Numbers......

Dougie went for a blood count today, and the result was 19K. Woohoooooo! Why does 19K sound so much better to me than 11K? I am hoping (possibly without any foundation) that this slight rise marks the beginning of the end of this particular dip, and he can go back to safer counts.

I am particularly hoping this because the nurse mentioned today that the paediatrician had written to the consultant about Dougie having treatment. The more I think about this, the less I like the idea. I know it is illogical, but as a family, we hardly ever take medicines - if we go through a bottle of calpol or a box of paracetemol a year, its unusual. I hate the idea of giving Dougie a tablet a day. But equally, I worry about the "what if's", especially since he seems determined to have the normal active life of any 12 year old boy. Also in the last few months, he's been really tired again, and I think this might have to do with lower counts - he thinks it is connected, and on this basis alone, he says he wants to try something to get his count higher.

Argh!!!!! He just needs to get his platelets over 30K again so that I don't have to consider the answers to all these difficult issues!

Ali

P.S. Side effects of promata(eltrombopag) - what are they?

I'll do the woohoooo dance with you, just cuz it looks like your having so much fun! Actually, any rise is a good thing! :woohoo:
I can't share about promacta side effects...yet. I'm only on my 4th day of it. And I'm a grown up! Hoping his counts keep rising!

Alison,

Since you are concerned about allopathic medicine (rightly so!), have you ever considered homeopathy? It works so well, is inexpensive, and does not damage the body. There are a number of people on this board that have had good success with it. Our boy has done VERY well and it has helped his body heal other issues he had as well. There are a number of good h-paths in the UK.

patti

Hi Patti

I've been reading your posts about your son's progress with great interest, and I have a lot of respect for your position. The trouble is that, personally, I just don't "believe" homeopathy. Sorry!

However, the part your son's experience that I've found really thought provoking, and that I am exploring further is food intolerances. Dougie was lactose intolerant as a baby/toddler (as were two of his brothers), although this seemed to stop being a problem as he grew up and milk became a smaller proportion of his diet. He has quite a lot of cows milk in his diet now, but I am wondering whether this might be still causing problems in his gut. So we are going to get him tested. You might be interested to know that the ITP Support Association in the UK are funding some research at the moment about food intolerances being linked to ITP as well.

So thanks for the food intolerance thing, but I don't think homeopathy is for us at the moment - although, thats not to say never!

Thanks, Ali

Ali,

A significant portion of the population is allergic to dairy because people no longer drink raw milk. The pasturization and homoginization process are very damaging to the body. Heating it kills all of the enzymes our bodies were meant to utilize in processing it and mixing the fat into the milk causes severe leaky gut which leads to food allergies. So, all that to say, it wouldn't surprise me if he is allergic simply from those two factors. And then throw in whatever issues he's had before and it's an interesting mix. There is also a genetic factor to dairy allergies specifically.

One thing I will say - and UK is probably very different - but we spent 7 yrs running every type of allergy test we could get run and nothing was coming back as an allergy that would create the kind of issues we were having with Luke. Someone finally told us to have an ELISA test run (it's a fairly sensitive test) and when we did we got A LOT of answers! The boy was allergic to more then half of the 96 foods it tested.

So if he comes back not allergic, I'd question it deeply since he had issues as a toddler and has immune issues now.

Best wishes,

patti