Live Well: Colorado Springs woman reflects on living after dying
Oct. 25—Bethany Liefer doesn't remember anything about the morning she died.
What she does remember about June 19, 2021: doing yardwork in the morning with her father, moving slowly, being out of breath, feeling unwell.
What she remembers next: being locked inside a coma, intubated and trached, frightened, her mom's hand on her face, hearing her say she was safe and it would be OK.
On the cusp of summer solstice about 18 months ago, Liefer, a pediatric pulmonology nurse at Children's Hospital Colorado, almost lost her life to a bilateral pulmonary embolism, otherwise known as a saddle embolism because it reaches from the pulmonary artery across the heart. In her case, the aortic artery also was clotted. After the clot broke free and pushed into her lungs, causing her respiratory distress, the right side of her heart worked so hard to get blood into her clot-filled lungs that it failed and she arrested.
She thought she was just having an asthma attack. And why not? At 37 she was a beacon of health who ran 5 miles three times a week, hiked 6 to 10 miles a few times a week and constantly chased after three young daughters.
"My hematologist explained it's a combination of factors," said Liefer, 38. "I was on birth control, which has a very small risk of blood clots. I was dehydrated, up at altitude and under a lot of stress. Put those things together and it pushed me over the edge."
She hadn't been feeling well that late spring. Two weeks earlier she'd hiked Mount Big Chief near Florissant, and noticed she had to take more breaks than usual to catch her breath. She climbed two mountains that day, but wasn't able to summit the first one because she felt so bad, an unusual occurrence. She chided herself for being lazy and not working hard enough.
"I could have had that clot then, when we were two and a half hours in on a four-wheel drive road, and I would have been dead," said Liefer, a Pine Creek High School graduate. That's what I think all the time. If it didn't happen at my house with medical care at hand's reach. I'd have been dead."
The odds aren't good for people who develop a saddle embolism. Half of them never make it to the hospital and die at home. Liefer is one of the lucky ones. After arriving at UCHealth Memorial Hospital North, she arrested — her heart didn't beat for five or six minutes.
"I was dead. Not brain dead," Liefer said. "They were compressing so my heart was pumping. Pulseless is what I read in the notes, which made my skin crawl."
Those compressions, as part of CPR, saved her: "That's why I have a brain. I want to hug every person who pressed my chest."
She was then transported to UCHealth Memorial Hospital Central, where a surgeon worked on her for six hours and she spent nine days in a coma.
When she finally gained consciousness, she couldn't see, a result of the embolism cutting off blood flow to the occipital part of her brain where vision lives. Her eyesight has gradually come back, though it will likely never be the same. But that's totally fine with Liefer. She's alive.
To celebrate one year of her aliveness, she and her boyfriend hiked Mount Sneffels, a fourteener in the San Juan Mountains, on June 20, delayed by one day due to weather. She hikes and runs a little slower these days, and she gets more winded due to the small clots that remain in her lungs, where they'll either live forever or be absorbed. She'll be on blood thinners forever. And there's a wicked scar on her chest from surgery that infatuates her.
Those minor physical aftereffects are inconsequential, though. What's more important are the ways the health crisis changed her approach to life.
She's a different parent now — being late to school with mismatched shoes is nothing to get worked up about. Her romantic relationship is richer and deeper. And she's a better nurse: "Having been a patient and feeling hopeless, out of control and frightened, I'm a much more compassionate nurse. I have more patience for the little guys coming in who are terrified of their flu shot. I get it."
What she'll always remember: "I'm really excited to be here, even in the awfulness sometimes. This is finite and small and we have to love each other better."
Contact the writer: 636-0270
