The everyday life of a stay at home mom just trying to stay sane.

Saturday, September 03, 2005

perplexed

The actual term used by my hematologist.
I had my repeat labs+about a gallon of blood taken out for extra tests.
SEVEN vials.
We won't get all of the results back until Tuesday, but what we DID get back leaves him 'perplexed'.
One of my tests that HAS been abnormal is now the very highest of normal. For example, if normal was 5.0-12.6, mine was 12.6.
My other one that was abnormal is getting MORE abnormal. (taking too many seconds for my blood to clot)
Then, a new test that he just threw in there to see what would happen, fully expecting it to be normal came back abnormal.

He said that that right there shows him that something is going on. We just need to figure it out.
He DOES believe this is acquired. Meaning, I was not born with it, it just happened.

So, these are a couple theories he has.

1. With the HELLP syndrome, my liver was affected. normal lab values are under 30 and my highest was 276. Still, not OVERLY high in his opinion, to leave permanent damage. However, apparently your liver is 'in charge' of all the the factors needed to clot your blood properly. My liver may still be a bit damaged and needs more time to heal. My liver labs were back to normal by 2 weeks post partum though.
Thus, he is quite sure this theory isn't what will be found out.

2. Sometimes, if there is an internal injury or problem, the injury or problem will take up too many of a certain clotting factor(s) to help fix the problem. Enter in:possible retained placenta. IF I have retained placenta (which, really, I'm not very positive feeling that there WILL be some found, but we'll see) then possibly the placenta is hoarding the factors I need else where in my body.
Take out the placenta, blood goes back to normal.
Good theory, right? He said this is probably NOT the case, as it would be very rare.

3. My body may have developed an immunity to a certain factor and is trying to get rid of it, causing the rest of my clotting factors to work harder, but they are not able to do all of the work. We will know this when my factor assays come in next week.

If he still doesn't know what is going on, he's going to refer me to the University Hospital. He said now that we know SOMETHING is going on, we need to know what.
According to him, the fear is the unknown.
He said, if he knew I had a very mild case of hemophilia, we all would know what needed to be done if I were in an accident or needed surgery. Seeing we're getting abnormal readings, but not knowing WHY, he can't be sure of anything.

Depending on what my labs reveal, my surgery is still planned for Friday, and he will be oncall and in the building in case excessive bleeding does occur. bleh.

2 Comments:

Blogger Stephanie said...

That is so weird .. leave it to you to be different. I really hope they figure out what's going on and can get you levelled out.

10:23 AM

 
Blogger Misti said...

I am so sorry you have to go through all this. I really hope he can figure it out and get you healthy
{{HUGS}}

9:40 PM

 

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