April 9, 2010

I want to be boringly normal

All I think any pregnant woman wants is to be "normal". No extra testing, no worries, no complications. I know that's all I wanted. I had finally relaxed and started to enjoy this pregnancy when Wham! no longer am I "normal". Last Friday, they redrew my CBC because my platelets were low. They were 139 and the low end of normal was 140. I figured it was a fluke and it'd be all good. The office nurse called to tell me they had dropped more - to 127 and that Doc wants to redraw again in 2 weeks. If they are still low, or drop further, they will refer me to a hematologist and maternal-fetal medicine. WTH!?!? Ok, give me someone with low platelets a little further on and I understand, but at 11 weeks? I've never had an issue with my bloodwork before. Like most nurses I know, I hit up the internet (which I DO NOT recommend) and of course I had myself self-diagnosed with something like leukemia, lymphoma, lupus, etc., because that's what Dr. Google came up with. I know, I know, I do know better than to do that, but, I know just enough about medicine to be dangerous to myself. The only thing off on my labwork was my platelets. Everything else was fine, as was my CMP and liver enzymes. It's a good thing Sister is a doctor. I'm sure she was shaking her head at me (would be well justified) and she found some information on gestational thrombocytopenia. Apparently 8% of a pregnancies are affected by this, and the majority of the time it is benign and it resolves within days of delivery. She also reassured me that if I did have something more serious, like leukemia, there would be other lab values that would be off and I'd probably have some type of symptoms. And since I just had a CBC done last August which was fine, this is probably brought on by this pregnancy. I have no symptoms, I'm not covered in bruises, my gums and nose aren't bleeding, and I'm no more pale than usual. Of course, I won't know anything for sure until after my next round of bloodwork comes back and I meet with the hematologist. I've taken care of women with very low platelets and they had taken steriods throughout their pregnancy to try and get them up. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't work enough and they had to labor without an epidural (and they wanted one). So one of my concerns, should this just be gestational thrombocytopenia, is that my platelets are high enough for me to get a spinal. The literature says they just need to be above 50, but the anesthesiologists I work with won't do it if it's under 80-90, depending on who is doing it. We'll see. I'm jumping to conclusions, but again, I'm a nurse, I'm not a good patient. I want answers when I can't have them at this moment. Until my next appointment, I'm going to try and forget about this, and just be patient...it's going to be a long 2 weeks.

3 comments:

Melanie said...

D*%n those docs and the long wait for appointments, lol. I hope these two weeks fly for you and you get great news that everything is fine. :)

Lindsey said...

Wahoooo! 11 weeks pregnant! Again, where have I been! How exciting! This baby came back to you, didn't she?

I imagine you'll be a little more nervous this go round. I hope it gets easier quickly.

Anonymous said...

Read this and calm down!! Everything WILL BE OK!!!
http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/272867-overview