Sasha Belcher and her husband, Nathan, were just glowing with excitement over the anticipation of welcoming their second child into the world. At four months along, the expectant mother was nearly halfway through the beautiful journey that would soon bear their brand new bundle of joy.
All signs indicated that she was happy, healthy and stable—but one morning, a single piercing pain down the middle of her forehead changed everything.
Sasha had experienced migraines since she was about 11 years old, but something about this one was different. Concerned over his wife’s unusual headache, Nathan urged her to go to the hospital. Though the symptoms may not have seemed ER-worthy just yet, his intuition told him something was wrong.
And thank God, because his gut instinct was dead on.
Photo Credit: Sasha Belcher
By the time they got to the hospital, Sasha was already unconscious, and her heart stopped just moments later. Before Nathan could even process what was happening, his wife was flown to the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences where they immediately started emergency surgery.
“They had already cut her hair, they had all the tubes in her, I was terrified out of my mind,” said Nathan. “I didn’t know what was going on.”
He was informed that Sasha’s surgery was supposed to take approximately eight hours, but just one hour into the procedure, doctors came out with gut-wrenching news. They spotted a tangle of burst blood vessels in her brain that had formed a two-inch clot, and Sasha was too unstable to have it safely removed.
By medical standards, it was unreachable. Inoperable.
There was nothing more they could do.
But thankfully, God wasn’t finished yet.
The best the surgeons could do to alleviate pressure on the brain was to remove the fluid around the mass, but they had no hope left for her survival. They regretfully informed Nathan that his wife would likely not last through the night.
“I told them I didn’t think she would survive the night. I had done everything I could to help her, but the rest was up to God at that point,” said Sasha’s neurologist, Dr. Abla. “I remember talking to people who were in my operating room that day who went home and cried—nurses in our operating room—after this surgery.”