February, 2009

I may never utter these words again:

I went an entire month without any swelling.

This is the first time I can remember since the three month break I had the year I graduated from college.  (At least, that’s when I think it was…that was a long time ago.)

Hey, Di (I can hear you thinking), why do you think that is?

I have a theory.

Although we are not sure what protein it is that I am missing (the docs seem to be leaning toward the thought that it is not C1 esterace inhibitor, but something else that holds the mast cells together), we know that having infusions of FFP (fresh frozen plasma) helped me out.  We think that the donor plasma has whatever protein I don’t have, and therefore heads off my symptoms.

I haven’t had plasma in almost a year, and probably won’t until I deliver this baby (for sure) and finish breastfeeding (speculative).  Therefore, I have had pretty regular swelling.

Until I got pregnant.

The doctors have told me that some women do really well when they are pregnant, and some women do really poorly when they are pregnant.  So far, I seem to be in Category A.  So what it is about pregnancy that has made my symptoms go down?

I think it’s the increased blood volume.

When you are pregnant, your blood volume increases by about 50%.  That means I have more protein floating in my body than I normally do.  I am guessing that the extra blood volume/protein presence has brought me up to “normal” levels, and lessened my swellings.

Since, again, we don’t know what protein I am missing/doesn’t work in me, there is no way to test this hypothesis. There doesn’t even seem to be a way to count/test the efficacy of many proteins other than C1,so it’s not like we can look at before/after labs (and, since there is nothing interesting in my labs anyway, the docs have discontinued making me go through a five-vial blood letting once a year).

It will be interesting to see if this trend continues for the rest of my pregnancy…watch this space!