Antibodies

I figured I would clear up some questions about my antibodies.  I was diagnosed as having Anti body P1 when I miscarried the first time in November 2013.  This was thought to have come about from one of my 3 pregnancies.  When I had My second miscarriage in July 2014 I was diagnosed as having not only the P1 antibody but also the E antibody. The E antibody came from my blood transfusion in November 2013.  Due to these two antibodies I have a rare blood to try to duplicate for transfussions.  If I ever need to have sugary or blood I will need to be in a bigger hospital so they are more likely to have the blood on hand.  I always knew I was special.

The loss of another pregnancy

So after grieving over the miscarriage in November 2013, it has been a crazy year. 

First, I finished up my bachelors in business in December and walked in the graduation ceremony on April 25th, 2014.  The Next day, by back started hurting; I had MAJOR sciatica pain that traveled all the way down to my toes.  They put me on some strong pain meds and sent me to physical therapy.  I went to physical therapy for over a month, they never could figure out what was causing my back pain. 

The day after my graduation I was offered a big promotion at work.  I decided to take the promotion.  So I’m not the Monticello Branch manager of the San Juan Credit Union. This involves a lot more paper work but less physical activity. I also commute 25 miles (one way) each day.

My 33rd birthday was in May, The day after my birthday I took a pregnancy test and it came back FAST as positive.  I had been feeling sick but didn't put two and two together. Ron and I had both decided to hold off on telling everyone about the pregnancy until we seen the baby on the ultrasound so we wouldn’t have a repeat of last time.

So I got off the pain meds and made it to my first prenatal appointment on June 6^th.  At the first prenatal appointment we were in for a great surprise.  The doctor had a hand held ultrasound machine, and he was able to show us our little baby moving around and the strong heartbeat.  We were so relieved and joyful. WE HAD A BABY!!!!  It was wonderful news after the lack of baby in October/November.  We finally figured it was safe enough to start telling people.  A couple of weeks later we had our ultrasound, and we were happy to see the baby doing so well, it was moving around alright and we were able to get a few nice ultrasound pictures as keep sakes. 

Over the following month everything seemed to be progressing nicely, I had set up the next prenatal appointment for Friday, July 11th. During this pregnancy I had a lot of nausea/morning sickness that I had never experienced with my previous pregnancies. I was finally getting some relief after the 14 week mark or my pregnancy.  With each passing week I rejoiced in the fact that our baby was developing and growing fine, and that our chances of miscarriage decreased with every day.  Until the first day of my 16^th week.

me at 15 weeks pregnant

one week before the miscarriage

It was Saturday July 5^th, the day after we were out celebrating our countries independence. I wasn’t feeling extremely well on the night of the 4^th, I felt like my body was shacking all over, I played it up to too much actives and sun on the 4^th.  I went to bed that night; when I woke up the next morning I had a lot of lower stomach pain I played it up to bowel problems.  I figured my son had passed his stomach flu on to me that he had had a week prior. We went about our normal Saturday routine until the pain got unbearable.  I had asked my husband to take me home, I felt as if I was going to be sick.  When I got home I felt a gush of blood, I ran to the bathroom to confirm it was blood and I had Ron call the ER.

(Caution: the next few paragraphs are quite graphic, proceed with caution)

The hospital told us to get in immediately.  I put a pad on and made my way to the ER.  The pad was soaked by the time they pulled me into the ER.  The nurse got my Waite and height, when I asked her for a new pad so I could go change before I made a mess.  She handed me the pad and I proceeded into the rest room.  I locked to door behind me out of habit.  I went to the bathroom and that is when the baby came out. The baby was still attached to me through umbilical cord.  The baby was not moving.  I pulled the nurse call string. It took the nurse a while to get the door unlocked and get in to help me. They helped me remove the baby and they put it in a specimen cup.  The nurse asked if I had wanted to see it, I originally told her no, but then my curiosity got the better of me and I had to look. The baby was a normal pink color, and it was a girl.  The baby was about 5-6 inches long and perfectly formed.  It was my perfect precious angel.

