Post-partum begins

Well, as I was nicely recovering and feeling great about Lars, my postpartum recovery really threw me for a loop. About four or five days after the birth, just when my soreness was going away and I was starting to feel more normal, I noticed a few hives in my vagina while I was in the shower. As most people know, that whole area is a huge mess for a while. I didn't think much of it, but the next day it was really a lot worse. I googled it and found that some people had a reaction to the same kind of pads that I was wearing. Since I had switched over to this brand around the same time, I figured that was the issue.

I took a Benadryl and sent my mom to the store to get a different brand. (As a side note: I'd highly recommend bringing your own Poise or Depends adult diapers to the hospital instead of the mesh ones they give you. It was so much better!) Even with the change, the hives didn't go away but were spreading and becoming really uncomfortable. I got hydrocortizone cream and Benadryl cream and doubled up on Zyrtec and Benadryl and nothing was stopping these guys! Finally on Sunday, when everyone was at church, I hopped in the shower and started to get really nervous. They were spreading up my backside and front side and were just really angry, red, itchy, and hot. And everything down there had totally swollen up out of proportion. It was uncomfortable, to say the least. I decided that on Monday morning I'd call and at least ask to speak to the nurse.

I dropped Willa off at school Monday morning (Lars was now nine days old) and called the doctor as soon as his office opened. I was going to just ask to speak to the nurse, thinking that maybe this wasn't such a big deal, but I decided to risk overreacting and I asked if there was any way I could get an appointment that day. They got me in to see the nurse practitioner pretty quickly. When she walked into the room she took one look at my nether regions and was like, "What?!!! Let me go get the doctor!" So the doctor came in and took a look. He checked the sutures (I had a minor first degree tear), but there was no swelling or edema there so the reaction wasn't coming from those. I asked if it could be post partum hives, which are actually a thing, but he said it wouldn't be so localized. We wondered if I had had a reaction to something they prepped me with at the hospital.

Thankfully, they prescribed me some Prednisone right away and told me to come back on Friday for them to check it. I went home and took it as soon as I could and Oh, the relief!!! I could feel it work very quickly. The heat and redness immediately went down. I went through the rest of the week very happy. It was a freak thing, but it was over and done. The Prednisone was just a two day dose. Well, right as the effects of the second dose were wearing off on Thursday morning I looked in the mirror and found a red smudge on my face. It was almost like a huge pimple or cyst was coming. The area was hot and itchy. I didn't think too much of it until that afternoon when I realized that it seemed an awful lot like hives and it was spreading over my face and ears and I had small pinprick points on my arms. So I took Benadryl and Zyrtec again before going to bed. The only thing that calmed me was knowing that I had a doctor's appointment the next morning.

Friday morning I dropped Willa at school and drove straight to the appointment. They looked at my face, they looked at my nether areas again. They asked what I was washing with (Cetaphil) and everyone was stumped. So the OB called the dermatologist and asked them if they could possibly fit me in that day. And they also threw even more, heavier steroids at me. Again, I took the steroids and felt almost immediate relief.

 Here is a picture of my face as I was in the pharmacy drive-thru waiting for the new steroids. Not a pretty sight. It's going down my chest, on my arms, it was just horrible, horrible. Not to mention that by this point, I'm in the throws of postpartum hormones and my mental game is not going great.

 I went into the dermatologist that afternoon. He agreed with their treatment of throwing even more steroids at the rash, then as a "by the way" he said, "You know, it kind of looks like a Lupus Butterfly rash." ?!?!?!? Lupus?!?!?!? He said that if the red didn't go away by my follow-up next week, they would biopsy it and do more tests. Well, I went home a little scared by the Lupus, but still thinking it was a freak allergic reaction. My skin cleared up within two or three days (now I was on a 7 day pack of steroids) and I went about my business feeling normal. But of course, that would be a boring end to the story.

I now went into my THIRD follow-up with the OB. I mentioned the Butterfly Rash to the nurse practitioner who had been treating me. She wanted me to go get one more blood test for an autoimmune antibody. So I went and did that, thinking that it was just an extra precaution. The next day, she called to say that the ANA test had come back positive. So now, I not only had a rash that looked a lot like Lupus, but I also had a positive blood test come back! I was starting to freak out a little. The blood test wasn't definitive at all, there were lots of false positives with it, but for me it just didn't seem like good news to have the two symptoms together. The nurse practitioner advised me to see my PCP or a rheumatologist for more tests.

