You Have A What?!?

The second opinion with my doctor's colleague turned out to be very successful. She spent about an hour and a half with me and we started basically at the beginning of my story with her reviewing everything with me, including all of the details of the images they took during that ER visit on Easter. In about a minute or less of reviewing those slides, she was able to immediately see something very significant. She suspected that what she was seeing appear on the sonogram pictures was what is known as a subchorionic hematoma. Hematoma meaning blood clot. She also suspected she was seeing a fibroid as well. She conducted another sonogram.

Yep, there it was: the subchorionic hematoma lying between my uterus where they baby is and the placenta…and a continuous flow of blood coming from the clot. And yes, there was also a fibroid sitting near there as well.

FINALLY!!! An answer. A bit of a scary answer, but an answer, nonetheless.

I was told that the subchorionic hematoma could cause some complications. For instance, you could bleed the entire pregnancy, it could cause miscarriage, it could cause pre-term labor, and/or it could cause placental abruption in which case that could be "detrimental to both you and the baby." Oh great!  So this is kind of no joke. The doctor agreed, it is a pretty serious condition and she asked me if I was still working because she wanted me to stop if I hadn't already. I told her that I had already started disability thanks to my regular doctor and that I had been out for a few days at this point in time. She said, "Good." Then, she continued to tell me that less than 5% of pregnant women typically get this, that 50% of women go on to have a health baby, and that the only way for it to try to heal itself and for the body to possibly absorb the clot is to be on bed rest. No walking the dogs, nothing strenuous, don't work, just try to rest as much as possible. *She addressed the fibroid as well and said it probably wasn't anything to worry about, but that pregnancy hormones can potentially cause it to grow more rapidly than it normally would. She then proceeded to tell me a story about a woman who had a subchorionic hematoma who bled buckets throughout her entire pregnancy in addition to having a tiny fibroid prior to being pregnant that grew to the size of a basketball by the time she was due, and went on to deliver her baby naturally (despite the hematoma and basketball sized fibroid) and then had the fibroid shrink back to a small size after her pregnancy.

There you have it. I have a diagnosis. And a fibroid. And a bleeding clot by my baby. Yikes!