By Lee Bonorden (Contact) | Austin Daily Herald

Kasey Snater is thankful.

Thankful for the doctors, nurses and technicians who did so much for her.

Thankful for her husband, Noah.

Thankful for her parents, Michael and Ann Langstaff, older sister, Michelle, and younger brother, Mikey.

She’s thankful for grandmothers, Mary and Linda, and all the other relatives and friends.

Thankful even for Shiloh, her pet dog, and his friendship.

Thankful most of all for second and third chances at life and every breath she takes.

“If this would have happened to someone older, they wouldn’t have made it through surgery, my doctor told me,” she said.

Snater did survive, but what a price she paid and is still paying.

This is another story of ordinary people thrust into extraordinary circumstances.

Snater’s husband, Noah, works at Carney Auto Salvage, where her father, Michael Langstaff, also works. Her mother, Ann, is a night supervisor for the housekeeping department at Austin Medical Center.

Her sister, Michelle, recently moved to Mankato. Younger brother, Mikey, is a freshman at Austin High School, where Snater graduated.

Noah and Kasey live in a comfortable two-story home in northwest Austin.

She worked at a video store and aspired to go to college.

All that normalcy for the 21-year-old woman changed drastically last June.

Ironically, it was a bit of “happy news” that set the series of events into motion.

“I found out I was pregnant,” she began retelling her story and speaking unsparingly the basic details. “I didn’t have any problems. No morning sickness or anything like that, but toward the end of June I started throwing up.

“Anything I ate, I threw up and I was sick all the time,” she said.

By the middle of July, Snater’s condition worsened. She was losing weight and went to the emergency room at AMC.

Doctors told her she was dehydrated and had an elevated heart rate and sent her home.

Soon after, she returned to the emergency room.

“My weight was down. I had lost five pounds in one week,” she recalled.

“I told them I was really sick and that this had been going on for two weeks. I said ‘I know this can’t be normal,’” Snater said.

According to the woman, doctors told her she was “trying” to lose weight because of her pregnancy and may be anorexic, but Snater said it wasn’t true.

In the end, “They diagnosed me with severe morning sickness and sent me home again,” she said.

Worried about her baby, Snater visited her OB/GYN, who said her baby was developing normally. She was relieved.

Back home Snater grew weaker by the day until she was forced to quit her job at a local video rental store and postpone plans to enroll in community college.

“I was too sick and wanted to take two weeks off to see if I would get better,” she said.

She was 12 weeks pregnant at the time.

Her health worsened more.

“It got to the point where I couldn’t even keep water down,” she said.

Snater returned to the AMC emergency room and was admitted to the hospital Aug. 11.

According to Snater, a dispute arose between emergency room physicians and her OB/GYN over what was causing Snater’s illness.

“My OB/GYN said they should do an ultrasound of my abdomen,” she said. “They (the ER doctors) kept saying it was pregnancy complications, but he said no, it was not.”

The ultrasound was done and it revealed “something didn’t look right in my colon,” Snater recalled.

She was discharged from the Austin hospital and referred to an OB/GYN at Methodist Hospital, Rochester.

“I couldn’t even walk by myself at this point,” she said.

Her normal weight before the ordeal began was 125 pounds. When she was admitted to the Methodist Hospital, she weighed 99 pounds.

Complications surface

quickly

Admitted to the Methodist Hospital emergency room, the pregnant woman had four ultrasounds, an MRI plus CT scans.

Her developing baby was okay. However, doctors discovered an enflamed colon.

A biopsy further revealed “my colon tissue was dying and they ordered an emergency surgery,” Snater said.

The surgery was performed Aug. 14 by Dr. Mark Truty.

“I made him promise that I would survive or I wasn’t going to have the surgery,” Snater said. “He said ‘I promise you will be fine’ and I went to surgery and went under and I lost the baby during surgery.”

Her son, Jakz Michael, was 14 weeks old at the time.

Matters get worse

Doctors told her she had ulcerative colitis, a form of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Ulcerative colitis is a form of colitis, a disease of the intestine, specifically the large intestine or colon, that includes characteristic ulcers, or open sores, in the colon. Ulcerative colitis is, however, is a systemic disease that affects many parts of the body outside the intestine. Because of the name, IBD is often confused with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a troublesome, but much less serious condition. It has similarities to Crohn’s disease, another form of IBD.

Snater, literally, has the scar to prove how far reaching the colitis was.

“My scar goes clear across my abdomen,” she said.

More things happened in the hospital that alarmed her.

After surgery, her weight ballooned to 150 pounds.