The nurses proceeded to get me up and in a wheel chair, they decided I was better off in an OB room in the hospital instead of the emergency room.  Once in my room they helped me to get changed into a hospital gown and into bed.  I went to the bathroom again shortly after that and passed some of the placenta came out. They finally let my mom into the room with us. To make a long story short, after several hours the doctor can in and cleaned out more of the placenta.  My blood count kept going down and they were worried about it.  With my last blood transfusion my body made another antibody.  So I’m Very hard to match my blood.  I’m A+ and Antibody P and Antibody E.  My blood count started going back up and my pain and bleeding subsided, so they were able to release me by 8pm.

            The kids were happy to see us and we proceeded on with a normal night.  I went to bed that night, and half way thru the night I started cramping.  The cramping continued into the next day.  I had tried Midol, ibuprofen, and a hot pad nothing help the cramping. I called the clinic first thing Monday morning; they originally told me they couldn’t fill me in. I was devastated.  I informed the receptionist my situation.  They changed their tone quickly.  The receptionist decided they would figure something out and call me back.  After a few minutes I got the first call back asking some questions. Then about 30 minutes later they had an appointment for me to have an ultrasound done at 10am.  Ronnie was able to put one hour in at work and come and get me to go to the hospital.  I was still cramping quite a lot.  In the ultrasound they found a bit of tissue left behind that was attached to my scar from my C-sections. It needed removed via D&C.  They moved me around a few places in the hospital here in Blanding, until we came to rest in the ER. None of the doctors or nurses were sure where I was, Ron and I joked they were playing “Find the patient.” Finally after several phone calls and arrangements they decided my best option was to go to Grand Junction to St. Mary’s for a D&C.  They had access to blood if I needed it.  So Ron and I proceeded home and then onto our 200 mile drive to Grand Junction. The kids were worried by they had Grandma & Grandpa to care for them.

I could not eat or drink anything the entire time. I only had one banana that morning. I did however drink water on the way over.  The Blanding Doctor had sent me with some anti-nausea medication; it helped with my motion sickness.  We arrived in Grand Junction within 3 hours of leaving Blanding. The ER receptionist had no idea what to do with me. She had to make many calls to see what to do with me.  Eventually they admitted me to the ER. Once I was dressed in my unflattering hospital clothes. They started hooking me up to all the monitors and other devices.  We sat in the ER waiting for over 4 hours while they were making sure they had my blood ready. The Doctor was able to come in and talk with me a few times.  She took the CD that Blanding sent with us to give the Dr. the ultra sound that morning. Dr. Simms took the CD and reviewed it with her radiologist. She came back with the same conclusion as the Blanding Radiologist. Finally after 8pm they were able to have my blood ready and on hand.  They moved me up to the Operating room to start the procedure. Their medication worked great to knock me out and the next thing I knew the procedure was done and I was on my way to my room for the night. They didn’t need to give me blood, the procedure went well and everything removed nicely once they were in there.  They took another vile of blood to check my blood count, it was still up. 

We stayed the night in room 727 and were able to be released the next morning.  By that time my bleeding was minimal and we were sent home. Everyone at the hospital was surprised I was not more emotional.  All in all I was quite proud of myself for not having a breakdown.  We did a little shopping and headed home. I was doing alright, we made it home safely and sound.  Both our kids were happy to see us home.

About 30 minutes after being home I got a call from the Blanding hospital; they needed information for the Death Certificate.  My body and mind went into shut down mode.  I know I needed to answer these questions, and then it would be over.  I answered all their questions clean and clear.  The death certificate was needed since I was over 15 weeks along. I started to break down when she asked me a name; we had not had time to pick a name out yet. So the name was left blank.  Once I hung up the phone I broke down crying. That was my finally straw and I couldn’t hold back anymore.

It is the first day since the miscarriage that I have been home without anything to keep my mind off of the situation. However, I feel like I’m handling it fine considering. We have talked about being sterilized so we don’t have to go thru this again. Two times in a row is more than enough for me. We will have to Waite and see what the future holds.

