Board Post

I posted this to one of my online boards, instead of re-wording it for the blog, I'm just going to insert it instead. It was to my fellow women due in the same month that I am.

"Today I went in for my first of a zillion fetal monitoring appointments. First they hooked me up to the fetal heart monitor and the thing that checks your contractions for 30 minutes. My little boy's heart rate was great @ 157 bpm and he was moving around a lot and there were no contractions. All good. Then they took my blood pressure which I have been consistently monitoring at home and it has been on the rise. My measurement this morning was 160/122 EEK. Mind you, I am taking meds 4x per day for my bp too and charting my bp 4x every day too. Anyhow, they took my blood pressure and is was 122/85. WHAT?! That's like perfect, well in my case it's pretty ideal. So what gives? I got home and took it again and it was 157/116. I just don't understand. Then they took me in for the U/S. No face shots, no fun stuff, no pictures for me. They said my fluid levels are within normal range but at the very lowest acceptable number for normal. I don't get that either, I drink like a fish, I was certain my levels were superb! Ugh. Then they tested my urine for protein. Well, only after an embarrassing 5 minutes fight with the specimen door to which I gave up and walked out of the restroom with pee in hand complaining of the trick door and feeling so incompetent. They said it actually is a "trick door" in that if it isn't closed completely on the other side it won't open, that way two people don't end up looking at each other. Understandable, but dang whoever didn't close that door! Anyhow, they said my urine didn't test for any protein on the strip. Great! I thought. Until I got home and read that the strip only tests for ONE kind of protein and there are quite a few more different kinds that don't show up on those goofy little strips.

So now my questions..

Do I probably still have protein in my urine, just not the kind they're testing for? OR Did I somehow magically make all the protein disappear? When they did the 24 hr urine collection on me they said there was 364 mg (She actually said "grams" but I'm pretty sure she meant milligrams.) and that anything over 300 is bad.

My next question is about pre-eclampsia. My first DR over at the high risk center mentioned it before ordering the 24 hr urine, or rather WHEN ordering the 24 hr urine collection on me. He pretty much made it sound like if my sample came back the way it did, then I had pre-eclampsia. Of course we didn't go into it further, because it was an uncertainty at the time. He's on vacation now, so I am scheduled to begin seeing a different DR at their practice starting on Monday. Now that my urine sample has come back with 364 mg of protein, does this, coupled with my high blood pressure, gestational diabetes, blah blah blah, mean an automatic diagnosis of pre-eclampsia? I ask because now they insist on monitoring everything 2x per week, but at the same time I have not heard the term pre-eclampsia used one time since they told me about the protein. So are they trying to be gentle in not scaring me with terms, or do they think my original high risk DR already explained this to me, or is it not a definite diagnosis yet?

Holy heck, if you got this far, I'm sorry, and thank you!

Bless you all!"