And again

Friday night - it's good to be home.


We had A's blood checked again at 11 this morning. I called back after 1, as instructed, to be told the lab was backed up and I would need to call back in an hour. Called back after 2, talked to our nurse, who said Dr. Hum was on the phone with pathology because the full results of the biopsy weren't in the computer. She did say that his platelets had dropped back down to 2,000, so we were going to be starting the prednisone today. I was recommended to ask about Shark Liver Oil before starting on the prednisone, but the nurse said the dr wouldn't want to do that because if they are being done together, they wouldn't know which solved the problem. My thoughts: 1) I don't care which solves it, I just want it solved; 2)I didn't ask to do them at the same time, I was preferring to do the shark liver oil before trying the prednisone. But, the nurse said they prefer to do these three steps (WinRho, IVIG, prednisone) before trying other possibilities. She said Dr. Hum would call back after they had more information on the biopsy.

Got the call later, everything showed great on the biopsy. Dr. Hum said it looked like garden-variety ITP (that's one tough garden, then..). Personally, I think it's going to end up as chronic ITP because we are having such a hard time getting good results. She said she was going to call in the prescription for prednisone right away. I asked what the next step would be if this didn't work; she said she'd rather cross that bridge when we come to it. She said she'd rather stay positive about this, because it's been rare for her to have a child who didn't respond to it. She asked if we wanted a liquid or pill (crushed) form; I chose pill because it's a lot easier to get him to eat than to drink sometimes.

The only problem is, we can't get A to take it. We put it in ice cream first. I've never had to force-feed a child ice cream before. I put the last of the ice cream in a sippy cup and added a little chocolate milk. He won't drink it. He fortunately has a short attention span, because he kept going back to the milk, but would put it back down immediately after starting to drink... with a delayed shudder. I don't want to do this dance 3x a day for however many months. So, I guess I'm calling in the morning to find out what we can do instead, since the prednisone alters the flavor of his food so much.

I did start him on Mona Vie though. It's juice, right? Oh, and he goes back Thursday afternoon for another re-check.