Is Your Blood Pressure Low?

This past week has been really trying at both the hospital and home. What started as an innocent foot rash, caused by cardboard in a pair of ballet flats, grew inflamed when the AC in our bedroom blew only hot air inside with the 100+ temperature outside.

I started itching, thinking it was the heat and having heat stroke. I couldn't sleep because of the furnace I was carrying around inside me. For the first time in nearly a year and a half, I cried uncle and didn't go to work. I took it easy and waddled around the house - only to find the itch spreading to my hands.

My husband's colleague, a nurse, identified this as the early signs of a condition that starts in the 36th week of pregnancy: obstetric cholestasis, where the rash was not just a skin issue but my liver releasing bile salt into my blood. There were scary words thrown around: still birth, inducing delivery. All of this at the end of a pregnancy when there had been literally no complications.

The hospital has been no help as no two doctors will tell you the same thing. The first test we took said the salt level was high (165) but not so high (in the 1000s) as to cause poison to the placenta and thus the fetus.

So I'm scratching away and hoping that they are right; it's not to a level to be concerned. We'll hopefully find out more on Sunday at the next appointment.