I was told on the phone that a normal persons platelet levels were meant to be anywhere between 150,000 and 400,000 and that mine were only 26,000. He told me to go straight to the emergency to get another blood test, just to be sure that the first blood test was correct. "Sometimes they can be wrong," he told me. "Try not to worry about it."
To be honest, at first I was pretty confused. I felt fine. The doctor didn't seem to think it was anything. What even were platelets? I drove myself to the hospital, ringing my girlfriend and my parents on the way to let them know what was going on. I got another blood test done almost straight away, and then waited... And waited.. And waited... This didn't seem like any kind of emergency, so the nerves I originally had left pretty fast.
Eventually, the doctor called me in. He asked me a heap of questions, examined me, looked at my bruises... "Hmmm..." He kept saying. He seemed just as confused as I was, which wasn't very comforting. He was a young guy, maybe he was just a new doctor and he had never seen anything like this before.
He told me that my platelet levels were now only 16,000 and that they didn't know what would be causing them to drop so fast. He also told me that I was going to have to stay in hospital so that they could do further testing and see what was going on. My platelets were dropping, and they needed to find out why. Platelets are pretty important so it seems.
By this stage, it was past midnight.
Like I said in my last post, I've never been in hospital before. This was kind of exciting in a way. I know it shouldn't have been, and it definitely wasn't exciting being stuck in there, but I've always wanted to know what it would be like. Life is all about new experiences, right? Even bad experiences.
19/12/2018 3:30am: I got taken up to my own room in a wheelchair. I had now been awake 24 hours and all I wanted to do was sleep. I had doctors and nurses coming in and out of my room all night. Checking my blood pressure, my temperature, my heart rate, checking for more bruises and at 6am they took more blood.
For the first few days of being in hospital, they still didn't know what was wrong.
That was definitely the worst part. Not knowing what was wrong, and not being told anything.
They were checking for everything. HIV, Hepatitis A, B and C, even Leukaemia.
Eventually a specialist doctor came in. He told me that he had been assigned to my case, which sounded cool. Like I was on an episode of House or Greys Anatomy or something.
"We think you have ITP," he told me. Finally, it had a name. Finally, they had figured it out. Finally there was a light at the end of the tunnel.
I went on steroids to try and boost my platelet count up, but that didn't work. My platelet levels dropped to the lowest they had been yet. 8,000.
I got put on an IVIg infusion drip straight away for 5 hours. That was the next step after the steroids didn't work. It was in their plan that they had told me about after they told me my diagnosis.
I was on a desperate effort to get out of hospital before Christmas. When I originally got admitted to hospital, I definitely didn't expect to be there for longer than a night or two.
The next day, my platelet levels were back up to 29. It seemed like the IVIg infusion had done its magic. (Yay!)
24/12/2018: I got the best news I had heard all week. My platelet levels were up to 43,000! This meant I was allowed to leave hospital, and just in time for Christmas. It was a Christmas Miracle, that's for sure. They gave me my medication, a medical certificate for another two weeks off work and dates for three more blood tests to check up on my platelet levels.
And with that, I was on my merry way.
I was ready to leave the hospital, and spend Christmas with my girlfriend and my family. I was glad all this was over with and I could finally move on and get back on track.
Or so I thought, anyway.
As I'm still learning about ITP, I'm slowly finding out that this could be an ongoing thing, and not just something that gets better after a week of lying in a hospital bed. My platelet levels are still going up and down, which means the steroids still aren't working like we had hoped they would.
It seems that rather than this being the end of my ITP journey, it's merely just the beginning.
Comments