Well, I thought I would give everyone a general update on what's going on with me...
this has not been a fun pregnancy. As you all probably know I've had multiple complications along the way. Due to my blood clotting disorders I've been taking anticoagulant shots daily to stop my blood from clotting, which has been working great and the little guy is doing great because of it. Well, on 4-24 I got a back ache, which I had a doctors appointment that day anyway so I mentioned it to them. Nothing unique since backaches are common in pregnancy. The back pain continued until 4-29 morning when I woke up and my back was fine, but my left leg was numb. Throughout the day I started getting shooting pains in my left leg and it would occasionally give out. Which again nothing real unique in pregnancy since it's common to have a pinched sciatic nerve when your pregnant. Wednesday, 4-30 I woke up with the most excruciating shooting pains I've ever experienced in my left leg. The entire leg was heavy and numb feeling with shooting pains and the leg was basically paralyzed. I couldn't put any weight on the leg at all. Jason took me to the emergency room where a doctor examined me and said it was a severely pinched sciatic nerve and sent me to physical therapy. Thank goodness there was a cancellation at physical therapy and they were able to get me in right away. After they examined me they called the doctor and insisted on a MRI because they were convinced it was more than just a pinched sciatic nerve. So, back to the emergency room we went. After waiting for hours I had a MRI done (yes you can have an MRI done while your pregnant. MRI uses magnets and apparently is not harmful to the baby). The MRI came back to show that I had a blood vessel rupture in my spinal column. My spinal column filled with blood and formed a clot in the spinal column which was pressing against my spinal cord damaging the nerves and causing the shooting pains and numbness in my left leg. There was a team of doctors, my OB doctors, my OB specialist, the neurosurgeons, the hemoglobin doctor, etc. that all had a meeting to figure out how to handle this situation since I'm 27 weeks pregnant and the normal course of action can't be taken. Since I had got an anticoagulant injection at the emergency room they had to wait 12 hours before they could operate on me. So, the next morning, 5-1 I had another MRI done and at 9am I went into surgery. Surgery took 2 hours to remove part of my L1 vertibra and to remove the blood clot and repair a whole I had in my spinal cord that was leaking spinal fluid. I have a 4+ inch scar with 10 stitches on my back now. The pain is completely gone from my leg, but it's still very numb and very heavy. There was a 50-50 chance that I would never walk on my left leg again. They don't know if I have any permanent nerve damage in my left leg or not. I was told recovery could take up to 1 year and at that point I will know if there is permanent damage or not. So far I am able to use the leg somewhat though. I have to walk with a walker very slowly and some of the muscles (controlled by the nerves) don't work yet, but it seems like every day it gets a little bit better. It's just going to be a very slow process to heal. The baby is doing great though. He doesn't seem to be effected by this at all.
Jason finished painting the baby's room and our furniture came in! We had our 8th ultra sound today too, but the little guy kept putting his arm in front of his face so we didn't get any good pictures to bring home this time. The complications with the bleeding and blood clot in my spinal column that required spinal surgery, my doctor said there has only been 11 documented cases of that happening before. The first was documented in 1971 and the most recent was 2005. I'm officially in the record books as being the 12th now. I'm doing much better and can walk around now. I'm still working on getting my quad and hip back to normal, but everything else seems to be pretty close to being back to normal.
