About a year after losing my friend Rachel, I found myself in a real pickle.

I was at our family lake house, in an extremely rural town, laying in bed during the middle of the day (highly unusual for me). My leg was in a walking cast from an unfortunate wakeboarding accident. I was having my very first miscarriage (and all the emotions that comes with trying to get pregnant for years, finally doing so, and personally screwing it up).

My family was in the living room trying to decide whether to take me up North to Cincinnati (4 hours) or Nashville (2 hours).

I remember ‘waking up’ and finding my friend Rachel sitting next to me. Rachel had died a year earlier but I knew I was dreaming so I wasn’t alarmed. In fact, given the circumstances of HER death (story here), and my situation, I found it fitting.

She kept ‘aww-ing’ as she was prone to do when she was living. But instead of concentrating on my stomach, were the pain was, she held on to my leg. She picked up my leg, cast and all, as if it were a baby, and said “Aw, poor leg. Poor, poor leg”.

Which, frankly, pissed me off because I felt she should have been saying that about the baby!

This went on and on and on. Until finally, I woke up (for real this time) out of frustration. Suddenly, like a punch to my already aching stomach, I made a connection.

Yes, Rachel had been pregnant when she died, but her actual cause of death was a blood clot.

I ripped off my walking cast and inspected my leg. Sure enough, through the swelling, I could see a tiny dark line making its way from my ankle to under my knee.

I crawled into the living room declaring I had to go to the hospital RIGHT NOW. Of course, everyone thought I had gone crazy. Explaining my dream did not help. Only when I started crawling to the car did my mother-in-law take the leap of faith and take me.

I made her stop at the first hospital we came to, a Doc Hollywood-style place with farm animals and all. Inside, however, we found a miracle. An old and decrepit, but very capable, retired vascular surgeon.

This man found several blood clots in the deep veins of my legs and the twin of my previous miscarriage well hidden in a place it couldn’t escape.

You’ll not find one doctor who, upon looking at my charts from that week, will not shake his head in amazement. It would have been only a matter of hours before the ectopic pregnancy burst or the blood clots moved.

This event was the cusp of what my doctors call the ‘Series of Unfortunate Events’ which eventually led to a major illness in my life. We didn’t know that then, but it only mattered that I survived the first step.

I struggle with that dream. Was it really Rachel visiting me as a forewarning of events to come? If so, why didn’t she receive such a vision to prevent her own death?

My mind has settled on the answer that my subconscious was just fitting together the pieces that were already in place. And the dream was my mind’s way of telling me.

But I look forward to the day I reunite with Rachel and learn the truth. Regardless, I owe her many thanks.