It's Chronic ITP (so sad)

So, I haven't posted in a while because Brooke has been doing good. Her last counts have been good so I was hoping for remission. 3/15=106k, 4/12=142k, 5/22=174k, 8/24=158k...yesterday, 1/22=99k! Even though it's not that low, it's under normal and it just kind of burst my happy little bubble of thinking she was in remission. SIGH....

Background: Nov 2011 Brooke was diagnosed with ITP. Treated with IVIG and had a horrible reaction. Numbers didn't stay up very long and on New Year’s Day 2012 was admitted to the hospital again. Then we found out that she is IgA deficient and the IVIG could cause anaphylactic shock and she could have died last time. Started her on steroids. Counts increase, decreased and then increased again.

The good news...no active bleeding or crazy bruising in a long time. I guess 'her' normal is just lower than normal, if that makes any sense.

I think that once your child has had ITP for any length of time, you will probably have it in the back of your mind for the rest of your life - I know I will!

But the good news is that 99K would probably hardly qualify as ITP anymore as I think that they they have lowered the threshold to 100. Its a really decent count and although its obviously lower than you would like, its high enough to make no difference to your daughters life. One of the things I've noticed about myself in the time since my son's diagnosis is that my aspirations for his platelet count have lowered. I used to want normal (100+) but now I just hope for safe (somewhere over 30)

Its hard to do, but its probably easier if you don't look at patterns and trends in your daughters count - it will drive you mad. The word chronic doesn't mean much either - it just means its lasted longer than 12 months.

Good luck for Brookes next count

Ali

Ali sure summed up what I would have said. I agree! Your daughters counts are just fine. Don't worry about what 'normal' is on the reference range - it doesn't matter much.