Saturday, December 27, 2014

Live Lokai

Hello one and all!

This year for Christmas my cousin and Aunt got me a bracelet. I had never heard of or seen this bracelet anywhere before. It is called the Lokai bracelet. It has water from the highest point on earth on Mt. Everest and mud from the lowest point on earth in the dead sea. It represents any low point in life, one of mine being our Molar Pregnancy, and the higher points in life. All of the clear beads are meant to represent the rest of your journey through life.

It was very thoughtful and representative for them to give this gift to me now. I have been wearing it ever since and have plans to buy more for some of my friends. I look to it as symbol of what has happened and better things to come. I know that it sounds silly, but it gives me hope.

I hope that everyone has a wonderful day!






Friday, December 26, 2014

Welcome!

Well, I've been toying around with starting a blog for some time now. In light of the recent events in my life, I've decided to just dive right in and do it. I'm hoping to shed light on a topic that has hit home and turned my life plan upside down and inside out. This blog is by no means to bring attention to myself or have people give me pity. I feel that my purpose in all of this is to bring awareness to something that is so rare that not many people have ever heard of it.

In October, my husband and I found out that we were pregnant. We were over the moon excited. I quickly scheduled my first appointment with the doctor. Then the waiting began. They wouldn't see us until I was 8 weeks along. In the meantime, we decided to tell our families the good news. They were also very excited. Finally, the time for our appointment arrived. We went in and had an ultrasound only to find out our baby had no heartbeat. I was scheduled for another ultrasound two weeks later, just to be sure that I was indeed miscarrying. However, I decided to get another opinion. We went into another Doctor's office and saw that there was now nothing on the ultrasound screen. They didn't say much at this appointment. Instead I was scheduled for ANOTHER ultrasound a week later. At this point, I just wanted all of this to be behind us so that we could move on.

I went in for my appointment, sans husband, and was extremely nervous for some reason. I just had a feeling that something was off and not right. As soon as my ultrasound was finished, the tech practically ran out of the room after telling me to wait in the waiting room. After about 20 minutes, the doctor came in and told me the bad news.

I was diagnosed with a Complete Molar Pregnancy (CMP). Not only are Molar Pregnancies very rare, but it can turn into quite a dangerous situation.  I was scheduled for an emergency D&C the next day. Some of these can turn into something called Gestational Trophoblastic Disorder (GTD) and even cancer (Choriocarcinoma), both of which require chemotherapy to bring the HCG level down to negative. Luckily, so far, mine has been an ideal situation.

Along with this diagnoses, one must go in weekly for blood draws to track your Beta HCG levels. This continues until you reach negative, which is below 5. When I went in for my D&C, on November 29, my levels were at 145,000. I then went in the following friday, December 5, and it had dropped all the way to 4,657 (thank goodness). My next couple of weekly draws have been 756 on December 11 and 140 on December 17.

I am very thankful that my levels have declined so rapidly, but I still have a long and winding road to travel. I will post updates when I have them!

I will also try to post about fashion, exercise, travel, food, photography, and other events that occur in my life.