Stephanie Snook, who was due with twins, wanted to be interviewed for an article about her race's high rate of pregnancy-related deaths. She had no idea her own life was at stake.
Snook felt confident for most of her pregnancy, even though her age, the fact that she was carrying twins and her heart condition made her high-risk. But she didn’t drink or smoke, and she had no reason to doubt her maternal-fetal specialist at Swedish’s First Hill campus, part of a hospital system that is the largest nonprofit health care provider in the greater Seattle area.
The following day Snook went to work. There, she told a longtime friend and co-worker, Cheryn Castro, a few details about the appointment: Her doctor had told her to stay hydrated and to keep her feet elevated to help with swelling from the pregnancy. She also mentioned she was getting frustrated that the doctor had not delivered the babies yet, said Castro, one of the final people to see Snook alive.By around 9 a.m. that day, Snook’s breathing had become visibly shallow, Castro said.
An emergency C-section was performed six minutes after the ambulance arrived. A 6-pound, 7.4-ounce boy and a 5-pound, 2.5-ounce girl were delivered, both experiencing seizures as a result of the oxygen loss, Snook’s family said. Photos of Snook's twins, Sean and Tammy, were hung on a posterboard at a celebration of life memorializing Snook. The twins died days after Snook, cradled by relatives.A death certificate for Snook obtained by NBC News lists cardiac failure as the cause of death, and cites her pre-existing heart condition as a contributing factor. For reasons that are not clear, no autopsy was performed; the King County medical examiner’s office said it was not authorized to provide information.
“We can have all the medicine and we can have the most advanced science, but if the racism is still there, there's still that barrier,” said Natasha Osborn, 28, who is half-Native, half-white and lives in the Seattle suburb of Tukwila.
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