My Pregnancy with No baby, Miscarriage, D&C and Blood transfusion story.

 NOTICE: VERY GRAPHIC, this is an uncensored description that can tend to be very graphic.

This last month and a half have been a major roller coaster ride. It started off when I took a pregnancy test on Sep 11, 2013 that stated negative.  I continued about my life and then when my period had not started but I was tender and sore, my husband suggested I take another test.  I took another pregnancy text on Sep 30, 2013 it was positive.

We were very excited to learn of the news of having another baby.  This was my third pregnancy; I have a daughter that is 7 and a son that is 2.  I have a very hard time conceiving and we were very happy about this news.  We hadn't been trying to get pregnant that long and this was the best news we had received in a while.  I made a doctor’s appointment for the next day.

At the doctor’s appointment they confirmed what the home pregnancy test had said that I was pregnant.  I immediately applied for prenatal Medicare since my husband and I have hit some hard times financially with the economic downturn.  Even though the movement was shut down at the time, Medicare still approved me very quickly.  I made my first appointment with my regular doctor for a little over a week later.  In the mean time we notified our employers of then news along with many friends and family.

At the first appointment everything went normal; the normal pap and blood work was worked up.  The doctor measured me at the time between 3-4 weeks along.  She scheduled my first ultra sound for dates and sizes of the baby.  The Ultra sound was two days later.

We were excited about the ultra sound as many expecting parents are.  We wanted to know how far along I was, when the due date would be, if we had one or two babies and so forth.  We didn’t expect to get the information we did. At the ultrasound the tech was not very comforting; we could see the sac but no fetus.  The tech checked my ovaries and my kidneys as well as several other areas before informing us that we would need to try an internal ultrasound.  Anyone that has not had this experience you should be grateful.  I went into the other room and disrobed, they gave me a sheet to cover with (This would have been fine if I could figure out how to make a toga). The internal ultrasound didn’t reveal anything else, other than making me horribly uncomfortable and feeling violated. The ultra sound tech simply told us; well maybe you are less than 5 weeks.  You will need to make another appointment with your doctor to discuss the findings.

The next open appointment I could get was almost two weeks later.  This entire time being concerned and worried with no more information being provided. While we were waiting I received a letter in the mail telling me that my Pap results came back irregular.  This added even more to my anxiety.    At the doctor’s appointment they took some more blood to test for HCG levels to try to help determine how far along I was in my pregnancy.  My doctor reassured me that my pap results were most likely due to being pregnant and that they would do another pap on me 6 months after I have the baby. That it is normal to have an irregular pap during pregnancy.  At that time they rescheduled me for an ultrasound to see if maybe the baby was just too small last time.

Two days later (on Halloween) at the ultrasound my worst fears were realized.  The tech went straight for finding the sac, there was nothing in the sac, just a black circle that was the empty sac, they called my doctor right over and she confirmed that there was not embryo in the sac.  This was devastating to me and my husband.  My doctor explained that what happened was an unfertilized egg attached resulting in having all the pregnancy signs except the baby. 

My doctor informed me that I would miscarry (with no baby) within a week or two, but not to worry because I would only loose the tissue, no baby. This was still devastating.  I went home and broke down crying.  I left the job of telling our daughter to my husband.  I was able to put myself together long enough to take the kids out trick-or-treating.  The next week was very depressing just waiting for the miscarriage to happen. All my family, friends, and coworkers were very understanding and very sympathetic to my emotions.

