I'm not complaining, but....My count is down over 100k. I've been holding stead at 250-280 for months, but on Tuesday my count was 146. Kind of freaks me out a little bit.
I've been having problems with itching and rash, which is probably autoimmune uticaria. It's better after several weeks of 3 different antihistamine drugs. With the itching and rash, I've had itchy eyes, nose and burning inf lammed sinus, so I'm also on steroid nasal spray and Zrytech eye drops. At least the itching is better, because that was starting to make me crazy.
On Monday I was working on our taxes, sitting for about 3 hours straight, when all of a sudden I had upper back pain. I thought it was from sitting, because I do get stiff and painful pretty easy, so I figured I was done for the day with sitting and went to get a heating pad and lay down to rest. The pain progressed throughout the day and night, so on Tuesday morning, I was having problems breathing and chest pain. I called the doctor and he ordered me to the ER. I was really in a lot of pain, so of course with my history of PE, they did a PE work up, along with cardiac, because I was having shoulder and arm pain and the EKG was a little off.
The doctor ran all the tests and nothing, so diagnosed pleurisy. I've been having some mild pleurisy, but this was unbelievable and required Oxycotin to manage the pain. I have not had pleurisy like that since transplant and am discouraged and worried about it. I upped my prednisone on Wed to 20mg and have stayed at that dose through today, but tomorrow I'll drop down to 10 and see how it goes. I really didn't get any dose suggestion from the ER doctor and didn't call the rheumatologist, because I lost him last month and have not seen the new guy yet. I do have an appointment with him in early March, because the immunoogist who is treating the uticaria insisted I get an appointment with the rheumatologist. I see the immunologist on Monday, so I'll run it all by him.
I'm concerned because of the increased symptoms of pleurisy, the drop in platelet count, the rash and itching...it all just seems to indicate something autoimmune is going on and I hope it does not mean I'll be back to low platelet counts again, because that will make me worry about APS, ITP, lupus. So far my lupus tests remain negative or very low titers. ANA is negative, DsDNA negative, just a low positive Sm and RNP.
I think I'll have the immunologist run another CBC, so I can see what my platelet count is and hopefully it will be up next week. Wish me luck...
