Idiopathic and Still Searching for Answers

As of this past Tuesday, I’m off anticoagulants. I do not have an identifiable clotting disorder. This doesn’t mean that I don’t have some issue, or that it isn’t dependent on when I’m pregnant, but it does mean that I do not have to take rat poison (warfarin/Coumadin) or inject medicine made from porcine intestine mucousa (enoxaparin sulfate/Lovenox) for the rest of my life. Though I do have to take Lovenox if I’m anywhere near pregnancy.

This means that the final explanation of what happened to my son is idiopathic. Idiopathic is medicalese for “We don’t know.” This has actually been rough for me the past couple days, because it means that I will not find an explanation. I have some hypotheses that are unscientific, that mostly revolve around stuff that is correlated with PCOS. It took me years to get PCOS diagnosed, and I suspect now it’s “subclinical,” though I still have other symptoms, and other test results that are correlated with PCOS in other people. Estrogen can make the blood “thicker.” This is why combo BC pills are not recommended to people w/ a history of clots, smoking, etc. Pregnancy alone will make a person run the risk of clotting. I hope that the perinatologist fellow (as in fellowship) I visit in a few weeks is open to discussion of the PCOS. Women w/ PCOS have a higher rate of stillbirth than women without, from what I understand. I hope I can find a doc that’s willing to hear me out, and actually engage with the questions instead of dismissing them academically.

I wanted an explanation. I wonder if I had been diagnosed with a minor clotting issue, if that would have made me feel better?

I guess I’ve formulated what I believe to have happened.

1. I exercised too much. (Broke a sweat on the eliptical 3x/wk for 60 min, never mind that women do prenatal aerobics.)
2. I was too stressed/anxious.
3. I was obese. (My starting weight was just under the line between overweight/obese on the BMI).
4. I didn’t drink enough water.

I guess if there is a next time, I’ll avoid those things. Take walks instead of going on the elliptical, or going on the elliptical and not breaking a sweat. Even if what I was doing was within the normal, healthy range according to what I was reading. Maybe it wasn’t for me.

I don’t know what to do about the anxiety, I’m an anxious person. I get it from my mother. She knows that. She’s told me. I know that, it’s obvious.

The water part is hard, but water will help keep my blood the right consistency and also help flush out the hormones in my body.

I know that other women who are larger than me, more neurotic and stressed than me, with crappy diets and not drinking water still end up having healthy babies. Maybe it’s the fact that I exercised as well? Though I know that there are large women who exercise regularly, too. (I also have to remember that I’m now close to the “average American” in size. I forget that even though I count as obese on the BMI as I sit here, I also wear a size 14/16, which used to seem impossibly tiny to me. I wore 24/26 at my heaviest.) All that science can tell me is that I had a couple of risk factors that made an already very rare occurrence more likely. PCOS, anxiety and obesity. I can’t change the PCOS. I feel like I need a therapist to help with the anxiety, but I can’t find one. The obesity, I’m working on through Weight Watchers, and if all goes well, I’ll be to goal within 11 months, 6 months if I follow my first trend. (That’s 1-2 lbs/wk average.)

I also have to remember that this shit happens to other women who are in better shape. Also, that other women have PCOS who aren’t obese, who also have problems. I’ve known a couple of women with fertility issues who WERE NOT EVEN OVERWEIGHT.

I know that in the end, no matter what I choose to blame this on (did the placebo effect kill my son?), I will never know the true answer.

I really, really believe that PCOS has something to do with it. PCOS is so crazy, because I haven’t met one woman who has had the same issues as me, or who has had the same issues as someone else I know with PCOS. For me, I had the cysts and higher testosterone level, but that’s it – and after I lost weight, my testosterone levels went down to normal. I still get the dark hairs on my face, neck and chest that I have to pluck. My blood work last summer showed that my cholesterol had a few things that are correlated with other women with PCOS – low good cholesterol, higher bad cholesterol (within normal range) and high lipoprotein, which is not impacted by diet and considered purely genetic, only impacted by high niacin supplements.

I know this kind of shit can happen to women after successful, uneventful pregnancies. I guess for me, I don’t know if my body can do that. I still feel so betrayed by my body.