“One Harrowing Day”: How a Freak Accident Changed My Friend’s Outlook on Life Insurance Forever

Life insurance can be a safeguard against an emergency. If you pass away, the money from your policy can help provide some financial security for your family. For many people, life insurance is (let’s face it) a mundane back-up plan. But you can’t always predict what can happen in your life, even if you’re young and healthy.

A friend of mine was proactive about getting life insurance as soon as she and her husband started their family, especially since she already knew quite a bit about life insurance because she works in a related industry.

What began as a checkmark on a list of “things I should probably do to be responsible now that I have a family” transformed over a few short years into something really emotional and almost sacred.

Under the condition of anonymity to protect her family’s privacy, she agreed to share her story.

Responsible Beginning

She first got life insurance in 2018 when her daughter was four months old. Both she and her husband were grouped into the best rating class, meaning that life insurance underwriters considered them in excellent health and, as a result, gave them the best possible rates for their age group. People who are young (she’d just turned 31) and have a clear medical record might be able to get some of the most competitive rates. She and her husband both took out 20-year, $1 million term life insurance policies.

My friend isn’t alone—a common reason to get life insurance is when you have people who depend on you financially, and a new baby is a perfect example. (But not the only one—your spouse, parents or other relatives may depend on you, too.)

“My first child was the most seamless birth you’ve ever seen in your life. I was bouncing around the next day,” she said. But as many parents like to say, every baby is different—and in her case, the difference between her first and second child came with dangerous consequences.

Birth Story Gone Wrong

A few years later, her second child’s birth turned into a medical emergency.

“I had an extremely dicey experience where I risked dying while giving birth,” she said. “I had no reason to believe I was a high-risk birth. I had no risk factors, and then unexpectedly I had an undiagnosed placenta accreta.” In a normal birth, the placenta detaches and comes out shortly after the baby is born. Placenta accreta is a condition where the placenta grows deep into the uterine wall. When it detaches, it can cause life-threatening bleeding.

My friend’s labor and birth seemed to go smoothly. The baby was born healthy. A student doctor even stepped in to gain experience taking out the placenta just after delivery. She first knew something was going very wrong when the supervising doctor pushed the medical resident out of the way in order to help her, herself.

The room became chaotic. Doctors rushed to stop the bleeding. When they couldn’t, they raced her into an emergency surgery. The operation to remove the placenta created a perforation, or hole, in her uterus, so the surgeons cut into her abdomen to stitch her uterus back together, and gave her multiple blood transfusions to stabilize her. When she woke up, she realized she was lucky to be alive.

“I was deeply out of it and coming to, and a nurse asked permission to pray for me. My doctor was clearly relieved I was alive. It hurt to breathe. I wasn’t functional.” Maybe because of her job in a related industry, she swears life insurance came to mind even in those moments lying in the hospital bed. “I thought, thank God I already have life insurance, because if I died—I get upset imagining my husband going home alone with a new baby.” Knowing she had financial protection in place offered a sense of comfort and security at a time when she was especially vulnerable.

She’s made a full recovery since then, as far as day-to-day life goes—but any future pregnancy would be extremely high-risk, involving a planned C-section and even a possible hysterectomy. While birth is often a joyful time, it can carry some serious risks, even with modern medicine.

Health Complications Beneath the Surface

How a person looks may not tell the full story about their health. You might not even know what secrets your own body is keeping, unless the right test brings new information to light.

In my friend’s case, it wasn’t her doctor who alerted her to another important health condition. A family member measured extremely high on a lesser-known type of cholesterol called lipoprotein(a), or Lp(a). The family member’s doctor recommended that that person notify all immediate family members and tell them to get tested.

My friend’s bloodwork has always been within normal limits for the main types of cholesterol (HDL and LDL), but when she was tested for Lp(a), the results came back elevated. Elevated Lp(a) could mean increased risk of heart disease and blood clotting problems, even if other cholesterol levels are normal. Her doctor urged her to take measures to make sure her regular

HDL and LDL cholesterol levels weren’t just in normal bounds, but excellent. The doctor prescribed a statin medication to help reduce cholesterol.

To be clear: Her Lp(a) levels have likely been high her whole life. Lp(a) is primarily genetic and someone’s lifestyle has a limited effect. Years before taking the Lp(a) test, my friend qualified for the best life insurance rates based on the medical info her insurance company requested. With a new diagnosis and prescription medication on her file, though (as well as the surgical history from her child’s birth), a future underwriting assessment could turn out very differently.

“Same Me,” New Outlook on Life Insurance

The big realization was that even seemingly isolated or relatively subtle shifts in health can change a lot in terms of your life insurance profile.

“It’s not like I got cancer,” she said. “I feel like the same person, but I had this freak thing when I gave birth, and I also learned something new about my bloodwork which has been with me forever and not changed anything about my life. This isn’t a story of aging or getting some new chronic disease. Birth is pretty objectively the most dangerous thing I’ve done in my life. It’s one harrowing day, but I’m really glad I’m insured already rather than seeking insurance now. An underwriter looks at your whole health history and presumably they’d be concerned about the risks should I have another baby. I’m the same me, but one crazy thing can really change things in terms of my insurability.”

It can be easy at times to think of big health changes as part of a distant future, when really, a single day can change your life. Having a baby, climbing a ladder to build a treehouse, even driving down the highway to work involves an aspect of danger—risks are necessary to reach the deepest joys and most satisfying goals in life. A life insurance policy exists to help give you more security and peace of mind now, not just to be back-up for some far-off scenario.

“The longer you wait, the more you leave it to chance,” she said. Preparing early may help you feel more ready to face the unknown.

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