Meri's Journey:

My ITP story began February 12th, 2025, on an early Wednesday morning while working on an assignment with my roommate in our college dorm. Just hours earlier, I had been laughing, making TikToks at Sonic, soaking in what I thought was just another carefree college night with friends.

Looking back, the signs were there. The tiny red dots on my skin. The random bruises. The intense exhaustion I had been blaming on my late-night studies. I didn't think much of these little warnings seeing how I am a very active student. My regular routine often included CrossFit, my coursework in nutrition and medicine, my hours in the research lab, my sorority commitments and my social life that fits in between. I didn't give my body the attention it needed to tell me something was very wrong.

Around 1:30 am that Wednesday while brushing my teeth, I noticed dark red spots covering the inside of my mouth. Immediately I froze in worry. I had never seen anything like it before. I tried to calm myself by making a plan to see a dentist as soon as I could get an appointment. But the fear would not subside. I decided to make a middle of the night call to my mom, hoping she could offer something to ease my concerns. We tossed around ideas and both agreed it must be a virus, and I would call my hometown doctor in the morning.

I laid down in bed, praying for peace… and instead, I felt God speak to me as clearly as I ever have in my life:

Get up. Go to urgent care. Go now.

I knew it wasn't my own voice. It was firm & unmistakable. I called my mom again. She tried to reassure me, but once she heard the unshakable urgency in my voice, she gently told me to go to one of the only Urgent Cares open. Before taking myself in, I called one of my sorority sisters- not because I was scared to go to the care center, but because I just knew what my gut was telling me.

Once I made it to the check-in desk, I was told if nothing was wrong, I would still owe the late-night emergency fee and would still need to wait to be seen. I am not surprised, anyone passing by would've assumed I was fine. That is what makes ITP so cruel- it is often referred to as an "invisible disorder", hiding right beneath the skin, invisible to everyone but you. Which makes it all that more important to bring awareness to it. Regardless, in my healthy-looking state and lack of knowing how critical my immediate condition actually was, I again heard that voice God placed inside of me: "Stay". I heard, I listened when every part of me wanted to walk away. Hours passed. Lab draw after lab draw. Confusion and worry continued. Tired eyes, blank stares and no answers. Then at 4:30 in the morning everything changed- fast.

A doctor walked in with a stretcher and said, "Call your parents. You're going to the hospital. You'll be there for a few days." Words I never would have guessed to have heard and still anxiously echo in me.

At that time, we still had no explanation. No diagnosis. Only more fear and a quick trip in an ambulance ride.

Upon my arrival at the hospital, many more tests and scans consumed many hours to follow. Finally, a doctor walked in and said the words that would define my life as "Before" and "After":

Immune Thrombocytopenic Purpura.

"You have ITP."

A disease I have never even heard of.

Platelets are the blood cells that are responsible for healthy clotting. My platelet count was 12,000 per microliter which would eventually drop below 1K. For reference a healthy range is 150,000 to 400,000. Anything below 10,000 is considered critical. To reflect on how unaware I was walking around campus unknowingly carrying on with my routine while a spontaneous internal brain or heart bleed could have happened at any moment, ending my life. That realization still humbles me.

I was administered a high dose steroid protocol over a course of five days with several lab draws each day. I tried to keep up with my coursework from my hospital bed. Several classmates would visit to tutor me on the lessons I was missing. I was terrified not just of my condition but also worried how missing so much class would affect my college career.

When I was discharged, I thought the nightmare was over. Unfortunately, however, hours later, my symptoms returned and I was back at square one- only this time with a platelet count of 3,000. I will never forget the look of exhaustion and despair that plagued the faces of my sweet family as we learned my platelets had significantly fallen. My platelets were so low I was developing bruises while laying still in a hospital bed. Back to a hospital bed.

Back to more fear and worry. And starting to anxiously wonder what the rest of my life will look like.

My medical team decided to begin IVIG treatments- a temporary solution made from donor antibodies, and a platelet transfusion. Each transfusion took six hours every day. I spent another four days in the hospital receiving mega doses of steroids alongside my daily transfusions. I was a healthy 19-year-old active freshman college student who now was pondering the things I never thought could so quickly be taken from me: My sense of normalcy, school, friends, health and future plans. I now was asking:

Will I get to stay in school?
Will I need to move back home?
Will my life ever look normal?
And the one question that scared me the most: What if it never gets better?

The only thing that kept me hopeful was knowing the Lord was with me. I clung to Scripture every day. As I read the book of Job from my hospital bed, I realized God had already nudged me to read it before I ever knew my diagnosis. He knew what was coming when I didn't.

When I was finally discharged again, I fought to hold onto some normalcy. I didn't want to drop out of school. I didn't want to lose the life I had worked for and loved. I cut my classes down to a minimum, knowing I would have to make the hours up later and tried to keep my focus forward.

But then the mental battle began.

The steroids changed everything, my emotions, my face, my confidence, my sense of self. I woke up some mornings looking in the mirror not recognizing the woman looking back at me. My face was swollen. My mind was foggy. I felt disconnected from my own body. I isolated myself because I couldn't handle my friends & family seeing me in such a state. I cried constantly. I feared every bruise, every red spot, every strange sensation.

Then Rituximab entered my journey. I was administered one infusion a week for four weeks in the Cancer Clinic in my college town. Sitting in a room alongside chemo patients, with an IV in my arm for hours-six hours at a time, I recognized how fragile life can be. I was only freshly 19. I felt so broken. But slowly, quietly, God started piecing me back together.

After many weeks of infusions, countless lab draws and appointments, three nutritionists, months of mental counseling, and endless tears, I finally could feel my body was healing. In June, I was taken off the steroids waiting and watching to see what would happen next. My face slowly returned. My mind began to clear. My spirit began to feel joy. I was becoming me again, but also different. I was stronger.

Today I still have lab draws and follow ups with my specialist. But we have almost reached nearly a year and by the many hands that helped me through all the trauma and by the grace of God who never fails us:

I am in remission.

When I look back, I see God's fingerprints all over my story. I see the way my family and friends carried me when I couldn't carry myself. I saw a doctor who genuinely wanted me to heal and did everything possible for my recovery. I see how the darkest season of my young life became the most transformative.

I used to ask God, Why me? Why this? Why God why?

Now I understand.

I understand God will use our valleys to build mountains. He can bring healing from pain. And He can use my story to help someone else survive theirs. I want to do my part to raise awareness for a condition that takes so much when you least expect it. I hope sharing my story can give even a little comfort to those who are silently suffering right now, or waiting in a hospital bed, or receiving yet another transfusion.

ITP is still a part of my life, but it no longer controls me.

I will not live in fear.

If my journey shows anything, it is this:
We are so much stronger than the numbers on a lab report.

To anyone newly diagnosed, I want to tell you, truly and deeply,
You are not alone.
Your diagnosis does not define you.
Your ITP journey is not your ending.
It wasn't mine.
And it won't be yours.