Trista Sutter is opening up about the terrifying medical emergency that she had on vacation last month — and the lingering effects the incident had on both her and her family.
On Tuesday's Good Morning America, the first Bachelorette star and her husband Ryan opened up about the seizure Trista had on June 1 while visiting Croatia with their children, 9-year-old Maxwell and 8-year-old Blakesley. Trista said all she remembers is "feeling very dizzy and nauseous" before falling into a dreamlike state, which she describes as a "white euphoria" and losing control of her body. "I heard Blakesley screaming, 'Mommy, Mommy,'" Ryan said. "Trista had fallen [over] onto Blakesley in a sort of convulsive state." The trained EMT described his wife of 14 years' scary condition. "I was checking her pulse. She was shaking and stiff. Her eyes were wide open, rolled back in her head, looking sort of up," he told GMA. "She wasn’t breathing. She was turning sort of blue."
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
The little girl was pretty shaken up by seeing her mother in that state, of course. "She was traumatized, I think she probably still is a bit," said Trista, who has undergone a battery of tests without conclusive results as to the cause of the seizure. "She knows that something is wrong." Things are different now for Trista, too — in good ways and bad. Without knowing what caused the episode, her doctors have advised her not to drive until they determine what happened. "It's changing my life, still is, to this day," the 44-year-old explained. "I have to have a new perspective in order to keep me and my family and everyone around me safe." She explained, "I mean I got up this morning and I thought, 'I need to go to the grocery store.' And then I'm like, 'Oh I can't drive.' Because God forbid, I have another seizure or event in the car. And I could kill someone. I could kill myself. I could kill my kids."
Less than a month after her health scare abroad, Trista's outlook on life has changed for the better. "You do tend to just get wrapped up in daily life. I wanna try my hardest to not let the impact of what happened disappear. I want to be able to live my life fully and as best as I can without getting caught up in the minutiae, you know, and the drama and the negativity. If there's any negativity, I wanna instantly, you know, shoo it away." She added, "Life is fragile. It's precious. And you need to take time and enjoy it and the people around you."