On November 3,34-year-old Karisa Bugal was going into labor at the Medical Center of Aurora, Colorado, when doctors discovered that she had a rare and unpreventable condition called amniotic fluid embolism. "The amniotic fluids surrounding the baby or part of the baby's skin or hair gets into the mother's bloodstream and that causes catastrophic shutdown of all the organs," Dr. Kelly Gerow told KUSA-TV. "We don't know how to prevent it. We don't know how to keep it from happening at all."
Because of the condition, her unborn child's heart rate began to dip, and the mother was faced with a horrible choice: Have a C-section and save his life, or delay and save her own.