July 15th, 2014: Mystery Diagnosis and My Own Realizations

Recently I've been watching Mystery Diagnosis. It's an old show that used to air on Discovery Health before Oprah bought it and turned it to OWN (The Oprah Winfry Network). WHY she couldnt make her own damn channel with all that money I'll never understand (but thats a different tangent, and it has nothing to do with the topic of my blog so I'm leaving it be :P).

Mystery Diagnosis is about rare medical diseases that next to no one knows about. There are all sorts of rare diseases, like PNH (Paroxymal Nocturnal Hemoglobinuria) which is potentially deadly if left untreated, PANDAS, which is an autoimmune disorder where the body's strep antibodies mistake your own neurons for the strep bacteria (you start to display tourettes and OCD behaviors), Maple Syrup Urine Disease where you body is unable to process two different amino acids and your urine smells like maple syrup. Ingesting those amino acids can be lethal. There are so, so many more and you can check them out on youtube.

There was one episode I watched on youtube. The video was called the boy who only hopped, where it showed his mystery diagnosis (PANDAS) and the diagnosis of a woman who had Autoimmune Progesterone Dermatitis... Which now leads me to the name of my post.

Thanks to an app called Fertility Friend I started tracking my cycles more in depth, and came to realize there is a pattern to my flare ups... My flare ups happen around the second half of my monthly cycles, which is when progesterone production spikes because you ovulate...

The flare ups are recreatable by exposing your body to the hormone, by intramuscular progesterone or a patch (which is what was used to solidify the lady's mystery diagnosis).

13 weeks gestation is when your baby's placenta is fully operational, and when your body starts producing progesterone rather than hcg. I started getting the progesterone shots at 13 weeks, and noticed that my eczema would flare horribly every time I got a new shot... Then I watched the PANDAS mystery diagnosis and it clicked... Because of the Fertility Friend app, I was made aware of the cycle in my flare ups... And then, it made me remember Chris... From 14w to when I lost him at 16w I had horrible eczema and had constant contractions that I was told was growing pains...

And now... My body had killed my son... My immune system killed my tiny child... A child that depended on me to keep him alive and safe... A child I felt I was ready to raise and to keep...It explained how I was able to get pregnant by taking Benadryl, both with Chris and with Isaac... Benadryl is an antihistamine, and represses your immune system... Reduces inflammation... I didnt have any Benadryl when I was pregnant with Chris... But I keep a constant supply now...

I'm at a loss for words really... My body, without medical help, will kill every child I conceive...

July 29th, 2014: Trying not to think about it... And failing miserably

So I ended up listening to an Eminem mix on YouTube... And one of the songs is "When I'm Gone". Once again I found myself in tears...

I've been trying not to think about my birthday. I've been trying not to think about the son I lost just last year... Trying not to think about the gaping hole that he left. Trying not to think of wanting to hold him or how if he was here he'd be almost a year...

But I'm failing miserably... My birthday... A time where I'm supposed to be happy and enjoying being pregnant with my son Isaac... But there's only trepidation as I inch ever so slowly toward that date... You see, my birthday is the first and only time I got to hear his heartbeat... And six days later I caught him as he came out of me when I went to go pee that morning...

The pain is still fresh. It still hurts like hell... I didn't get to see him smile, or hold him and tell him I love him. He never got to truly hear my voice like Isaac does, or feel my hand on his home like Isaac... He didn't get to take a breath on his birthday... His tiny little heart had stopped beating when my water broke, or he suffocated when the his umbilical cord hit air... I never saw his little chest move, never felt any of his little muscles move...

It's almost been a year... Last year, I was pregnant on my birthday, and happy... This year, I'll be pregnant on my birthday... But this time... I don't really know what to feel.