A Question That May Never Be Answered

In very rare cases, Aplastic Anemia can be caused by pregnancy. This being known, there will always be a question as to whether or not Jo's pregnancy induced her condition. The answer will never be known for sure, but we had an interesting chat today that I wanted to share.

Jo's condition was diagnosed in November, 2004, approximately 8 weeks into her pregnancy. Her platelet counts were already at about 30,000 and dropping quickly. The timing all seems to point to a possible connection to getting pregnant.

However, in April of 2004, at the Pike's Peak Line Dance event in Colorado Springs, Jo remembers having a little cut that kept bleeding for an abnormally long time. Then, sometime in May or June, 2004, Jo woke up at home with an unusually heavy nose bleed.

In July, 2004, Jo was practicing a swing dance routine (for Swingtime in the Rockies) with Toby Munroe and she remembers feeling abnormally winded. For anybody that knows Jo, being winded by anything less than a 48 hour dance marathon (without food or water and carrying a 20 pound backpack) would be unusual. Finally, in September (about a week before getting pregnant) Jo was practicing another routine with Michael Kiehm and she had to take breaks to catch her breath much more often than normal. Yes, I know that a lot of women have trouble breathing when they dance with Michael Kiehm, but this was different!

So, there is some data that suggests that the Aplastic Anemia may have been coming on as early as the spring of 2004. If so, it's probably better that we didn't find out about it since the doctors would not have let Jo get pregnant until after the condition was resolved.

Tomorrow, we head on down to Houston where we will have a chance to see our friends, David and BeLynda, who inspired this blog. BeLynda grew up with Jo in East Texas and in September of 2004, BeLynda gave birth to triplets. She and David have done a wonderful job documenting the adventure of raising triplets on their blog - www.davidandbelynda.com.

On Thursday, we will see Dr. Anderlini at M.D. Anderson. Jo will have another bone marrow biopsy (under sedation, of course). We should have the results within a week.

P.S. Today is our 2nd wedding anniversary!!! Jo and I were married here in Lufkin, TX 2 years ago with our immediate families present. We met over 12 years ago and the past 4 or 5 years have been a concerted effort to slow our travels down enough to have a family. Every time I get Anna out of her crib in the morning or after a nap and she smiles with her big toothless grin, I realize how amazing the journey of the past 12+ years has been.