Hey, before you read this know that I know this is not RPGCry, or RPGCrutch. I’m putting this situation out there just so anyone with a brain and a little legal knowledge can tell me whether they think I have the makings for a lawsuit on my hands.
First point, I’m about eight weeks pregnant. They test your blood for a lot of shit when you’re knocked up, and I came back positive for antibodies. These are bad antibodies, the kind that kill your baby sometimes. If my fiancé is negative for them (blood test pending) the chance of us having a live birth from a pregnancy could be up to about 90%. If he is positive, it’s less than a 50% chance that a baby from any pregnancy will survive to birth. I’m considered extremely high risk now, and have to deliver at Dartmouth-Hitchcock, the best hospital in New Hampshire, I’ve been told, with the best neonatal unit and specialists available. (Its two hours away from me.)
As you might know, I have a beautiful 19 month old son. Why am I finding out about these antibodies now? Because I didn’t have them before he was born. I had a lot of complications caused by fuck-ups from the doctors from the birth (and the records are mysteriously missing right now) and had to have 3 blood transfusions.
Isn’t blood screened? Actually, not for this. Because the antibodies are uncommon, they don’t think it’s important. Even though it can steal the fertility from someone and change their life. Also, I will be affected later on and can no longer have regular blood if I need a transfusion. It can make me seriously ill. I’m not sure what that means, whether I’d need 0 negative or blood that exactly matched mine. We’ll talk about that at my appt. on Monday.
Basically, I want to know if there is someone that can be sued for them not checking the blood for these horrible, life affecting antibodies.To save 5 minutes and 5 dollars, they risk lives. I know it sounds selfish, but the big thing for me is not a fat lawsuit check, but a change in policy, so that another poor girl doesn’t have to find out she may never have a live baby again.
Why don’t you be more direct and just ask for a change of policy. They would be more likely to comply with you if you are nice.
Not to make broad generalizations, but I find most companies and businesses don’t bother with changes to policy unless there is the threat of losing money involved.
I shouldn’t have to ask. They should screen blood for all diseases they know about. Now just popularly bad ones like AIDS.
“Oh, Mr. Blood company, please, you ruined my life can you plz change the rules for other people?
Oh, shove that up where? Thanks.”
They’ve really fucked up by not screening for something they know about. That’s wrong. They deserve to be sued. No one said to me “Before we do this, you could catch X because they don’t check it THAT well.”
Saying to ask a company to change policy is just naive. And thats bad coming from me.
Damn! Sorry to hear that, Kasey. I pray that your baby will be OK.
As for having a case? I’m no legal expert, but I’m not swallowing the “blood transfusion doesn’t get screened for things like this” explanation. There’s way too much wrong stuff that can get in that way. There HAS to be some regulation about this antibody thing or it would happen more often. The problem would be proving it… do you have evidence you didn’t have those antibodies to begin with?
I hope your baby will be alright. Good luck.
I don’t fully understand what happened so I don’t know if there are any misunderstandings about your potential condition and its potential cause.
Bear with me as I ask a few questions to try to get my head around what you’re trying to tell us:
You had a baby 19 months ago. Complications arose, you required 3 blood transfusions. Why did you require blood transfusions? Nurses are supposed to check and re-check every sample of blood before it is given to you to prevent the wrong blood being given.
I am confused by your description of antibodies. Are you saying there were antibodies in the blood you were given? If so, then those are already out of your system. If you have problems with antibodies, they’re antibodies that your system made in response to something in the blood. So what I want to know is what are these antibodies directed against that is threatening your baby? Its not uncommon to develop an immune reaction against something, which is why it is very important to be very careful about things like blood transfusions. What are these genes you and your husband are being screened for?
Its important to know what these antibodies are reacting to in order to differentiate between something that naturally occurs after certain pregnancies (like if you’re Rh- and your first baby was Rh+) and something like this.
I strongly recommend you talk to your physician and if you don’t understand what he’s telling you, just force him to rephrase what he is saying until you do. What is happening to you should not be news to your obstetrician and so he should be able to clearly explain what is wrong, what happened and what can be done next. If negligence did indeed occur, then its most likely the hospital’s and its nurses’ fault for not properly checking the blood as they were supposed to. If there was indeed a mistake that was made, odds are it isn’t because there lacked a protocol for how to address your case, but because of negligence - I may be wrong since I don’t know what’s happening, I’m only making a guess right now.
-
I required blood transfusions because an artery popped in my lady-zone and I bled out for ten hours before they realized it was that and not a blood clot in uterus.
-
The doctor said these antibodies get into your blood and reproduce and stay there, like how your body gains antibodies to dieseases youve had. I dont know what its called yet- on Mon we have an appt. and I’m not leaving without some sort of name.
