Australian mom Sarah Buller, who now resides in France, became pregnant for the first time three years ago with her husband Bruce. For the first three months, the former model was feeling great and everything was progressing perfectly. However, at around the end of the first trimester, Buller went to bed one night as usual, but when she woke up her left leg was double the size of her other leg.
“It was like one day I went to bed with two normal legs and the next morning I woke up and had one huge leg in comparison,” Buller said. “I was so shocked but doctors did tests and nothing showed up so I guess we all just hoped the swelling would go down after I gave birth.”
Yet as her bump grew, her leg only got bigger and bigger, and it never went back down as doctors had hoped after she gave birth. Soon after the birth of her first child, doctors were finally able to diagnose Buller with primary lymphedema, an incurable condition where fluid builds up and causes swelling in the tissue because of a problem with the lymphatic system. “Instead of enjoying precious moments with my new baby girl, I was having to bandage my leg constantly to try and reduce the swelling.”
Then when Buller became pregnant for the second time, the condition only got worse, and she was then classified with stage two lymphedema. To help cope with the condition, Buller started her own blog, The Lymphosaurus Rex, but quickly realized how many people were suffering from the condition, and what other treatment options were available.
“I was fed up of feeling like an old woman and then I read about other people feeling down and realized that every person with this condition should still feel beautiful,” said Buller, who underwent Vascularised Lymph Node Transfer (VLNT) surgery last May where doctors take healthy lymph nodes from her armpits and put them in her leg, which will take a year to show results.
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[Featured image: Caters News Agency]
Pregnant Mom Develops Lymphedema Overnight is an article from: LifeDaily