viral infection?

Hi, I was diagnosed last summer. My count was 40K. It then steadily dropped to 20k in a month. I caught a virus and my count dropped in a couple of days to 2k (I suspect that the origin of the sudden drop was the infection and my hematologist agrees). I got hospitalized and went through igv and cortisone which brought the count back to 110k. I stopped the therapies. After a couple of months the count was 40k. I am currently not treated. I am now afraid that a viral infection would bring my count down again. I have now a sore throat and a cold since a week. I avoid a blood count in this situation as I think it would not reflect the true values. How to help my immune system to deal with relatively small infections for an itp patient? Any suggestion?
By the way, this site is great!
Carl

Anything can drop a count really. I do recall however when my count went up to 401k after a bout with the flu [real flu] - everyone thought I was "cured" until it dropped back down again.

Wash hands - that's the biggest thing to try to combat getting sick.

I'm sure now that I have responded someone else will chime in.

Good luck!

Carl:

There isn't much you can do to avoid illnesses. Just be as careful as you can. Counts do not always drop when one gets sick and many times if they do, they rebound on their own. Sometimes an illness may not cause counts to drop but the antibiotic used to treat it can be the culprit. You never know.

With ITP, you learn to take things as they come and try not to worry about what may or may not happen.