On Tuesday, Serena Williams revealed that she almost died after giving birth to her daughter, Olympia, after developing blood clots in her lungs.
The 23-time Grand Slam champion also revealed that she had an emergency Cesarean section surgery after her increased heart rate during contractions. However, the surgery was successful.
According to reports, Williams said that, “I almost died after giving birth to my daughter,”. “But what followed just 24 hours after giving birth were six days of uncertainty,” she added.
Serena has had a scrape with death from blood clots. In 2011, she spent nearly 12 months incapacitated after a cut on her foot from a piece of broken glass at a Munich restaurant led to a pulmonary embolism.
Serena said that while recovering in the hospital, one day after the emergency Caesarean, she felt short of breath and after some convincing on Serena’s part, the hospital staff finally sent for a CT scan and then put her on a life-saving drip.
But her ordeal wasn’t over. She started coughing so much from the blood clots that her Cesarean wound popped open.
“I returned to surgery where the doctors found a large hematoma in my abdomen. Then I returned to the operating room for a procedure that prevents clots from travelling to my lungs.
“When I finally made it home to my family I had to spend six weeks of motherhood in bed.”
Serena said it was a complicated experience and despite the agonizing ups and downs she “considers herself fortunate”.
Partly for surviving the ordeal and also because she can still live out her dream on the tennis court once she returns to competitive form.
The former world number one staged her long-awaited tennis comeback earlier this month by playing alongside her older sister, Venus, in a Federation Cup doubles match but it didn’t go well.