Had a rather nice day out today. We took a drive out west an hour or so to visit this amazing pottery store. All of the stuff is handmade on site. It's all gorgeous stoneware and I already have a coffee pot from there which I love. Saw some beautiful pieces which I've earmarked for purchase at some point! Drove back via the English sweet shop (for G not me!) in Oakville, and by the time I got back home I was absolutely worn out despite doing very little other than sitting in the car!
I've also been reading in some detail today the Protein S Deficiency site as they've a specific forum related to pregnancy. It's scary stuff but I need to have as much information as possible. I think this is the one thing I need to be allowed to read! Ignorance is the reason I ended up with the PE last time. At 38 wks pregnant I complained of a very bad hard lump in my calf muscle to my midwife, who dismissed it as cramp without looking at it (DVT, duh). Shortly after Dylan was born I asked the midwife if it was 'normal to not be able to breathe very well when I get out of bed?" (i.e. gasping for breath) and was told 'sure, your lungs are just a bit squished after having a baby pressing on them'. (Start of PE, duh). Had I, (or they!!!!) been more clued up about this stuff I perhaps would have avoided the PE happening or becoming any worse. Obviously nobody knew then that I had Protein S Deficiency, but those are standard symptoms of DVT/PE which any fool even vaguely connected to the medical profession should have recognised, so I'm not going to risk ignorance again and want to know as much as possible by way of things to look out for or to be concerned about.
Posted by katie at January 11, 2004 06:55 PMMy first DVT was diagnosed by a student doctor that just wandered past my cubicle in the hospital accident and emergency department - each week for six weeks before that moment I'd seen my doctor and my symptoms were dismissed as insect bites, sprains, etc but never diagnosed properly. If my GP had recognised the symptoms it would have saved me a lot of pain and anxiety. They didn't get to the bottom of what caused it and a year later I had a PE. A year and a half after that I was given a comprehensive blood screen and learnt that I had Protein S Deficiency. It is a life threatening condition so I expected to be given a leaflet or something, perhaps an address to write to but no support was given. After that the amount of time spent in hospital getting my blood checked and consultancy was more than my holiday allowance so I went self-employed in 1996... as a print and web designer... the absence of information on the web about PSD surprised me (I was also rather annoyed). Eventually I decided to put my story up on the web and gather up any useful information. I received emails from people who found my site and they all had similar stories to tell but it's hard to respond to everyone - a web site is very scalable but a personal reply to 10 people a day and keeping track of their questions is another matter. So I installed forum software on my web site and that's when things took off. The specific issues for women with PSD and pregnancy only came to light by the messages posted by forum members so I created it's own little section. The best bit of advice I can offer to anyone with PSD expecting a baby is to realise that your mother has proved it is possible to have a lovely new baby (yourself)!
Posted by: James Slattery-Kavanagh at January 13, 2004 11:50 AM