A Texas woman has finally been released from the hospital after nearly dying and having her arms and legs amputated after contracting septic shock in giving birth.
Krystina Pacheco, 29, of Pleasanton, Texas, welcomed her daughter Amelia on Oct. 24, 2022, in what she told ABC News was an uneventful C-section delivery.
However, after returning home two days later, she began to feel feverish and experience shortness of breath and vomiting. Assuming these symptoms were related to her recovery, she was given ibuprofen by a nurse but continued to feel sick.
Pacheco visited a doctor, who had her dispatched to a local emergency room. From there, she was airlifted to a San Antonio hospital, which diagnosed her with septic shock — an extremely dangerous condition in which the body has an extreme response to infection.
“I just remember I couldn’t breathe anymore and I couldn’t see anymore and I just started slowly fading out,” Pacheco told ABC News. “My husband, I could just hear him saying, ‘Please come back to us, please, your babies need you. I need you. I need you to be here and help me with our babies,’ and that’s the last thing I remember.”
While treatments and medication that Pacheco was given to control the condition saved her life, unfortunately, they cut off the circulation of blood to her hands and feet, leading to necrosis that made amputation necessary.
“My hands and feet were black. They looked like a person who had gotten frostbite,” Pacheco told ABC, adding that her medical team had done everything possible to avoid getting to this point.
“I was just breaking down and being absolutely crushed,” she said, of learning about the necessity for amputations. “And crying with my family, crying with Jacob, and just being sad that my life would no longer be the same.”
However, Pacheco kept moving forward, using the thought of her daughter and son Owen to give her strength through multiple surgeries. “They were my number one motivation, hands down.”
In January, she was moved to TIRR Memorial Hermann, a rehabilitation center in Houston, where she tackled the hurdles of learning to live with her new reality.
“She’s really, really strong. She’s kicking rehab butt, for sure,” said Pachecho’s husband Jacob, speaking to ABC. “We’re waiting for the healing process to happen on her legs, but her arms are doing really well, and hopefully we’ll be starting the prosthetic training.”
“It’s a roller coaster, I’m not going to say I don’t have my bad days, because I do,” Pachecho told Houston’s KHOU. “It’s an emotional thing to experience.”
In addition to mothering her children, she reports that she’s made progress with little personal care things that most people take for granted.
“I’ve gotten into putting on makeup by myself, I put my contacts in by myself,” she shared with KHOU. “Brush my hair.” Her life has become a series of small battles that she is winning one at a t
