Hi, I’m Michelle, I’m 31 and I’ve had ITP since I was 4 years old. My “normal” blood count for my whole life since has never naturally been over 5 and I usually hover around 2-3.

I was diagnosed back in South Africa where my family were living at the time. After three years of treatment there having immunoglobulin intravenous transfusion it was just not a long term solution- this was back in the 90’s though when ITP was really rare and not much research had been done on the disease.

When I was 8 we then moved to the UK where I started seeing a heamatologist at Alder Hey Children’s hospital in Liverpool. We decided that we were going to stop treatment and just see how I handled life. Long story short, I lived a very normal kid life- being careful, as much as a kid can be. The doctors were always hoping that when I got to puberty then I might grow out ITP- shock, I didn’t. Still not treatment I carried on living my life just knowing and listening to my body.

I went on to study sport science at university and then became a PE teacher- despite lots of conversations with doctors while I was growing up about limiting how much sport I played- I didn’t listen as sport was my life. I lived life maybe too risky.

At 23 I moved to live and work in Thailand as a sports teacher, again no treatment just living life. At 25 i moved to live and work in Abu Dhabi. I did start to see a Dr here when i injured myself really badly- hospitalizing myself for 5 days due to severe bruising. This was maybe the shock I needed. A few years after I started to see another Dr and we started looking at treatment options. I’m a partial responder to steroids and these are not a reasonable solution. We then tried a round of Rituximab- I had zero response and was rather upset by this. We then tried N-Plate. We had really mixed responses to this with my platelet count going into the 100’s to then drop to 2.

Fast forward a year, I now live in Prague and have started seeing a new Dr here. I’m currently not ok any medication as we are seeing how my menstrual cycle can be without contraceptive pill and no medication. However we are looking at other options to try and have as emergency medication choices for me.

The next step is discussions about possibly starting a family and this is extremely scary for me and a worry that it may never happen. But my Dr is great here in Prague and had many ITP patients who have had children. My condition is extremely severe but I’ve never ever let it stop me living my life how I want to and for that I am grateful.

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