Our Crazy Month of May...

Since news is leaking out all over the place, I decided to post an update and correct all the crazy stories that are circulating. Our month started off in a pretty horrible way. Our trip to California was delayed a bit by a miscarriage, followed by a D&C procedure to make sure everything was ok. I was about 8 weeks along, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been, but still, horrible! Any of you who have been through that know what I mean. Thanks to all the family and friends for thoughts and prayers. We really felt your strength and had the comfort of the Lord to help us through that. It was great to spend a few days with my family to help us keep our minds off of what we were going through.

We got home from California and thought we were returning to life as normal. Unfortunately, that wasn't in the plans for us. On Saturday (15th), I woke up with bruises all over, and especially bad on my arms and legs. I seriously looked like I'd been in a fight. The doctor guessed that it was either a result from an infection (I guess that can very rarely be a sign of infection..) or a blood condition. I got through the weekend and went in on Monday for some blood tests and I was told it would be a day or 2 before they got the results back. I was surprised with a call from the doctor at 8 am the next morning. Short story, my platelet count was critically low and the doctor wanted to be sure that I was especially careful to not bump into anything or hit my head. Platelets are one of the main things that help your blood clot. If the count is critically low, a tiny bump results in a big bruise, and a bump on the head could result in serious internal bleeding and brain injury. I got a couple more calls from the doctor throughout the day as he tried to get a hold of the specialist (a hematologist), which made it pretty clear that this was serious.

We got in to see the hematologist that afternoon. He asked a lot of questions, did some more tests, and succeeded in scaring us to death by sending us over to the hospital for a CT scan (I'd had a migraine the night before and he was concerned about bleeding). Everything looked pretty good for the seriousness of the situation. No internal bleeding, aside from the bruises, and I got started on a steroid treatment, and a standing appointment for a blood test each day. To give you an idea about the seriousness of everything, normal platelet count is over 150. At the time of the D&C procedure, I had 249. On Monday, I had 2. Platelet count is considered critically low if it is under 20. So you can imagine the doctors were a little concerned. They basically told me that I could either go live in the hospital until my count was up, or completely limit my contact with Josie and stay home. So, Josie has been living at Mimi and Papa's house all week. Let me tell you, We miss her!!

At this point, they aren't exactly sure what the cause is. The hematologist seems fairly certain that one of the medications I was given during the D&C procedure caused it, but he hasn't been able to obtain my records from the specialty hospital yet. It could also have been a toxin that somehow got into the blood stream. They took a bunch of my blood yesterday to run tests, which we will hopefully see the results on Monday. All we know for sure is that my antibodies went a little crazy and started killing my poor little platelets.

The good news is that the steroid treatment is working and we are seeing progress. I was at 2 on Monday, 3 on Tuesday, 10 on Wednesday, 14 on Thursday, and I'm all the way up to 25 today. Hurray! I'm no longer in the "critical" zone, but I'm still borderline, and Josie still can't come home. But, I did get a free weekend and I don't have to go in until Monday to get tested again. So we are looking forward to a couple of days with Josie, and hopefully she'll be able to come home soon. I'll post again when we have some more information. Have a wonderful weekend!