Protein Levels

Here is an excerpt from my latest CaringBridge post if you are not following along.

Note - when you go to CaringBridge, you are asked for a password if you have previously established an account, as in you've followed someone else on CaringBridge in the past.  The password is not specific to my journal.  Also, I'll never know that you read my journal unless you leave a comment; I know more about my readers on Blogger than I do CB)


Other note... Ella is making some steady progress over the last couple of days (as chronicled on CB) for which I am tremendously grateful.  I've decided that I definitely do not want to duplicate posts between this site and CB on a regular basis, but still figuring out how to balance it as in the near future I just don't see how I can keep up two separate spaces at the same time.  I'm not going anywhere...  I just need to figure out the balance.  Once things calm down...

Mommy

I'm too tired tonight to go into a detail of my 'condition' and its impacts, I do need to summarize a few tidbits tonight.  My follow up with the Asheville high-risk OB is in the morning... so hopefully I can come out of that with more information and finally write that entry about my health.

I did, however, speak with my local (to Charlotte) OB today.  I called my nurse there this morning and told her I would like to know what the results of my 24 hour urine test were, the test that I completed on Thursday morning before Easter.  And additionally I told her I'd like to make an appointment to sit down (or by phone) with my doc - Dr. R - to review what led to all of this, if it could have been caught sooner, etc.  Simply put, closure.

Dr. R called me today, we had a good conversation.  I'm not going to go into the full detail on this discussion at this time, just the highlights.

*Remember, my OB appointment on Tuesday before Easter was with a different doctor in the practice, Dr. V. as patients are encouraged to rotate their appointments after 20 weeks between the different doctors in the practice in the event your doctor is not available at the time you deliver.  Fairly standard practice.

While I turned in my test to the doctors office by noon on Thursday, I'm told the results for my 24 hour urine test were not received from the lab by Dr. V until after I had already called my nurse on Monday to report what had happened and that Ella was here.  

Dr. V actually had to call the lab for the results (Dr. R was on vacation last week).  Apparently when the lab ran my test they didn't believe the results and decided to rerun the test.  I have no idea how long it takes to run these tests, I just provided the sample.

The good news is my liver was not affected, it was normal.  

I did have just a little bit of protein in my urine... below are the thresholds for protein in urine for a pregnant woman:

< 300 Normal

> 300 Pre eclampsia

>5000 Severe  Pre eclampsia

My results...  23,000

Go on, the normal response to this is OMG!!!  Yes, this is 4 1/2 TIMES the threshold for 'severe'.  You can say it again.. OMG!!!

It's a wonder I was functioning at all...  

At this point, I don't know what having this information a few days prior to when I went to the ER would have, or would not have done for Ella and me?  Obviously things happened the way they did for a reason, but there was definitely a process breakdown between the lab and the doctors office that needs to be addressed (and Dr. R sounded like those discussions were already underway).  

As I mentioned, I have a follow-up with the Asheville doctor for myself in the morning.  And Dr. R and I discussed a number of other things.  There are a lot of thoughts to put together around all of this so it's going to take some time to write that post.