Anna Weeber, 27, had always suffered intense headaches.
Roughly three times a week since she turned 16, she’s had to struggle through the day with a pounding in her temples.
But she had never felt anything like this before. It was a crisp September afternoon. Weeber and her husband were getting ready to go on a bike ride with their 2-year-old son. At the time, Weeber was 26 weeks pregnant with the couple’s second child.
Before they could hit the trails, a burst of indescribable pain went off in Weeber’s skull.
“It was the most intense headache I’ve ever had in my life,” Weeber later told People. “It felt like a balloon was filling with tar in my head.”
Weeber was sweating. She vomited. Moments later, she realized that she had no power over the entire left side of her body. She collapsed as her husband called an ambulance.
“From that moment on, I don’t remember anything,” she said.
An ambulance rushed Weeber to her local hospital in the town of Zeeland, Michigan.
There, doctors administered a CT scan. They had terrifying news to share with Nate, Anna’s wife. Anna had been stricken with a ruptured brain aneurysm.
Essentially, a blood vessel in her brain clogged up, causing a building pressure, like a balloon. Then the vessel ruptured. Blood flooded the empty spaces around her brain tissue, nearly leading to a stroke. It was a potentially deadly illness.
Dr. Justin Singer took over Anna’s treatment. He described the odds she was up against.
“About 50 percent of patients who have a ruptured brain aneurysm don’t even make it to the hospital alive,” Singer said. “Of the 50 percent of those patients that do survive, another 30-50 percent don’t recover to their previous level of health and function.”
Anna’s case hit Singer hard.
His wife is around Anna’s age. At the time, Singer’s wife was 24 weeks pregnant herself. The similarities were eerie.
Singer thought about what he want if he were Nate. He knew he couldn’t risk the baby.
“I know if my wife was in that position, I would want the most definitive treatment option that poses the least risk for the baby,” Singer said. “And that’s surgery, so that’s what I advised them to do.”
Doctors prepared Anna for risky brain surgery. Meanwhile, Nate was hard at work doing all he could for his wife. He asked his Facebook friends for prayers. They forwarded his request to all of their friends. Soon, there was an enormous network of Facebook users praying for the recovery of Anna and the safety of her baby.
“Hundreds if not thousands of people started praying for us all around the world,” Anna said.
The surgery was a complete success. All those prayers had been answered.
Nate waited in torment for a full day and night, while Anna recovered from surgery.
Would she have brain damage? When she woke up, would she still be the woman he married and the mother of his children?
Nate got his answers when Anna woke up.
“She was completely back to herself,” he said.
Anna recovered slowly, and her baby continued to grow inside of her. On December 30, 2016, Anna’s baby boy Hudson was born. He was completely healthy.
“We were just praying that Hudson wouldn’t suffer any effects from the surgery, and as far as we can tell, he is one perfectly healthy little boy,” Anna said.
The week after Hudson was born, Singer’s wife gave birth to a healthy baby girl named Jordyn. The woman who survived the unthinkable and the doctor who helped her do it started planning play dates for Hudson and Jordyn.
Anna and her husband have already visited Singer and his wife. They both brought their miraculous children along. These two infants made friends almost instantly.
As an added bonus, Anna’s headaches are gone. She hasn’t had one since she woke up from the surgery that saved both her and her infant son’s lives.
“The first couple of days after Hudson was born, he and I would look at each other and make eye contact and I would just start crying knowing everything we’ve been through together. We both knew God got us through this huge miracle.”
