Preeclampsia awareness

This is a post for those of you that are interested in pregnancy and preeclampsia issues.

My very good friend and founder of the Preeclampsia Foundation, Anne Garrett Addison (gosh, Anne, there are so many double consonants in your name!) was nominated as a Woman of Worth by L'Oreal

She just had an interview on NPR. It is worth listening to. It is a story of the need to empower patients in being active in their own care, in understanding their conditions and partnering with their doctors for their care. Anne has been my and hundreds of other women's mentor in becoming empowered patients. It was my brush with preeclampsia that made possible my researching more about social anxiety and about being able to live (pretty well) with it.

It is late at night and I really need to go to bed, but I will update this post with more relevant links about preeclampsia awareness and patient empowerment. I am very grateful that I had preeclampsia and that made me meet Anne. Thank you Anne for all that you did and are still doing for us and for me!

Why all the preeclampsia talk on a social anxiety blog

I'd first like to thank everybody that sent comments. I wanted to email you all personally and thank you for your kind notes, but most of you logged on anonymously. I got one or more comments each day and they all kept my day going. Thank you so much! It means a lot to me.

So why all the talk about preeclampsia? Because I've trying to talk about this for a long time, and it always seems inappropriate, the wrong time, the wrong person, or there's always someone that knows better, is smarter or can talk better than I do. I'm taking the spotlight here... and maybe this will be a good rehearsal and some day I will be able to say these things to other people.

I will linger for a while on preeclampsia and see how it feels. I might move it later to their website in a more professional format.

And a disclaimer: any opinions expressed on this blog are my own and do not represent the view of the Preeclampsia Foundation.

On preeclampsia

I'd like to share a few ideas on preeclampsia. It is a disease that affects pregnant women. It affects about 10% of all pregnancies, being as common as breast cancer. It usually happens toward the end of the pregnancy and can cause emergency delivery, but sometimes it happens in the second trimester and it can cause severely premature babies or stillborn babies. It can get dangerous enough that the mother can remain disabled or even die.

Paul Levy reminded me of an excellent article on preeclampsia written by someone at his hospital. It appeared in the New Yorker this last summer and it is worth checking out

For a great summary on preeclampsia and the research done at the Beth Israel Deaconess MC, check http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060724fa_fact

If you want to read more and preeclampsia stories, check the Preeclampsia Foundation's website

If you want to chat with other people that had preeclampsia, the Foundation's Forum is a wonderful resource. I basically learned everything I know about preeclampsia from there and it was a tremendous support while preparing for my second pregnancy after a loss.

I think there are two ideas that I'd love you to remember:

• It can happen to any pregnant woman, so if any family member or friend is pregnant, send them to check the signs and symptoms. If they have any of those symptoms after 20w, send them to their doctor or take them to L&D. This is no joke.


• If you had it once bad, there is still hope that you will succeed in a future pregnancy.

We lost our first son at 24w gestational age. He was very small, less than a pound. We took 3 years to prepare for another pregnancy. We got medical textbooks, we read all that we could get our hands on about preeclampsia, I got fit and got as healthy as I could, I selected the best doctors I could get, I got a second opinion from a specialist in hypertension in pregnancy... we did all we could to help it.

When I got pregnant, I took my blood pressure twice a day, logged it and graphed it. When things started to be interesting (after 33w gestation), I was the one that told my doctors that things are going downhill. Here are my charts and graphs

After all this graphing and charting... here's the result: 5lbs, 13oz born at 36 weeks gestation, healthy mother, healthy baby, 13 months later still healthy baby. This is the perfect outcome for any pregnancy, the rest doesn't matter!!!!