Danielle Andersen-Jeppesen was supposed to take an exam to get into medical school Saturday. Instead, she took her daughter to Mary Greeley Medical Center for an emergency appendectomy.

This wasn’t the first medical emergency Danielle, senior in pre-medicine, has had to deal with during her life, and it won’t be the last.

When she was 2 years old, her father was in an accident. He broke several bones in his back and was resuscitated several times on the way to the hospital. The accident left him disabled.

“I remember bringing him his walker because he had to learn how to walk again. I remember him not eating and not remembering things,” Danielle said. “That was probably my first reaction with the potential of death and understanding that life was fragile.”

Danielle graduated from East Monona High School in Moorhead as valedictorian and was awarded a full-ride scholarship to Iowa State. It was here she met her first husband, Scott Andersen, an engineering student.

They married in 1997 and graduated that spring. Several years after, they weren’t sure if they were able to have children, so they decided to foster children.

“We just thought that there were tons of kids that need parents that don’t have them,” Danielle said.

During the process of adoption, she found out she was pregnant. Despite this, the couple proceeded with the foster program anyway.

On Sept. 11, 2001, Danielle went to the hospital to have her first biological child.

“There were so many other women going into labor just because of the stress,” she said. “I mean, it was 9/11 that day.”

It turned out she wasn’t in labor and went back four days later to have her child.

“Things did not go well. They said everything would be fine, but my pelvis was injured in the process,” Danielle said. “Every time I talked to a doctor, they would always say, ‘Oh, this is your first baby, it’s always hard for your first baby.’ But I knew something was wrong.”

She was sent home several days later on Sept. 19 and was sent back to the hospital that same night with a high fever, a kidney infection and severe hemorrhaging.

“I couldn’t get a transfusion because of the clot and they couldn’t give me blood thinners because I had bled out so much,” she said. “I remember Scott holding my baby girl and the doctors telling him that if I couldn’t turn this around on my own, there wasn’t much they could do.”

Danielle almost died, but managed to pull through.

During the next few years, the couple continued to adopt and have kids, reaching the point where they needed to remodel their house.

But in June 2004, Scott had a heart attack.

“The doctors said that there wasn’t anything wrong, just a ‘lung thing,'” Danielle said. “But later that night, the lab work came back and something was very wrong.”

Her husband had what is known as a widow-maker, an arterial block in the heart.

“I cried and prayed,” Danielle said. “A lot of people might not understand this, but I had known for over a year that something was wrong with him. He just said, ‘As soon as the house is done, I’ll go get checked out.'”

He had the heart attack four days after finishing the house.

“It felt like God had prepared me,” Danielle said. “It was the fact that death is inevitable for everyone and we don’t always go through life that way. Whether or not we want to enjoy what we have in front of us at the time has everything to do with how we handle it.”

Scott died of cancer Sept. 19, 2004, exactly three years after her own near-death experience.

“It was especially traumatic for the adopted children,” Danielle said. “Because they’d only been adopted for a year at that point and to go from, ‘You love me, you’re going to care for me forever,’ and then death occurs.”

Ten months later, she finally decided to do something for herself. She took her children camping with her brothers. At the camp site, her 2-year-old son Marshall fell on a thorn. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time.

“He’s always been the brave child who stuck through everything,” she said.

After two weeks of antibiotics, Marshall had an MRI. Doctors found the thorn, but they also found that the thorn had infected a bone.

“When they came in, they had on their yellow gowns,” Danielle said. “The children associated those yellow gowns with death. I’m not sure he would have recovered if we had to do the therapy in the hospital.”

Marshall has a weakened immune system, due to a condition coincidentally known as Marshall’s Syndrome. After six months of at-home care for her son, Danielle met Jaysen Jeppesen.

“He was a great friend to me,” Danielle said. “We bonded over my son being so sick and injured and him being injured because he broke his back in a car accident recently.”

At that time in her life, more than anything, Danielle needed a friend. Jaysen helped her with taking Marshall to the hospital and sat in the waiting room with her over and over again.

A few months later, they went on their first date, seeing a movie with the whole family. Marshall had his IV in the theater with him.

Danielle and Jaysen got married in the fall of 2005, the same week Marshall had to return to the Mayo Clinic.

Because of her vast experience in hospitals, Danielle decided she wanted to become a doctor. She took her exam to get into medical school but didn’t pass.

“It was like being in kindergarten and trying to graduate high school,” Danielle said.

But Danielle hasn’t given up. She is currently back at Iowa State, where she is working toward getting into medical school. She hopes to become an oncologist.

“It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when,” Danielle said. “I’m very stubborn. It’ll happen.”

Danielle’s family continues to have various medical issues. Her daughter Samantha had to have an emergency appendectomy Saturday, the day Danielle was to take an important exam for medical school.

“It actually went really well,” Danielle said. “By now, we just have a bag with all the essentials and we’re ready to go whenever we need to. You have to be able to drop everything.”

Danielle herself has a condition that will cause her to eventually go blind. Her father had the same disease.

“I know what I have and I’m grateful,” Danielle said. “I don’t know how long I have, but I’m not going to waste it.”

Despite everything that’s happened to her, Danielle is devoutly faithful to God.

“I’m still worried about bad things happening, but there still can be hope,” Danielle said. “There has to be something more.”

Danielle lives in Boone with her husband, Jaysen, her adopted daughter Jessica, 16; her step-children Rachel, 14; and Ryan, 12; her biological daughter from her first husband, Samantha, 9; her biological son with her first husband, Marshall, 7; and her biological daughter with Jaysen, Jaydan, 4.

Danielle isn’t concerned with the attention she may get from this story. Instead, she hopes the story will inspire people to get through bad experiences.

“People are profoundly influenced by their past,” Danielle said. “Some people have bad experiences, but they don’t share them.”