10 days later after a week of feeling crappy, on November 10, 2013 I started bleeding.  Nothing too bad, I prepared for the day by loading up my purse with the essentials and we carried on with the plans to go up on the mountain and collect fire wood.  I was a little lite headed before we left the house but I changed my pad and we left the house, then 15 miles later, I made my husband stop so I could change my pad because it was overflowing.  We continued up the mountain about another 10 miles and I was covered with blood to my knees.  Since I have never had a miscarriage before I figured this was normal and I changed my pad again and tried my best to help my husband load the tailor with firewood.  At this point I was feeling very light headed and I was running out of pads quick.  About 10 minutes later we joined my mom and dad a little way away from us and I changed yet again.  I tried to help load up more wood but I got even worse.  I couldn’t stand without feeling like I was going to pass out.  My mom laid out a blanket on the ground next to my 2 year old son that was in the play pen and let me lay there while they finished collecting firewood.  We were ready to go about an hour later and I was officially out of pads.  I was covered with blood, and my mom helped me roll over and we used a diaper instead of a pad.  We continued down the mountain and I started to feel better. 

Once we made it home I figured I could make it into the bathroom to change and clean myself up, good thing my mom was there with me.  She helped me get to the toilet and she provided me with a washcloth and clean cloths.  I informed her that I was going to pass out.  She had me set there for a few minutes until I started feeling a little better.  We attempted to get me to our bed that was 12 feet away.  It didn’t happen.  I passed out half way there, my mom couldn’t hold me, she slowed my decent down, but I still hit my head on a box on the way to the floor.  My mom was very scared and screamed at my husband to get in there and help her. I was out cold, my husband and mother couldn’t get me to respond, they couldn’t find a pulse and were afraid I was gone. They lifted me halfway onto the bed, at this point I was able to hear them and feel them touching me, I could also see, but I had no way of responding.  I could feel my husband trying to get me to react and testing for my pulse.  The first thing I was able to say was “just give me a minute…” they were so relieved that I was not dead.  A minute later I helped them get me on the bed, I told my husband, “call the hospital, I’m going in.” He got the phone and the phone book as I lay on the bed with very little of a way to respond. He called the hospital and they said they would be ready for me.  My mom called my dad and asked him to keep my daughter with him.  We also called my sister-in-law for her to come get my son, she arrived immediately, and we were on our way to the hospital. 

I was very glad that the seats in our Yukon recline back; I was able to lie down all the way to the hospital.  When we arrived my mom went in to get the nurse and a wheelchair.  They helped me out of the Yukon and into the chair.  They wheeled me into the ER, and had me climb onto the bed.  They came in and asked many of the normal questions.  It was hard to explain to them that I was having a miscarriage but there was no baby, The ER doctor finally understood what was going on.   That is when I became a pin cushion; I had a few vials of blood drawn and the IV put into my right arm. My blood pressure was a little low when I was lying down but not bad.  The doctor ordered for me to have my blood pressure taken when I was standing and lying to see what the difference was. Lying down was fine, but I didn’t want to stand, I knew I was going to bleed everywhere and most likely was going to pass out again. The nurse seemed to not believe me. But we took the blood pressure lying down, then I stood up, Blood went everywhere, and the nurse replied with “aren’t you wearing a pad?” “Yes I am!!!” she then realized the amount of blood I was losing. Needless to say I passed out about halfway through doing the standing test. The doctor came in immediately and said they would be doing a D&C and a blood transfusion. I requested 4 units of blood for me. They tried at that time to take more blood and to put in an IV in my right arm.  My veins were so dry they were not allowing them to put another IV in.

They typed my blood and started the typing when they realized I had an antibody in my blood and that there was no way of getting my compatible blood in stock in time.  They decided to proceed with the D&C and then to try to use the most compatible blood for me after the procedure.  I was rushed into the OR immediately and was knocked out cold.  I was told by the doctor that the procedure took less than two minutes (The set up took 45 minutes), and that there was no embryo just the other stuff such as the afterbirth that needed to be removed. My bleeding stopped almost instantly. I was in recovery for a little while when they brought my husband and mother into see me.

