On the morning of May 28, 2016, my wife, our children, and I started the morning much like we do every Saturday morning. That day we were planning a family outing to go out in the boat we had just purchased to do some fishing. I was outside hooking up the boat, when Serene came outside and said she went to the bathroom and the toilet was full of blood. We made the decision to go to the Emergency Room, not knowing about the events which were about to unfold.
We arrived at Sanford Health Center and were immediately brought up to the Pregnancy Ward. The nurses placed monitors on Serene to monitor her and the babies heartbeat. We were there for about four hours, never being seen by a Doctor, when the nurse came in and stated the Doctor said Serene had the brewings of a bladder infection, and she would be discharged. While the nurse went to go get the discharge papers, Serene said she needed to use the bathroom. As she sat up, she shrieked in pain. She stated it felt like something tore inside her. We pushed the Nurse Call button, to receive assistance. Soon after entered a young woman, whom introduced herself as a CNA. The CNA asked what was wrong, so we explained what happened, she told Serene she needed to remove the monitor's, and left, not once offering to assist Serene out of bed. Serene went into the bathroom, and seconds later began screaming to get the nurse. Once again I hit the Nurse Call button, and after a minute or so the nurse came back in. When the nurse opened the bathroom door, there was a pool of blood on the floor, and in the toilet. The nurse immediately helped Serene back to bed.

Soon after getting back to bed, Serene stated she had to use the bathroom, so the nurse got Serene a bed pan, except it wasn't urine that came out, it was blood. Serene continued to have sharp pains, and I began to time them, sure enough, they were three minutes apart. At this point I asked the nurses if she was having contractions. One nurse looked at the other and asked, had she been timing them, her response was "no". At this point, I left the room to regain my composure,  Soon after a nurse rushed out to grab me, and informed me that at 25 weeks the water broke and they were going to do an emergency C-Section.

Serene was in surgery for about two hours, when a nurse came and told me our daughter was alive, but very premature, and prior to the surgery they called for a medevac from Sanford in Fargo. I went and seen our daughter, and spoke with the pediatric doctor. I then asked where the medevac was, and was informed the helicopter had to make an emergency landing, and it would be at least another hour as the had to send an airplane to pick up the crew. At this point, I asked why she couldn't be flown to Saint Cloud. I was informed that it was further, and would take longer. Knowing this wasn't true, I argued that it was about a 45 minute flight, which was less time then it would take to pick up the other crew, fly them back, and then fly them to Fargo. I was then told, they would prefer to keep her in the Sanford network. I went back down to tell the family, and waited for Serene to be out of surgery. About an hour and a half later, a nurse came down and told me the Pediatric Doctor wanted to see me. As I entered the nursery, I observed a team of people doing CPR on our daughter. I was informed that they had been doing CPR for over a half hour, and her oxygen level was at 5%.
They needed my permission to stop. Understanding the medical aspects, and the medevac team had not arrived yet, I made the hardest decision a parent has to make, to stop trying to save your own flesh and blood's life.

The family and I were brought in to hold our deceased daughter, and to take some pictures for Serene. As we were taking turns holding her, the nurse came in and informed me Serene was out of surgery and asking for me. I was brought to her room, and she immediately asked, "where is our daughter?" I attempted to lie, and told her our daughter was fine. Serene said "you're lying! Where's our daughter?" So I told her, " she is fine, she is with our mother's."

Soon after the Doctor came in and told us that they had to remove Serene's uterus, cervix, and that they made a small incision in her bladder to remove the placenta. We were also informed that she had a rare condition called a Placenta Percreta.

Serene appeared to be fine with no major side effects from the three hour surgery. After a couple of hours, Serene asked the nurse to assist her in switching positions, during the process, Serene's catheter filled with blood. I asked the nurse, if that was normal, she replied 'oh my!' And left to call the doctor. It wasn't long and the urine became clear. About 10:30 pm I overheard the nurse on the phone, her conversation was extremely disturbing! She was saying that they needed more then two nurses on the ICU floor, and that they nearly lost a patient the night before, she finished the conversation by saying "what's the point of having an ICU if we can't staff enough nurses to keep people alive!" I looked at Serene and said "well that's comforting!

At around 4:30am I woke up to alarms going off. Once again Serene's catheter was full of blood, the nurse was coming in about every ten minutes to empty her Foley bag. By 6:00am one nurse couldn't keep up with emptying the bag, so a second nurse was called, while a third nurse was attempting to contact the doctor on call.

A little after 8:00am, the third nurse finally came in and said she got ahold of the Doctor, and he would be in shortly. About 8:30 he came in and looked at Serene, her condition was quickly deteriorating. He left, and came back in around 9:30, and told the nurse they had more blood coming in from Fargo, and Duluth. He told Serene and I, they were going to send her to the UofM, but couldn't make the call until she was stabilized. This entire time, two nurses were dumping the Foley bag, and it was filling as fast as they were dumping it.

At around 10:00 am Serena's blood pressure had dropped to 50/30, and her heart rate was at 20 beats per minute. The doctor just stood leaning against the counter on the opposite side of the room watching, when a nurse said "if she dies, it's on you, aren't you going to do anything" at this point, Serene told me she couldn't feel her legs, and she couldn't see anything. She said "I'm going to die Chanse, I love you, and tell the kids I love them!" I said no you're not! Keep fighting. Finally the doctor came over and started massaging the blood bags.

At around 11:00am, the Medivac arrived to airlift Serene to the UofM.
On the way to the UofM, I received a call from a doctor at the U, she stated they had Serene, and when she arrived she barely had a pulse. She needed my consent to operate, I said "yes, please do what ever it takes to save her life!" The doctor replied "I can't make any promises".

When I arrived at the UofM, Serene had been in surgery for almost 4 hours. After 5 hours and 52 minutes of surgery, the doctors came out to tell me how things went. They asked me if I was aware of what had happened, and I explained yes, I understood there was a placenta percreta, and that Sanford removed Serene's uterus, cervix, and made an incision in the bladder. Both the doctors looked puzzled with their mouths dropped, and one of the doctors stated that Serene's cervix was never removed, nor had Sanford attempted to remove it. They explained that they have to make an incision in the vagina to remove the cervix. Then they informed me that they didn't see an incision on her bladder, and the had to remove the back half of her bladder in order to remove the placenta. The combination of the cervix and bladder were acting as a funnel for her blood to flow straight through her bladder, exciting through the catheter. They then went on to explain that she received 21 liters of blood at the UofM and a total of 62 liters when it was all said and done, and questioned why Sanford didn't transport her down to the U sooner, knowing the complexity of her condition.

Serene was at the UofM for 8 days, and was discharged with restrictions to basically bed rest. Once home we proceeded with funeral arrangements for our daughter, and getting Serene back to being able to get into her daily routines.

We now have over $60,000 in medical bills, unpaid funeral expenses for our daughter, and we are behind in all our bills due to time off work, and added expenses for travel, food, and hotel stays while Serene was at the UofM.

We can use all the help we can get, no matter how large or small!