Then, again 24 hours within finishing the seven day pack of mega steroids, I looked down and the hives were coming back again!!! By this time I was just exhausted and depressed. I should have been relaxing and spending time at home with my little soft baby, but instead I was dragging him and June to doctor appointment after doctor appointment. I went to the dermatologist for my follow-up (at this point, we are now five doctor's appointments into this mess). I could only see his assistant who wasn't too helpful. My hives weren't horrible, but I wanted another dose of steroids, dang it!, just in case they got worse again over the weekend. She reluctantly prescribed them and then did a biopsy of one of the hives. The hives were slowly spreading again, but nowhere like before. They were smaller and not as bothersome. For me, it was the mental uncertainty of "Why are these things coming back? What the heck is going on? Is this an autoimmune response? Is this the rest of my life?"

Logically, I probably knew that I wouldn't have hives for the rest of my life, but it's hard to see that in the anxiety and emotion of the moment. Thankfully, Rebecca called her rheumatologist (who wasn't accepting new patients) and begged her to take a look at me. They got me an appointment in the next two or three days. When I got to the rheumatologist office, I just started crying a little. It was scary and I was facing something that could potentially alter my life in a significant and negative way. She was such a good doctor and took time to listen to me and speak to me. She sent me off for even more blood tests, but she did give me some positive notes. First, autoimmune diseases after pregnancy don't usually develop until six weeks after labor. Second, the Lupus rash doesn't cover the nose folds around the face. Looking at the photo I took, she wasn't positive, but it looked like it might be covering my nose folds. The other positive was that the ANA can be thrown off and give a positive result for lots of things - including out of whack hormones. The negative thing was that autoimmune diseases can often cause the body to break out in hives in response to the disease. For the still spreading hives, she told me to take a combination of Zyrtec and Zantac.

I started taking that medicine after I left her and it made a big difference. The hives weren't as angry as before and they reacted really well to this combination. I ended up taking it for an entire week just to really kick everything. In fact, the main reason I stopped was because I wanted to give the hives a chance to come back before my third follow-up with the dermatologist. I had that appointment this past Thursday and hooray, no more hives have come back! The biopsy result said that it was some kind of dermatitis (which I knew already, but is the dermatitis a reaction to an autoimmune or something else). I'm going to do a blood test for allergies and a back scratch test too. He also said that if you have a localized reaction somewhere it is possible to have a secondary reaction in another spot (hence, the face hives).

I'm going into the rheumatologist tomorrow for a follow up and to get my other blood results back. All in all, I'm feeling like myself and more hopeful. Now that the hives are gone, I feel like most likely this was an allergic reaction to something in the hospital. It was just in too much of a localized spot in such a sensitive area. I've steadily been getting more and more sensitive to the chlorine in pools. If I don't wash as soon as I get out of the pool, I'll get a small breakout of hives. Maybe the instruments or the catheter had chlorine of some sort on them as an antiseptic. I dunno. I also had the dermatologist send over all the photos he took of my face. Hopefully, the rheumatologist can get a better idea about the face rash from his photos. But if it does end up being Lupus, we will deal with it and everything will be okay.

This past week, I also had my four-week follow up with my OB. Everything is healing nicely and it was nice to see the whole staff and to also not have to come back until my annual exam in six months. All in all, my appointment with the rheumatologist tomorrow will be my NINTH doctor's appointment since I left the hospital. This is not counting all the appointments for Lars (his one week, two week, circumcision, circumcision follow up, and one month appointment) or Willa (ophthalmologist).

And that, my friends, was my horrible post-partum recovery. I've found that I have very low stamina for not feeling well. I like my body to be healthy and when it's not functioning as it should, it really bums me out. I just feel ick, and I want to know "WHY" about everything. And a lot of the time, that's not possible. I also feel a little betrayed by my body in times of sickness - it's supposed to be functioning at a certain level, but for some reason it's not. It's broken. Ryan has been a huge support through all this and gave me a really wonderful priesthood blessing during some of the worst of it that calmed a lot of my anxiety. I'm feeling very positive and hopeful now that I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I will say that hives after childbirth in your nether regions is extremely uncomfortable and I hope never to experience it again.

Meanwhile, look at this sweet face fresh from heaven.

Easter Sunday, Lars was 8 days old.