I was wheeled into the patient wing of the hospital where they monitored me and started the blood transfusion process.  The nurse stayed with us most of the night.  My body accepted the two units of A+ blood without issue.  When the doctor asked for the other two units of blood as well the nurse tried the A- and my body rejected it, I started with a stomach ache and then started itching, at that time the blood transfusion was stopped and never started again.  I was able to get out of bed for the first time at 4am on Nov 11, 2013.  I made short trips to and from the bathroom, and worked my way up to being up longer amounts of time. I had more blood drawn at that morning, the nurse had a hard time getting enough blood out of my right arm so I got poked another 3 times, with no results.  The lab tech was finally able to come in and find a good vain to take 6 vials of blood out, I wondered why they were putting so much blood in to just turn around and pull so much more out.

The doctor asked that another laying, setting, and standing blood pressure test be administered.  My best results were when I was setting, but the standing or laying results weren’t much different.  My blood pressure was still on the low side but nothing too serious.  I was released at 2pm that afternoon.  It was a crazy 24 hours in the hospital. I’m now home recovering and recuperating.  I have been unable to go back to work yet but I have plans to in a few days.  I have been taking it easy and working on my school work.  I have a doctor’s appointment for a fallow up checkup today, and we will go from there.

Blog for marketing class 4-25-2012

This week we read chapter 18 in our MKTG book by Lamb, Hair & McDaniel.  The chapter was on setting the right price. Our learning objectives where as follows

·         How to set a price on a product

·         The legality and ethics of price strategy

·         Tactics for fine-tuning the base price

o   Discounts, allowances, rebates and value-based pricing

o   Geographic pricing

o   Other pricing tactics

o   Consumer penalties

This is how all of the above fit together, I love this graphic it explains a great deal all in one little graphic.

·         Product line pricing

o   Relationship among products

o   Joint costs

·         Pricing during difficult economic times

o   Inflation

§  Cost oriented tactics

§  Demand-oriented tactics

o   Recession

This will be my last class post for Business 3500 (Marketing). The class has been very informative and a good learning experience.  It was the first broadcast class I have taken with other students in the room with me; that was sure nice. The part of this chapter I learned the most from was the fine-tuning the base line, this is great knowledge that will come in handy when I go to price a product.

e Social Media Revolution 2012

Here is a video that professor Allen showed us in class on wednesday, I find it very infomative. Go and check it out. its social media revolution 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0eUeL3n7fDs

For marketing class 4-18-2012

This will be one of my last posts for my marketing class as we only have one class left before the final.

This week we studied chapter 16 on sales promotion and personal selling. We covered the topics of:

·         Sales promotion

·         Tools for consumer sales promotion, that are as follows:

      ·         Tools for trade sales promotion, that are the following:

·         Personal selling.  Listed below is the difference between personal selling and adverting & sales promotion. I found this to be a very interesting slide.

·         Relationship selling, listed on the next graphic is the differences between traditional personal selling and relationship selling.

·         Steps in the selling process. There are seven steps; the most important is the first one of generating leads.  Also note the last step “Follow up” this means the job isn’t done once the sell is made.

I found that this entire chapter was full of good information.  I also loved the video our professor showed us at the beginning on class about how the internet and social media is growing so fast, it also explains that the social networking isn’t going anywhere. However, the most important part to me was on the tools for consumer sales promotion.  I like the great detail the chapter goes into on the coupons, rebates, premiums, loyalty marketing programs, contests, sweepstakes, sampling, point-of-purchase promotions and online sales promotion. All of these are great to know about and understand. They will come into great use for all of us to know that plan to go into business.

Marketing Class blog for 4-11-2012

We didn’t have class last week due to Entrepreneur week.

This week we read chapter 15 in our book, it was on Advertising and public relations.  We learned about: The effects of advertising, Major types of Advertising, Creative decisions in advertising, Media Decisions in advertising, and public relations.

The part I found most interesting is, the major types of advertising.  Before reading this chapter I hadn’t realized all the different forms of advertising and what the most effective was.  I had thought that one of the best ways to have market selectivity would have been television (I was proved wrong on the exam), instead it is magazines, because magazines are selected according to such things as: age, hobbies, sex, race, and marital status.  So there for advertising in magazines can be geared to that exact group of people you are looking for.  The different kinds of advertising will become useful knowledge in my future; therefore, I know my choices for how and where to advertise.