after being placed on the ECMO, Ms Crouch suffered three strokes and a heart attack.
“Her risk factors for clotting were the fact that she had Covid and the fact that she was pregnant and the fact that she was on ECMO,” Dr Dezfulian told Today.
“Unfortunately, she also had a hole in her heart that had blown open that allowed for blood clots on the right side of the heart to essentially cross over to the left side.”
“The statistics say that I guess 12 women have carried a baby on ECMO. So she easily had the worst pregnancy ever. It was a nightmare,” Mr Crouch said. “It just kept getting worse and worse and worse and worse.”
“So she came off of ECMO when the baby was 28 weeks because her lungs just improved and she was doing better. She recovered from the strokes, she woke up,” Dr Dezfulian said. “We got her back to ambulatory, meaning standing up and walking and doing things again.”
“The ability to ventilate her meant that the clot risk went down a lot. Now, it still wasn’t that low because she was still pregnant, she still had Covid and we still knew she had this hole in her heart,” he added. “But it was a little safer.”
The healthcare staff wanted Ms Crouch to continue the pregnancy for as long as possible. The use of the ventilator was “weaned down” and she was breathing on her own, but at this point, the improvements ceased.
“She kind of plateaued at that point and it increasingly looked like the growing fetus was the reason for that. It was holding her back from being able to progress with her lungs,” Dr Dezfulian said. “She actually developed a pneumothorax, which is air inside the lung cavity.”
The medical workers decided to take her off blood thinners and perform a Caesarian-section. The parents named the baby Cameron after Dr Dezfulian. The baby boy was born on 10 November – 31 weeks into the pregnancy.
“He did require oxygen support,” Dr Dezfulian said. “Within a week he was actually completely off [oxygen]. He did great and only spent three weeks in the hospital before going home.”
Ms Crouch was moved to Methodist Hospital, where doctors thought she might need a lung transplant, but she soon began to improve.
“They were able to wean her quite effectively,” Dr Dezfulian told NBC. “She was up and walking within three or four days of her arrival there. She was off the ventilator.”
Ms Crouch was finally able to go home on 23 December.
“Coming home was very emotional for me,” she said. “I actually felt a little bit down for a couple of days. It’s a lot for me to take in. I hadn’t seen my kids for so long.”
“Her hand is just really weak,” Mr Crouch said. “The hand is probably the last part [to improve] because of fine motor skills to come back. She can walk around. She goes up and down the stairs now. She holds the baby. She’s almost back to normal.”
“I worry a lot. I’m scared. I just don’t know the effects my body went through,” she said, referring to Covid-19. “It was no joke. It wasn’t anything good. I just don’t know what the future holds.”
“There’s good data that vaccines are safe and they’ve very effective in terms of preventing severe illness,” Dr Dezfulian said. “If pregnant women are vaccinated their chances of getting so sick that they need ECMO are exceptionally low.”
The Crouches have now been vaccinated.
“I was so scared of putting something in my body that would affect my baby. But I ended up getting so much more and I exposed my child to so many things that I would have never thought,” Ms Crouch told Today. “I learned the hard way. I don’t like to push anybody into stuff. I don’t like to but I encourage everyone to get vaccinated.”
