Doug's Sounding Board

Now that it’s basically over, welcome to my month! Only a few people knew it was my month and I should have been telling people about it, but I got busy and I didn’t really know how to word it. This is my month because it is APS Awareness Month.

APS is Antiphospholipid Antibody Syndrome but you can refer to it as antiphospho-what? It’s also known as Antiphospholipid Syndrome, Hughes Syndrome, and Sticky Blood in the UK which makes it sound like something you’re likely to find in a horror movie. So what is it? It’s not Lupus! It’s a rare disease where your body makes antibodies that attack the phospholipids in your body. So the phospholipids in your blood cells get hit and the blood cells no longer have a nice smooth surface that can slip past one another. The blood cells catch on to one another, eventually forming a clot and once you get to the clots you face all the risks associated with clots.

As you might have guess by now, it is the cause for my two blood clots and as a result I am set to be on blood thinners until a way to fix it is figured out. There is no known way to fix the problem, and they don’t know what causes the problem. About all it seems that is known (at least to the end user) is that it isn’t a genetic condition which means I didn’t get it from my parents and I haven’t passed it on to Olive. If you look at every other blood metric my blood is fantastic, it’s just under attack. I don’t know whether I have primary or secondary APS. Primary means it’s all I have and secondary means I have something like Lupus as the primary. I wasn’t tested for that because I would have to go off blood thinners to test for that and it wouldn’t change my treatment of being on blood thinners. The doctor didn’t seem to think I have Lupus though so I’m going with primary.

So there you go, now all of you reading are aware of APS and I’ve done my part… very late. If you like you can ask me questions or find more information at the APS Foundation site.