GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — This month, Amanda Banic will be the featured survivor at the Grand Rapids Go Red For Women Luncheon, which means once again, she'll be making the trip to the metro area from her home in the Van Buren County town of Hartford. But this trip will hopefully be much less dramatic than the trip Amanda made to Grand Rapids last spring.
In May, Amanda was expecting her first child. She was having what she describes as a healthy, normal pregnancy until things started changing in her third trimester.
"It just started with high blood pressure. They just kind of started monitoring that a little bit. I was starting to snore a lot, and one morning I woke up with excruciating chest pains" she said.
"We did go to a local hospital. Everything checked out just fine, so we didn't really worry much beyond that. And that entire week, I just kind of went downhill, really. I just started retaining fluid. I had a lot of trouble breathing. I was swelling like crazy."
Then on May 8, the pains "came back tenfold."
"It just was like a ripping and tearing sensation. It radiated up into my jaw. My vision started to go, and I just knew right then this is it. I thought those were my final moments. All I could think about was I need to get out of here safely. Maybe we can at least save my baby," she said.
The Banics took another trip to the hospital. This time a CT scan detected something that was certainly cause for alarm.
"Within minutes, my room was filled with doctors, and they're like, 'We are airlifting you to another hospital, and you're going to have a procedure done. You're going to have your baby,'" she remembers.
The doctors didn't tell Amanda or her husband Derek what was going on right away. The couple believes it was an effort to keep Amanda calm during her flight to Corewell Health Butterworth Hospital in Grand Rapids.
As they would eventually learn, she was suffering from an aortic dissection. It's a tear in the body's main artery, and it's often deadly.
"It kind of just hit me in that very moment that I'm in a little bit of trouble. I'm in deep water here. I do remember someone coming to my bedside and conversing with me and I don't remember much of the conversation. But I know now that it was actually the labor and delivery nurse and the very last words I remember saying were 'Please make sure I get to meet my baby.'"
As Amanda recalled that moment, she got choked up and took a few seconds to compose herself.
"I have told this story so many times and that part catches me every, single time," she said.
"So they delivered the baby. Everything went off without a hitch there. She was very healthy. Everything was perfect. She did spend a few days in the NICU just because she was early. I went straight into surgery. They were able to repair part of my aorta. The next morning my heart started pooling blood and they had to go back in for a second open-heart surgery."
For the next six days, Amanda was on life support. Her husband Derek remembers seeing proof that she was fighting for her life.
"She's stubborn. One of the doctors said that she wouldn't be moving or doing any of this within three days or whatever I looked over within minutes and she was moving her hand or something, and I'm like 'That's my girl!'" Derek said.
During Amanda's time on life support, the only time she showed any kind of reaction was when doctors gave her skin-to-skin contact with her new baby girl, Baylor. On Mother's Day, she came off life support.
"I always think that's kind of neat. Maybe there's just a little magic behind that," she said.
Today, Amanda and Derek are enjoying every moment with Baylor as she continues to grow.
"She keeps us on our feet. She keeps us up, but we're very blessed," Derek said.
Amanda describes Baylor as "a spitfire."
"We always say she came in like a wrecking ball and she hasn't stopped since. She hasn't stopped swinging. She is just the greatest joy we could have ever hoped for. We are not able to have more children after this. So we just say that God gave us the perfect girl and we couldn't do better than her anyway, so we're okay with that," she said.
Amanda's story is not an easy one to tell. But she says it's important to her to keep this conversation about heart health going.
"Heart disease does not discriminate. I was 34 when it happened. I was healthy. I was fit. I was active. And in the blink of an eye, I was on life support, fighting for my life, with like a 2% chance of survival, undergoing one of the riskiest surgeries that can be done. I had never even heard of an aortic dissection," she said.
"I'm not out here saying I'm going to save a bunch of lives, but maybe I do. Maybe I just help someone start paying attention to their body more. Or maybe someone's going to get online and Google something after this and just learn about things to look for and pay attention to."
The American Heart Association has material on their website showing how the symptoms of a heart attack are different for men and women. They also have instruction on how to do CPR, which might save someone's life if they're experiencing a heart attack.
"I want to connect with other survivors, and I want to be an advocate for people. If I can help anyone in any way, I want to do that," she said.
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