Serena Williams Saved Her Own Life

— But too many women's voices are not heard in medical crises, especially women of color

MedpageToday
A photo of Serena Williams during a press conference.

One of the most amazing accomplishments performed by tennis superstar Serena Williams took place off the court, when she saved her own life.

It was in 2017, when Williams had an emergency cesarean section because her baby's heart rate became dangerously slow during labor. The day after giving birth to her daughter, Williams was short of breath. Having experienced blood clots in the past, she had no doubt that she was struggling with a life-threatening pulmonary embolism.

The trouble was no one believed her. As reported by Vogue in 2018, when Williams told a nurse that she needed a CT scan and heparin, the nurse concluded that Williams was not thinking clearly because of pain meds. Williams insisted that a doctor be summoned. The physician did leg ultrasounds, which were determined to be normal. Still, Williams persisted in her demand for a CT scan and heparin. When her entreaties were finally taken seriously, the imaging revealed deadly blood clots in her lungs, which required life-saving surgery and 6 weeks of bed rest.

"Serena had to figuratively jump up and down and scream before somebody paid any attention to her. She knew something wasn't right," Linda Goler Blount, MPH, president and CEO of the advocacy group Black Women's Health Imperative, told me when I interviewed her for a book on bias in medical care. Despite being a celebrity, Williams's situation was emblematic of the challenges often faced by women in medical settings, particularly by women of color. Black women in the U.S. have nearly three times the risk of dying from pregnancy related complications than white women, according to a 2022 federal report from the CDC.

After this traumatic experience, Williams took to Instagram to share her struggles with postpartum depression, which is also more common with Black women. In the U.S., estimates of the overall rate of postpartum depression range from 10% to 20%. For Black and Latina women the rate is closer to 38%, and many of these women do not receive screening or help.

Emily Dossett, MD, a reproductive psychiatrist at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, told me (when I spoke to her for the book) that Black women often face "institutionalized racism, and that actually cuts across socioeconomic lines, which results in microtraumas, as well as historical traumas that can result in elevated rates of perinatal depression." Although it is called postpartum depression, Dossett said this disorder can start in the third trimester of pregnancy and continue after the baby is born. The National Institutes of Health reports that perinatal depression "is a real medical illness and can affect any mother -- regardless of age, race, income, culture, or education."

The most serious risk for women of all races and ages is when they are not heard or believed in a medical crisis. The importance of listening to patients is especially critical during pregnancy, when expectant and new mothers can have a heightened sixth sense when something is wrong.

This phenomenon inspired the Tara Hansen Foundation campaign to save lives: Stop. Look. Listen! The goal of the program is "to empower a woman's voice as an important aspect in addressing maternal health and safety. The concept is simple: 'stop' when a woman has a complaint and no longer consider her a routine obstetrical patient, 'look' and examine the patient related to her complaint, and 'listen' to what she is experiencing, in her own words."

The campaign was created by Ryan Hansen to honor his late wife, special education teacher Tara Hansen, who died 6 days after the couple's son was born. In a video, Ryan described how Tara began to feel ill soon after a normal delivery. She feared that something was very wrong, but her concerns were ignored, and she was sent home. As her condition worsened, Tara told Ryan that she needed to go back to the hospital. Despite efforts by the medical team to save her, a virulent infection spread until nothing could be done. Had the infection been detected when Tara first reported her symptoms, she most likely would have survived.

Like Serena Williams, Tara Hansen knew something was wrong, but her voice was not heard in time.

In an essay by Williams in the new issue of Vogue in which she announced plans to evolve "away from tennis, toward other things that are important to me," she revealed that she and her husband want to give their 5-year-old daughter a sibling.

Williams' courage has been legendary on the tennis court -- and in the maternity ward. Let's wish her continued strength and success.

Emily Dwass has written about health and culture for numerous publications. She is the author of Diagnosis Female: How Medical Bias Endangers Women's Health. An updated paperback edition of the book came out in February.