Totally lost with these results......also since our failed treatment my asthma which is usually fine has been horendous can this have anything to do with a immune issue??
Sorry to hear about your cycle not working out
Keep hope - the immunes may be the ticket for you!
Actually may be able to help w the PT test (I researched clotting assays a lot this summer!)
Prothrombin, or factor II, is one of the clotting factors made by the liver. Vitamin K is needed to make prothrombin and other clotting factors. Prothrombin time is an important test because it checks to see if five different blood clotting factors (factors I, II, V, VII, and X) are present... Prothrombin time is usually measured in seconds — the time it takes for your blood to clot. This way of determining prothrombin time creates results that will vary depending on the laboratory and the method used to test the blood, but a sample range is approximately 10 to 14 seconds. A number higher than average means it takes blood longer than usual to clot. A lower number means blood clots more quickly than expected.Basically, if you are NOT on warfarin (oral anticoagulant), all those coagulation numbers should be normal UNLESS you have a clotting issue. A low PT or APTT generally means you are clotting QUICKLY (ie you clot too easily... PT measures the time it takes to clot and if is low #, then time to clotting is too short, see? That's how I help myself understand the #s.)
I can't quite figure why the Dr said everything is normal with a short PT... maybe it was bc it was 9.5 ie barely outside normal range? Personally I would want to be solidly within normal range - clotting is so easy to fix and blood flow helps with so many things. Also if you were just post-AF, not ovulating, not stimming, not on estrogens, not pregnant it could be falsely normal, bc all those things can thicken the blood (mainly due to estrogens effects)... and by the time you get to your ET your PT ma have shortened even more.
Maybe you could benefit from blood thinners if you aren't already on them. At least a baby aspirin. Even a lot of non-immune REs are now putting women on blood thinners just bc it seems to help success rates. Better blood flow helps with egg quality, too. Plus my OB who is really up on immunes says lovenox is a potent anti-inflammatory
All in all I think that # is worth looking into more.
FYI if you are on blood thinner like clexane (lovenox) vs warfarin your PT will NOT lengthen (go up) nor usually does your aPTT - so you can't use that to monitor whether you are back in "normal" range ie are you responding to the blood thinner and are you on the right dosage. Most of us are on "prophylactic" not "therapeutic" doses of the blood thinners so we don't really need to monitor dosages - but I personally feel if you have the family and personal history to justify it, you may actually need a therapeutic dose (especially once pregnant and if taking estrogens) - and you don't know you're there until the blood results show it. (One can be resistant to the heparins too, and need a bigger dose.) The monitoring test for heparins is called Anti-Xa I believe or alternatively a heparin assay. (FYI a 3rd type of blood thinner called Arixtra (fondparinux) doesn't show up on THAT test either - it has it's own assay for monitoring (one is rarely required to monitor arixtra dosing tho - unlike lovenox/clexane/heparins, which it's recommended to monitor during pregnancy IF you have a significant risk of clotting.)
Based on that questionable PT you might also want to think about getting the MTHFR and PAI-1 tests (that's part of Level 2 testing). This is to see if you have a genetic mutation that predisposes you to clots. My PT and aPTT were low-"normal" when Kwak tested them, but I still had hetero (1 copy) MTHFR and homo (both copies) PAI-1 mutations. This put me at risk not only of tiny blood clots in the uterine arteries (thus increasing risk of miscarriage) but also a greater lifetime risk of clots and strokes. So it was a really good thing to know, I'm now on lifelong baby aspirin and Folgard/metanx even when not preg or TTC.
Also wanted to share that every time I have a MC, chemical or what I suspect is a failed implantation, I get a flare of my autoimmune condition (mostly arthritic for me). I
think asthma has immune connection, no? So it could definitely be your failed cycle. Also the stim meds and high estro seem to trigger immune reaction per kwak the NKs go up even as we get close to ovulating naturally (vs the early follicular phase). Maybe your embies tried to stick and the body mounted a defense against the implantation... and flaring your asthma as well. Doing some kind of anti-inflammatory protocol from right now might help shift it and also help with egg quality. just a thought.
sorry if you have already done all this, I can't tell from your post/siggy quite how far you've gone down the immune road, but since you said "level one" I'm assuming you're just starting to investigate immunes... like I said keep up hope there's a lot that can be done on the immune front.
