It's been something of a hectic week. I had a doctor's appointment bright and early Monday morning, what I thought would be a quick in and out check up. It turned into a two day marathon of blood work, protein checks, and back and forth to the lab. Fun day.
Run down up until this point: Due to a family history of Factor Five Leiden I knew at my very first doctors appointment to ask them to do the test. Factor 5 is a blood clotting disorder. It breaks down like this, you have two genes that regulate your blood and control clotting. If one of them is mutated or doesn't function properly you are heterozygous Factor 5. If both of your genes are out then you are homozygous Factor 5. While heterozygous isn't as bad and doesn't increase your risk of blood clots nearly as much as being homozygous does, it still increases the risk, and if you're pregnant, then you're already at an increased risk, so any kind of positive test for Factor 5 is bad. I tested heterozygous so around my 8th week they started me on a baby aspirin a day regimen and a daily injection of lovenox, a blood thinner, to be sure that no clots interfered with the health of myself or the baby. The shot is certainly not my favorite thing in the world, but hey, what can you do. At 19 weeks I had a big deal appointment with a specialist who measured baby's body, head and heartrate to be sure that he was on track with development (woohoo, he was!!). He said that since I have no personal history of blood clots and am only heterozygous that he felt I could come off the lovenox, but stay on the aspirin. This was music to my ears.
Cut to Monday's doctor appointment. As I'm discussing this with my regular doctor she is taking my blood pressure, she's mid sentence (the sentence by the way was "I agree and am comfortable taking you off the injections") and suddenly gets a funny look on her face and checks my chart. Turns out my blood pressure is high. Not a lot high, but I'm pretty on target for blood pressure, I'm usually the same exact numbers, no variation. And this was no two point jump. She turned to me and asked if I'd been having any "abnormal symptoms"....
SIDE BAR: If you're a doctor, please know that someone who has never been pregnant before doesn't know an irregular symptom from a regular one. They're all irregular to me!! Every time I sneeze my pelvic muscles feel like a rubber band has been snapped against them! That's not a regular occurrence in my pre-pregnancy life, so don't ask if I'm having irregular symptoms, they're ALL weird.
My doc began listing things off, severe headaches that didn't respond to rest or Tylenol, pain in the right side of the abdomen, just under the rib cage, pain in the shoulder, dizziness or lighteheadedness...(okay, so maybe these do seem a little irregular, but I'm tough! I tough things out!!). I think with each symptom she listed my face took on more and more the look of a sheepish little kid who had been caught doing something they didn't realize was wrong. (Which I really didn't know, by the way, because a lot of that stuff can be explained away with normal pregnancy whatevers, how was I supposed to know that all together it meant something!?!). Obviously I realized something was wrong. She started making notes and talking about tests and blood work and then said "Given this new information I'm really uncomfortable taking you off the blood thinners." ::sigh:: SO close. Apparently all of those symptoms together spell out preeclampsia. Which any recently expectant mothers know is not something you want to hear while you're pregnant. It wasn't a complete shock as Factor 5 increases your risk of developing preeclampsia. I'm not going to go into too much about it, if you want details check out the Mayo Clinic article or the Google Health article. Succinctly it's a condition that constricts your blood vessels, causing high blood pressure and can severely decrease blood flow to the kidneys, liver, and uterus, which means, it can be dangerous for baby, if he doesn't get enough blood he doesn't develop right. There's more to it, but like I said, I don't want to go into details (mostly because it freaks me out). The only way to cure preeclampsia is to not be pregnant anymore, meaning a planned early c-section or early induced labor. I'm not going in for this tomorrow or anything, just giving an overview. The only treatment for preeclampsia is bed rest at home. In fact that's the treatment for MILD preeclampsia. If it gets to be a more serious problem you rest in a bed in the hospital. Woohoo. This is something they decide pretty quickly after diagnoses and insist happens right away.
Where we stand now: Waiting. My doctor scheduled me an appointment to come back in next Monday so that all the lab work and test results will be in. I do not definitively have preeclampsia. I could go in there on Monday, have stellar blood pressure and totally normal labs and walk out free and clear. Or I could go in and walk out, go home, do not pass go, do not collect a paycheck for the rest of my pregnancy, and have to lay in bed for the next couple months. I really don't know at this point. I know that the doctor was fairly confident it was preeclampsia, so I want to be hopeful, but I don't want to get my hopes up...does that make sense? I know that my kidney function and liver function tests came back with good results. Both my kidney and my liver are functioning and doing it well. So that's good. So right now we wait till Monday and talk to the doctor and see what happens from there.
For the record: When I do too much online research or look at peoples stories or read message boards, I get freaked out, I get really scared and wonder what's going to happen. I had a really great day Saturday where I kind of bonded with the baby and stopped worrying about all the stuff that had been scary and just focused on how cool it will be to meet Gabriel and hold him and sing to him and play jokes on his dad with him (he's totally going to be my accomplice). So Monday was hard to choke down, and all the information and stories and possible scenarios are really terrifying and I tend to be a worrier (not good for the blood pressure). But on the whole, when I'm not staring at a computer screen full of intimidating facts and figures, I am alright. Yes, it's scary, but I'm alright. I'm trying to stay positive and strong and keep my heart set in a hopeful, faithful, trusting place. If you're reading this and you have slash know preeclampsia horror stories, keep them to yourself. I don't want to know. Thanks. :)
I've looked into some things I can do to naturally try and lower my blood pressure. I plan to spend every night for the next month doing deep breath meditative stretches to soothing music while eating a sweet potato and drinking tomato juice.
Isn't that a FABULOUS plan?!
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