Question about symptoms--somewhat lengthy

Thankfully, it has been a while since I have needed to post a question about little Brooke. Some of you may remember her from about 2 years ago when out of the blue ITP hit. After a few treatments and months and months of platelet checks, she was dismissed from the Hemo because all was well.

Since then, she has occassionally had more bruises when sick and that type of thing, but nothing bad enough to cause us to see the need to start this watch and wait all over again. That is until a couple of days ago...

I am trying to pull from my memory exactly what happened when 2 years ago when we were battling this, and I'm having a hard time keeping things straight. Which leads me to my question.

I do remember one of the most frustrating things...everyone reacts differently. But before, Brooke would have lots and lots of bruises when her platelets were low. That seemed to be our 'red flag'. For the last week or so, I've noticed that while she doesn't have bruises, she has a purple 'tint/glow' to her if that makes sense. On Thursday of last week, she woke up one morning and had an ugly deep purple bruise on her lower back...a weird place for a bruise on a 3 year old. After a few days, it went away. It never changed colors like a normal bruise, it just kind of faded. Today, she fell and scratched her leg at school. I saw the dried blood when I picked her up. It was about the size of a quarter. When I gave her a bath tonight, after washing her legs, I looked to see how bad her scratch was, and all I could find was a TINY little scratch. Definitely not what you would expect from the amount of blood there before. I looked her over, and she has no bruises that look odd or out of the ordinary. Then, right before I put her to bed, I saw on the underside of her forearm an 'odd' colored bruise about the size of a pencil eraser. She has no other bruises at all. She is fighting a cold or something right now, so that could be affecting it as well.

What do you think? With basically no bruises, is it possible her platelets are low enough to be worried??

Any thoughts or idea or personal stories would be appreciated greatly. Thanks all!!

I am not sure I would worry about any of those symptoms individually, but given her history and the accumulation of symptoms, I would think it was worth asking your GP or haematologist to check her platelet level. If only to give you peace of mind!

Incidentially, a lot of kids don't actually bruise until their count is really low. My son doesn't really bruise at all until his count is below 10K, and his symptoms have changed over time - he used to get noticeable symptoms if he went below 30K, but now I only really see them under about 15K - so it is possible that your daughter's previous signs of a low count wouldn't be valid now.

Thanks for your input. The 'not knowing what to do' was one of the things I hated about this when her counts were so low before. I remember telling the drs before that I wished they could tell me, "now when ____ happens, you know her counts are low."

Thanks again for sharing!

Madison

Just thought I would update. I talked to the dr yesterday, and she wanted Brooke to have her counts checked. She was so excited to tell me they are well over 250,000! What a relief...a shortlived relief as she then started explaining that since Brooke had a bleeding episode day before yesterday, has two 'not normal' bruises, and the nurse mentioned how much Brooke bled from the CBC this morning, something is probably going on that is unrelated to ITP. She thinks she was another type of bleeding and/clotting disorder, so now we start down that road. Ugh!

Madison

Oh I am sorry to hear about that. But just keep positive, it could be nothing, you never really know. Hopefully you guys see a hematologist soon and get it all figured out.