What to do?

Well I thought I had been misdiagnosed with ITP when my platelets started going up by about 10k a week on their own without treatment.

This is my recent blood platelet counts:
February - 79k
March - 47k
April 9th - 39k
April 27th- 40k-50k (they tested two vials of blood)
May 12th - 66k
May 19th - 78k

I left my home (Colorado) on the 28th, to go to Louisiana for about 12 weeks for my husband's internship.

I opted to not start treatment (prednisone) in Colorado, because it looked like my counts were going up!

Now I'm in a state I'm unfamiliar with, I have no doctor, no insurance (lost it when I lost my CO job) and I'm very scared. I didn't bruise hardly at all when my counts went up, but now I count about 21 bruises on my legs, 2 on my arms.. and I only know where 1 of these bruises came from for sure. My husband mentioned it could be cause we were packing/unpacking/moving. But he only has a couple of light bruises, and he never bruises. I have three red dots on my arm and I was wondering if that could be petchia (not sure how to spell it). I've never had bleeding problems, so I don't even know what the petchia look like. (I've googled images, but they vary so much)

So should I be concerned? I want to just get a platelet count, but apparently I can't do that without seeing a doctor. However, a clinic told me today I might be able to have my Colorado doctor fax the blood test over.

So, do you think I'm over worrying? Ahhh I thought this was over!

hmmm....I never had really terrible bruising or horrible petechiae with low counts (less than 20). When I was hospitalized with 17,000 platelets, I had minimal petechiae but ONLY on my ankles. That is usually the most common place. My petechiae looked like little TINY red pin pricks. Like I had been pricked with a little needle all over my ankles. I find it odd that you have 3 small bumps just on your wrist. They are large too, at least larger than the petechiae I have experienced. Are you sure they aren't bug bites? Do they itch? They look a lot like bug bites to me! When is the next time you get a CBC? In the meantime, take it easy and see how quickly your bruises heal. Sometimes that can be a good indicator for your count. I know when I have high counts my bruises heal very quickly and go away very fast (within days). When I was sick with low counts, they would persist for a looooong time! Good luck with everything!

Natalie

You could be right about them being bug bites. I have a dozen or so bites on my ankles that look like they might be from mosquitoes. These just appeared suddenly and are completely different from the other bites. Ugh, I miss Denver! I haate bugs! They seem to think I'm very tasty

Lorna:

Petechiae are very small, like someone stuck a pin in a pore, and they tend to cluster. If I had three of them, I certainly wouldn't worry about that. As for the bruises, if your counts are in the 70's and you got bumped, your bruises might be a bit worse than your husbands. I don't think you have anything to panic about. If your counts were low, you'd probably have large black bruises. How bad are they?

However, it wouldn't hurt to get your counts checked. You'd only end up paying for the CBC which may not be too expensive. If your counts are low enough to need treatment, Prednisone is very, very cheap. I'd speak to the Colorado doctor too and see if he can help.