Something that scares me!

Pregnant women in general, then throw in the added congenital defect babies to the mix and there you have my job...all wrapped up with a pretty bow!

But on another note....

A mother came in at term with general non-specific complaints. I thank God, I made her give a quick urine and sent it down and the lab stat, the urine looked horrid- very dark and very concentrated and not a heck of a lot of it either...she had a slight headache, not touched even the slightest with Tylenol, and neck pain-in the back of her neck left sided and some arm discomfort, she was contracting, it was not being picked up well via the monitor but by palpating her abdomen, she was contracting every 3-4 minutes- moderate to strong, the baby was behaving well for the time being, and yes and she had some nicely elevated Blood Pressures to say the least. No edema at all. She was seen in Outpatient the day before and had none of the above. The only thing worth noting was that she was beyond,"crazy", would not sit still, could not stop complaining about everything, and our group has always talked so highly of her and her family.

Needless to say the protein level was greater than 100, and we sent down every bit of blood work you can imagine for PIH labs. Platelets dropped to 40 and liver enzymes were to highest ever recorded by our MFM team.

Final diagnosis? Yup, you guessed it HELLPS. I really do not like even typing it, it is very scary.

She had no risk factors for developing it, except one....she is a nurse, who works at our hospital.