When I was 5 weeks pregnant I had my first visit with my Dr. Everything went well and they did all of the usual tests including a blood test. A few days later I get a call from the doctor. He tells me everything looks great and that I am really healthy, BUT my blood work came back positive for a anti-large E antibody. Great I thought, what does that mean? He scheduled an appointment for me with Internal Fetal Medicine High Risk and a Genetic Counselor for the same week but told me not to worry. Yeah right! Worry is my middle name. In the meantime I start to do my own research on the Internet and did not found out much.
Mike and I met with the genetic counselor and the doctors at high risk and they tried to explain the whole anti-large E antibody. So here it is....Basically, my blood cells carry an ee protein. Some where along the way my blood was exposed to blood that has a Ee protein. Since I have never had a blood transfusion they assume my exposure came from my pregnancy with Adam. They said that most likely, Mike has a Ee protein. Matthew most likely has a ee protein since the antibody did not show up when I was pregnant with Adam. Adam, however, probably has the Ee protein and when I delivered him our blood mixed and I developed this antibody to large E.
They went on to explain that if the baby has a Ee protein in his blood then my body would start to produce antibodies and attack. The anti-large E antibody can affect the baby inutero by destroying the red blood cells and causing anemia. Which in turn could cause all kinds of other problems. There isn't really any solution to this but to monitor the levels of antibodies in my blood on a regular basis. So that is what I have been doing. I am very fortunate that everything has been going great with that. They titer my blood every 3 weeks to see if the levels of antibody are increasing. The levels did elevate to a trace amount at about 15 weeks but have not changed since then. I am assuming that this baby also has the ee protein so my body isn't attacking him. If my levels would have increased then there would have been inutero blood transfusions and an early delivery. We are very blessed this didn't happen.
It doesn't end there....last week I had my blood drawn and they ran their tests. The doctor informs me that my anti-large E levels are great BUT they have found another antibody in my blood. It is called BG. The great thing about this one is that no one knows anything about how this antibody affects pregnancy!!! Not my doctor, the high risk doctors, the hematologists...... Apparently they are always finding new antibodies and lab testing is becoming more sensitive and for some reason they found it this time. This sent us back to the high risk doctors last Friday where they did a very extensive ultrasound to look for problems. They told us they can't find anything and he looks to be healthy! If they find out anything about this antibody they will let me know. At least I only have a few more weeks!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment