Follow-Up

Well, the plan for the cold to go away didn't work very well.

I woke up late Sunday night with severe shaking, and a recurrence in the drop of platelets that put me in the hospital last February. When I went to bed, it was a cold. When I woke up, I had the little pinpoint bleeds under my skin called petechiae, and blood blisters on the side of my tongue, and that nonstop violent shaking. So we went to the hospital, where it turned out that my platelet count was one. Normal is 150-450. A problem. So they threw some very heavy duty drugs at me, and the count crept back up to 35. I got to leave the hospital yesterday afternoon, and am resting at home. PH will take me out for dinner in a little while, which I'm really looking forward to.

The big question in all this, of course, is where to go next with this problem. This was a much more rapid onset and a worse drop than in the past. I cannot imagine a life where every time I get a cold I end up in the hospital with twenty-five grand worth of drugs being pumped into me.

One option that I had avoided in earlier bouts is a splenectomy, removing the spleen, which is the organ that kills off my platelets and leaves me open to spontaneous bleeds. Folks can live without spleens, although spleens do other things to fight infections. Still, it's surgery. Other options are not very pleasant either, like a cancer drug that is experimental for treatment of ITP and has difficult side effects, or going on doses of steroids indefinitely with their difficult side effects. We'll see what the doctor says when I go on Monday.

For now, I'm grateful that I'm home, that this was treatable and didn't kill me this time although it might very well have done so, that we have good insurance, that there are options.

Please keep me in your prayers as we discern what next steps we will take.