Still in pain, doctors made her walk, which was even more painful with the added weight.

When her sutures started leaking, that hinted that something else had gone wrong.

“They waited to see if it was going to go away, because they thought it was just a little fluid leaking after I was so full of fluids and they wanted to wait and see,” she said.

Doctors changed their minds and told Snater she would need a second surgery Aug. 25. “They thought, maybe, the stitching had come loose,” she said. “They said they would be in and out, just a half-hour on surgery and an hour and a half in recovery. No big deal.”

In fact, she was in surgery for three hours and another three hours in recovery.

“When they opened me up, they found I had an infection, an abscess and they had to clean out my entire cavity. They completely redid the entire thing,” she said.

When she regained consciousness and learned what happened to her in surgery, “I freaked out completely,” she said.

They gave her pain medications, but that didn’t work. “I was in a lot of pain. Nothing seemed to help,” she said.

Snater was “banded” to protect the sutures from coming loose again and to stabilize the stitches.

By Aug. 30, she was feeling better. Her spirits were buoyed by an aunt who spent the night with her at Methodist Hospital and her father’s promise to get his daughter a haircut.

Another setback was about to happen.

She noticed, “I was wheezing.”

“I mentioned it to my nurse, but she didn’t think it was anything serious and they didn’t follow-up with an X-ray or anything,” Snater said.

She continued to experience trouble breathing and then even more trouble. Every breath was an ordeal. “Then,” she said, “my respiratory system crashed and I quit breathing all together.”

She woke up a week and a half later. “I was probably conscious, but I don’t remember anything,” she said of that new recovery period.

A breathing tube was inserted in her throat and she was ventilated, but Snater kept getting “worse and worse.”

Her respiratory system crashed every time they tried to move her.

A special roto prone bed was delivered to Methodist Hospital.

Snater was strapped into the bed and it rotated her every 15 minutes, so the fluids accumulated in her body wouldn’t settle.

She was made “paralyzed” at the time, because she kept fighting the artificial breathing machine and trying to breathe on her own.

Things happen again and again

At this point in Snater’s story, it’s worth noting she has spent an hour recounting the harrowing summer she endured. Recalling surgeries and other details matter-of-factly and at times talking about intimacies others would be too shy to share with a stranger.

Who is this woman who can do all that?

She’s 21 years old, suffered ulcerative colitis and lost a child.

Because she has no colon, she has an ostomy, the surgically-created opening in the body for the discharge of body wastes.

Her respiratory system collapsed and she endured Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome,

received 16 blood transfusions and countless plasmas, spent six days in the roto prone bed, watched her weighted drop by 30 pounds and then balloon upward all the while enduring a living hell of a summer of surgeries and pain.

Just what was going on in her mind throughout all of that? How did she do it?

“I got scared, but I knew I would be OK,” she said of her private thoughts as summer turned to fall and new medical emergencies occurred one after the other. “I prayed I would be OK and I really believed I would be okay.”

“I had my church praying for me, my grandma’s church praying for me. I was on prayer lists everywhere,” she said.

“I used to go to a Lutheran church and Mankato and the whole church was praying for me there,” she added. “I don’ think I’ve ever prayed as much as I did this summer in my whole life. And I never heard of so many people praying for one person.”

“I got discouraged a lot,” she admitted, “because before my second surgery I was almost home and then I was almost home again when something else went wrong, but, then, I made it out okay.”

Snater “woke up” from her final Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome problems Sept. 14. “I was half asleep and half awake most of that time in recovery,” she said.

The breathing tube was finally removed, but not before doctors threatened she would need a tracheotomy; still another medically-necessary invasion of the woman’s body.

She was discharged Sept. 30 from Methodist Hospital and went to her parents’ Austin home.

She came home to the house she and Noah and Shiloh occupy, Nov. 10.

Snater is recovering satisfactorily albeit slowly. So much has happened to her and there is more to come.

She faces two more surgeries next spring and summer.

“Some days I wake up and wish it was just a long dream,” she said. “I took a lot of things for granted before this happened to me, but not anymore.

“It’s been a big adjustment to get used to,” she sighed.

At that moment, it was the first time she shed any tears, during the interview.

Hope to defray medical bills

A benefit for Kasey Snater will be held beginning at 3 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 22 at the Mapleview Community Hall.

A free will donation of $10 per plate is asked.

The activities include silent auctions, root beer floats and bake and craft sales.

Food will be served at 4 p.m.

Donations are also being accepted at Accentra Credit Union in Austin to help Snater defray huge medical expenses.

www.austindailyherald.com/news/2008/nov/15/thankful-every-breath/