-
wil- They test for these antibodies in pregnant ladies, so there’s proof I didnt have them when I was pregnant with Theodore, and that I got them after the transfusion.
-
We’re not being screened for genes. They want to see if he’s a carrier for the same antibodies, and that will change the likelihoood my body attacks a fetus.
-
I’m RH+, BUT the doctor said this problem is kind of like being RH-, except its more severe, and theres no RHOGAM shot to stop it.
-
The OBGYN specifically told me they do not screen for these antibodies, because the people that do the testing to get it into the blood beank do not feel it is important enough. This is odd to me because it is important enough to check all pregnant for the presence of these antibodies.
When you go to your appointment, write down the exact name of the condition / antibody.
Antibodies are proteins. Proteins are made by cells of the immune system, and thus can’t reproduce on their own. It is therefore impossible for antibodies in a sac of blood that was given to you to proliferate on their own. It is also nearly impossible for someone else’ antibody producing cells to colonize your body to start making this antibody because your body would recognize these cells as foreign invaders and kill them.
What may be happening is that your immune system reacted to something within the blood you were given and so before we really know what’s happening here, we’ll need to know what that factor is. As it stands, I am confused by what may attack your 2nd baby.
Best of luck, Kasey.
First time I’ve heard of this.
Is it a not regulated only in your state (and some others) or in this a nationwide thing?
Maybe it’s a different type of blood cell antigen? Like the Lewis antigens or something else?
Ya know, I’m pretty fucking impressed with you, Rpgclassics. On an internet where if someone asked a question like this on any other video game website. That person would be ignored or insulted. This website goes above and beyond the call of duty. I raise my glass to you.
Yeah, you guys are pretty amazing. Honestly, I don’t get out much with a 19 months old, so outside of my inlaws and fiance, this is most of the human contact I get.
I just know a lot of you are pretty highly educated, and could give me advice. Tho I couldn’t have been suprised to be ignored/made fun of just about anywhere on the innernet.
Sin, I am not leaving the doc. on Mon. until they get me a name for this. So far, all Ive been given is a general name of ‘antibody’ but I know there has to be something causing it.
As for why it attacks, the best I know is that is for some reason attaches to a fetuses red blood cells and kills them? I’m not exactly sure yet, but from what I google thats usually the case.
I don’t get why people do this. Why not just say a year and a half? I would understand for less typing, but people do it in real life.
I am aware 19 months is more than 1.5 years.
The reason they do this is because there is a vast difference between (for example) a fourteen month child and a nineteen month child (developmentally speaking).
Yeah GSG, this way of speaking is much more accurate. Until the kids at least two, they’re referred to by month age. Even a nineteen month old and a seventeen month old have differences that are suprisingly distinct, and you could both refer to them as ‘a year and a half’ and that just wouldn’t cut it, especially if the age was important. Which it isn’t right now, but that’s just the way to write it.
The specific antigens that were in the blood I recieved were:
Kell
FyA
C
Which caused the creation of anti-Kell, anti-FyA, and anti-C.
Man, I had never heard of this until now. I’m sorry to say that the Kell is a very rare equivalent of the Rh factor and no one has made an equivalent anti-kell antibody treatment as they did with Rh. Assuming you acquired the immunity against Kell because of your blood transfusion, I don’t know who’s to blame. You would need to see who’s responsible for screening the blood for all the possible factors of interest (probably not the hospital) and I don’t know how much pull you’d have against them. The more obvious lawsuit would be the negligence that led you to hemorrhage, but I can’t comment on that further since I am not aware with the specifics of your case.
If your husband is negative for Kell, your baby isn’t at risk because any antibodies you have won’t react to the baby. Its pretty unlikely that he is since its so rare, but its safer to check. On a similar note, if he is positive, you can’t tell whether or not your antibodies are directed at the blood you received or your first baby’s unless you choose to test your baby for any of these factors you have developed antibodies to.
Re: Fya, there was a paper published in 2007 in Transfusion looking at a sample of women who were exposed and produced antibodies against it. The study found that 2/11 babies had developed anemia as a result but there were no deaths or hydrops (a normal consequence of fetal anemia). You probably don’t need to worry much about this. This has happened infrequently and when it has, it hasn’t led to any life threatening conditions.
Good luck.
Do any of these legal advice threads actually turn into lawsuits? I dunno about you guys but I’m 22 and I’ve been in a court room a whole one time in my entire life, yet I see like 10 of these “legal” threads per month on various forums. Is this a geography thing? Are people down south really court-happy?
I read this thread a few times over and did some googling, and I’m nowhere near as educated as Sin, but I’d agree that your problem isn’t clear enough to really say anything about.
Edit: NVM Sin seems to know.