As some of you might know (which by definition means some of you might not), I'm spending part of my summer working with Dr. Kristine Weatherston, a media professor at Temple University, on a documentary called Under Pressure: The Hidden Story of Pregnancy and Preeclampsia. It's cool and good and you should help us out by donating to the documentary.
Wait, hold on. Sorry - I forgot I'm supposed to, like, tell you about it. Hm. Okay.
Preeclampsia is a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy that affects 5 to 8 percent of pregnant women.. In general, the illness strikes before the baby is delivered/born, but in some instances, it can crop up post-partim, or the symptoms can linger after the baby is born. . It's terrible and life-threatening, and there's no known cure.
The only known way to "cure" preeclampsia is to deliver the baby, either naturally or by C-section. And even after the birth, preeclampsia can have lasting long-term effects on a woman's health. This isn't to say anything for the emotional and psychological suffering brought onto both the woman and her family from battling the illness, as well as leaving the premature baby in the NICU for the first weeks of its life.
The trick with preeclampsia (and its more serious variant HELLP syndrome) is that many of its symptoms - high blood pressure, swollen feet and legs, headaches, "floaters" in the woman's vision - are also symptoms of pregnancy in general. So in a lot of cases, doctors have a hard time diagnosing it, and women and their families don't even know the illness exists or that they are at risk of suffering it.
That's where Under Pressure comes in. Dr. Weatherston - a preeclampsia survivor herself - stared interviewing other women who survived preeclampsia and HELLP. Some of them came out of their fight with a happy, healthy child. Some, tragically, did not. But all of their stories - plus conversations with doctors from the Magee-Womens hospital in Pittsburgh who study preeclampsia - bring up a similar central point: there's not enough awareness about preeclampsia, and not enough knowledge about it. I've spent this summer transcribing about 9-10 hours of those interviews myself, as have three other students working on the documentary.
Dr. Weatherston - plus co-director Tammy Slaughter and co-producer Thea Chaloner - started Under Pressure with the goal of creating that additional awareness. The finished documentary will be donated to women's health centers for educational purposes, and entered into some film festivals.
The goal of Under Pressure isn't to make a ton of money; it's to make women and families (and even doctors!) more educated about hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. It's to give voice to the women who suffered and still carry harrowing memories - and to their spouses, who struggled trying to care for their wives while caring for their newborn child.
So to help with production costs, travel costs, and the eventual cost of distributing the completed film, we started an Indiegogo campaign a few weeks ago with the goal to offset some of those expenses. So far, we're doing great, but we're on the final push to raise funds before the conclusion of the fundraiser tonight at midnight.
There are some cool perks for donating to the documentary, including credits in the film itself, signed copies of the DVD, and more. But more than anything, your donation helps a great project created in the name of a great cause.
You can find the Indiegogo page here - http://igg.me/at/underpressure/x/14262212.
The page has more info on the documentary, a promotional video clip from the film, and a list of possible perks. It also has links to the documentary's website, Facebook, and Twitter account if you're interested in following the project further. Even if you can't make a financial donation, it'd be an enormous help if you could share the documentary - and the campaign - with your friends and family.
Thanks to everyone who donated already, and to all of you for reading. The dumb jokes and half-baked life commentary will be back soon.
