Coast radio host Sam Wallace with his wife Sarah, twins Sienna and Cosette, and son Brando.
Coast radio host Sam Wallace with his wife Sarah, twins Sienna and Cosette, and son Brando.
Welcome to season four of the Herald’s parenting podcast: One Day You’ll Thank Me. Join parents and hosts Jenni Mortimer and Rebecca Haszard as they navigate the challenges and triumphs of parenting today with help from experts and well-known mums and dads from across Aotearoa.
Want to get in touch with the podcast? Email the team at odytm@nzme.co.nz.
Coast radio star Sam Wallace and his wife Sarah are busy parents to three adorable kids: 4-year-old Brando and 2-year-old twins Cosette and Sienna.
The couple share parenting duties, with Sam taking on afternoons with his little trio after finishing up on his daily show while Sarah does most of the night shifts and mornings.
But recently the happy family were rocked by a health scare that turned their well-oiled parenting routine upside down and had Sam fearing his wife might not recover.
On today’s episode of One Day You’ll Thank Me, the doting dad and dedicated husband reveals his family’s terrifying ordeal.
“It happened quick,” recalls Sam. “We’re a healthy, fit family. Sarah exercises every day. We eat super clean.”
But what started with the flu in the twins quickly spread to Brando and then Sarah fell ill too.
While the children bounced back, Sam recalls his wife spending 18 hours in bed one day and again the next.
“She was really struggling. She could hardly even move. We took her to the doctor and they’re like, ‘yeah, it’s the flu and it hits people a lot harder than they realise.’”
But Sarah continued to deteriorate while Sam juggled looking after the children with support from his mum so he could go to work.
On the third night at 9pm, with everyone settled to bed, Sarah told her husband: “I can’t breathe.”
Sam called an ambulance and his wife was rushed to hospital.
“There were no beds at the hospital so she was treated for the first night in the ambulance and then the next day they did chest X-rays and they diagnosed her with pneumonia. She had pretty serious pneumonia,” recalls Sam adding, “It got worse from there.”
“She got septicaemia. And there is a reactive protein that they measure inflammation from and septicaemia is 200. She was 400. So she was like, double pneumonia, if you know what I mean.”
Sarah Wallace developed pneumonia and septicaemia after catching the flu.
Sam fears if Sarah had stayed at home another day “she would have been in serious trouble. It was like, will she recover from this? It was kind of at that point. You hear of people dying of Covid and of pneumonia and you’re like, ‘that wouldn’t happen to me.’ And it genuinely almost happened to us.”
While Sarah was put on antibiotics, they were slow to have an effect and Sam says, “There were points where we didn’t really know the outcome and that was getting scary.”
When Sarah Wallace became gravely ill, husband Sam was left to juggle their three children, Brando and twins Sienna and Cosette.
With his wife in hospital and Sam at home still battling the flu himself, he was supported by his mum and sister, until they also caught the flu.
“So then I was trying to work out ways to get to the hospital to see Sarah, who’s gravely ill, while still maintaining looking after three kids. I was in survival mode,” says Sam who consoled his children by telling them, “Mummy is with the doctors and she’ll be coming home. I don’t think they really understood the seriousness of it.
“At one point I started to think, s***, what would it be like if she didn’t come home? How hard it would be to play that maternal role, you know? And what would be missing from our kids’ lives. You see how hard it would be as a single parent.”
Thankfully, Sarah began to get better and eight days later she was able to come home to her family.
To hear more about the Wallace family’s ordeal and Sam’s advice for when a loved one is sick, listen to today’s episode of One Day You’ll Thank Me below from 9 minutes in.
You can follow the podcast at iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are out every Thursday.
