Couple Marries in Hospital ICU After Pregnant Bride Is Taken Off Ventilator
A pregnant Minnesota woman was taken to the hospital just two weeks before her wedding date
Although she was intubated and briefly took a turn for the worse, experiencing septic shock and pneumonia, her nurses helped her keep her original wedding date by throwing a ceremony in the hospital room
'This might top the list for the happiest things I've seen at work,' a nurse said
One young couple got serious about their relationship "in sickness and in health" when they decided to tie the knot in a Minnesota intensive care unit.
According to a GoFundMe page organized on the couple's behalf, 23-year-old Ariana Sleen, who is pregnant with her first child, was rushed to Essentia Health-St. Mary's Medical Center in Duluth, Minn., with severe back pain on March 31 — just two weeks before she was set to tie the knot with her now-husband, Chandler Sleen.
According to the hospital, Ariana quickly took a turn for the worse and was diagnosed with pneumonia. She then went into septic shock and had to be placed on a ventilator.
'I just remember being rushed from room to room and I was just like, 'I have no idea what's going on,' and then just flashes of waking up and a bunch of people surrounding me,' Ariana recalled to local outlet Northern News Now.
Her condition remained poor for several days, per the GoFundMe, as she battled a severe urinary tract infection, a kidney infection with abscesses and a serious lung infection. But according to Ariana, Chandler never left her side.
'She had very bad pneumonia, went into septic shock, and that's when they had to put the tube in,' Chandler told the outlet, opening up about his fiancée being placed on a ventilator.
'I was definitely very terrified,' the dad-to-be added. 'I mean, these are the two most important people in my life right here and they were both struggling.'
Despite the health scare, the hospital reported that Ariana began to improve and was taken off the breathing machine, just one day before the couple was originally set to tie the knot.
'I was able to start standing the day after,' Ariana told Northern News Now. 'He picked it down to the exact date. That's like another reason where I was like, 'We have to go through with it,' because it was just like God's divine intervention.'
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Luckily for the Sleens, their nurses decided to add another line to their job title — wedding planner.
"All the nurses and everybody came together and put us in what's known as the 'Taylor Swift Suite,' " Ariana recalled, per Essentia Health, "and we got married."
Three of Ariana's intensive care nurses — Madeline Vogel, Olivia Schmid and Deanna Anderson — opened up about wanting to help the couple as much as they could.
'I just tried to clean up the room a little, make room for a wedding cake and food and got some carts and threw a sheet over it as a tablecloth,' Anderson told Northern News Now.
'We had to get creative,' Vogel added.
After the nurses tidied up Ariana's room and helped her into her wedding gown, she and Chandler said "I do" right there in the hospital bed.
'This might top the list for the happiest things I've seen at work,' Vogel noted.
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Reflecting on their experience, the newlyweds said they were extremely grateful to their nurses for helping them put together an impromptu wedding.
'These ladies have been nothing but the kindest, sweetest people,' Ariana told the outlet. 'They'll get an invite to the reception and everything for sure."
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The pair also said they plan to come back to Essentia Health when Ariana is ready to give birth to their baby — a son to be named Sebastian — in June.
'To come back here after every set of kids we have and be like, 'We get to come back to the same spot that we got married, that somehow, that was awesome,' ' Ariana said.
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