In... and out.

We had an appointment at 1 on Thursday with the Oncology department at the Children's Hospital. The dr. talked a little about ITP, explaining what it is and how it works. Basically, the cold A had earlier this month triggered his body to attack his platelets. V's theory is that, the markers on his blood platelets may have resembled the platelets from the cold virus, and so his immune system was attacking his platelets faster than they could replenish. It's not a disease that can be "cured," but it tends to resolve itself on its own once the body can be held off a little bit from attacking the platelets.

They tested his platelet levels again and they had dropped to 5,000 from 8,000 on Tuesday. The dr said because of his age and high activity levels, they didn't feel comfortable with waiting and watching from home. If he was an older child that could be reasoned with, we wouldn't have had to be admitted. It was just for A's safety that they wanted to admit him. They were going to give him WinRho to distract his immune system. We were waiting for several hours and finally were told the medication would be there around 7pm (20 minutes later). I think it was around 10:30pm when the medicine finally arrived. The good part is A was asleep and couldn't fight them over messing with his IV! The reason it took so long was miscommunication between the Children's hospital pharmacy, the main pharmacy, and the blood bank, which sent the nurses running in circles. Our main nurse said she and the night nurse were going to be filing a complaint against the pharamcy because there was no excuse for it taking that long to get the medicine.

Other than the times that they were messing with his IV or trying to take blood, he didn't seem to mind being there. He even got used to having his heart checked and temperature taken. He hated having his blood pressure checked. They put a brace over his IV arm to keep him from messing with it. After a while he forgot about it entirely and just resigned himself to being one-armed.

Thursday morning they drew his blood again - from his foot, since they couldn't get to the veins in his arm - and his platelet levels had risen to 56,000! Still not to normal levels, but high enough that they felt safer about having him at home. We've already seen noticeable improvement in his bruises. He has a follow up appointment at the hospital on Thursday to check his platelet levels again.

The website for WinRho shows that the average time that the drug lasts is 36 days. We have no way of knowing right now if the problem will be resolved by then or if he will have to have more put in him. The dr said ITP is very hard for them to predict recovery.

J's stitches come out Monday!