On Friday, February 12th I went to visit the hematologist, as recommended by our delivery doctors. A little bit of history:
In high school, I started getting sick a lot as a sophomore. I came down with bronchitis one winter and then next fall had mono and strep at the same time. My senior year, I was getting strep almost every other month and the doctors finally agreed to take my tonsils out. Easy, right? Not so much.
At Bethesda Naval, they kept testing my blood and knew something was wrong, but did not pinpoint it for about 5 months. Every month I would go in and they would draw vials upon vials of blood. My mom and I started to joke that they were secretly trying to clone me with all the blood they drew. Well, finally they diagnosed me with von Willebrand's disease, which is basically a deficiency in clotting factor 8 in my blood. I was still able to undergo surgery, I just had to take a pill (yes, a pill after getting my tonsils removed!) every few hours for 24 hours.
Fast forward to today. Our delivery doctors were concerned about the vW's diagnosis and wanted me to see the hematologist to make sure my levels were normal enough to deliver without any medications. They took 8 vials of blood to test. Other Meredith must have been depleted.
I haven't heard any results yet, but the doctor said that the extra estrogen from pregnancy actually helps normalize blood clotting levels and that based on my history, I most likely have a very mild form of vW.
Praise God for all of this because we still want to birth naturally without any interventions or medications! Hopefully we will continue to stay on track!
My arm, 8 vials of blood later!
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