Dr. Carmen Vandal
Doctor saved by colleagues during C-section with complications.
Carmen Vandal has helped deliver hundreds of babies as a family medicine doctor at Swedish Medical Center. During the delivery of her own baby in 2020, her colleagues’ expert training and teamwork saved her life when her routine C-section turned into a life-threatening emergency.
Home team
When Dr. Vandal first announced her pregnancy, she got some funny looks when she said she wanted to deliver at her own hospital. Swedish has had a leading Labor and Delivery team for more than 100 years but the hospital is largely known now for being a Level 1 Trauma Center; home to the Swedish Neuro Network, with some of the best stroke interventionalists in the country and the Sarah Cannon Cancer Institute. Dr. Vandal said for her, she wouldn’t have it any other way, “My answer was always ‘I love the nurses there. I love my doctor. I know the care I'm going to get. I know it's going to be quality care. Little did I know, it was actually going to be really important that I deliver Swedish.”
The big day
Dr. Vandal went into labor on Super Bowl Sunday. After two days in the hospital (more than 50 hours of laboring!), she knew her body wasn’t progressing normally and she was getting worn down. Dr. Vandal and her obstetrician, Dr. Meredith Townsend, decided a C-section would be best for her and the baby. She explained to her husband the whole operation would take just 30-45 minutes but as soon as baby was out, Dr. Vandal recalls there was a change in the atmosphere in the room. “The last thing I remember is actually holding my baby. Once they brought him to me, I started to feel like was going to fall asleep. I remember saying, ‘I don't want to drop the baby’ and handed him to someone. Next thing I knew, I woke up in the ICU.”
Sudden complication
Dr. Vandal suffered what’s called a spontaneous uterine rupture, a rare complication that can occur during cesarean or vaginal childbirth. It’s essentially a tear in the wall of the uterus and can be life-threatening because of severe blood loss. In Dr. Vandal’s case, it was very difficult to determine where the bleeding was coming from or how to stop it. Dr. Townsend called for backup and the OB hospitalist came in to help, but they too were unable to control the bleeding. The doctors then activated the always on-call Level 1 Trauma surgery team and they started emergency transfusions and finally got the bleeding under control. She received 12 units (six liters) of blood in all, more than the entire volume of blood in a normal healthy adult.
Caring like family
When Dr. Vandal awoke, she was intubated and couldn’t speak to ask where her son was. The team got her a notepad and explained what happened. It was a shock, “I remember thinking, I could not be here if things would have turned out different, if I would have been at a different hospital, if things wouldn’t have happened as quickly as they did. Everyone acted right away to figure out what the problem was.” She was soon reunited with her son, husband, and extended family. Colleagues from across the department stopped in to show their support. Dr. Vandal was in the ICU for two days and then transferred to another part of the hospital for nearly another week to regain her strength after all the surgeries. Their first family “outing” was a lap around the nurses’ station — with Dr. Vandal using a walker and her husband holding their baby.
Continued support
In the weeks that followed, she attended the breastfeeding support group and never missed an opportunity to return to Labor and Delivery and the ICU to show them how she and her son were doing. Dr. Vandal says it was always a celebration. “I already had this great relationship with them being a coworker, but knowing that they were the ones who took care of during a very critical time, it just changed things. My Swedish Family means all the more to me now.”
Learn more about Swedish Medical Center's Level 1 Trauma Center and Labor and Delivery.