My Dancing Harry

This week we've been battling a little health crisis on the homefront...

On Monday, Kyle noticed some weird bruising on his arm and spots on his hands.  Otherwise he felt fine and perfectly normal. When he was 12, he had a very rare immune disorder called Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (ITP) and the bruising looked similar to him...red flag!  As I understand it, ITP can be triggered by a virus and then your immune system malfunctions and begins attacking your platelets.  He went to the general practitioner on Tuesday to get some blood tests.  He got a call very early yesterday morning from her telling him him to go immediately to the emergency room.  When you get a call from your GP at 6:30am you know something is not normal.  His platelet count was 8,000 and the normal range is 150,000 to 400,000.  Basically, at that level, he could have spontaneous bleeding internally, brain included, and, well...you know.

We got to the hospital to try to figure out what was going on.  Unfortunately, ITP can not be diagnosed on its own, you have to rule out everything else and then by default it is ITP.  So we spent yesterday first ruling out the really bad stuff (thank GOD) and then coming up with a plan of action.  The doctor decided to go with a really aggressive steroid treatment to try to keep his immune system from attacking his platelets.  She said the steroids could make him extra hungry, prone to gaining weight, unable to sleep at night and super cranky. Just what we need, another "pregnant" person at the house!

He got to come home yesterday and we are going back to the hospital tomorrow to check his platelet count.  His doctor would like to see them at 35,000.  He is pretty much on house restriction at the moment until we know that the steroids are working. They work in most cases!