My daughter received treatment for a sinus infection on Friday. By Saturday evening, she had red spots and bruises on her legs. She plays soccer and had a game earlier that day, so we assumed that was what had caused such bruising.  Later that night, after a long nap, she had bruises and spots appearing on her face, other areas of the body and the ones on her legs had multiplied. We went to the local ER immediately.  While we were waiting on the doctor, the spots appeared on her tongue and inside her cheeks. After blood test and a urine specimen, the P.A. came in and said she had ITP, to take her home and see the doctor on Monday. On Sunday, we were having Mother's Day lunch and our daughter's nose began to bleed. I called the ER and they said if the blood wasn’t pouring out of her nose that we should be okay and we could wait until Monday to see the doctor.  The littlest action caused her to bruise or to bleed. She had large spots all in her mouth. She was not looking too good.

On Monday, we went to one of our pediatricians to do more blood work and give another urine specimen. While in the waiting room, my daughter began sneezing blood and developed a nosebleed that lasted the entire visit. The least little finger stick was making her bleed for hours. The Doctor came back and told me to have a seat. That is never a good thing.  He said that her platelet count was 3,000 on Saturday night and that she had blood in her urine; she should have been hospitalized and treated immediately. Her count was up to 14,000 while in his office, but things were still not good. He told us to go home, pack a bag, and get her to a children's hospital in Dallas, about two hours from home. On the way, we had to pull over and clean blood from her nose and hand. We arrived with a pediatric Hematologist/Oncologist waiting.  Another nose bleed began. They took one look at our daughter, reviewed her file and admitted her to the hospital. Her count was back down to 3,000. She was given an IVIg treatment over the course of 6 hours and medicine to control the nose bleeds. After a long night, they drew more blood. Her count was up to 13,000. Around noon, the doctor came by and said that our daughter was looking good and could go home until a follow up appointment on Friday.

Just as he finished telling us this, our daughter told us her nose was bleeding. This called for another platelet count, the 5th time in 2 days. Our poor baby was bruised, sore, exhausted and ready to go home. If her count was over 20,000 we were going home, if it was under 20,000 we were staying for another IVIg treatment. Finally, Good News! This time her count was up to 45,000.  Her platelets were climbing and she had managed to not have the yucky side effects that we were warned of. She was discharged and we were ready to go. Just a quick stop at the pharmacy for her medicine and then to the doctor’s office to schedule her next visit. I took her to the restroom and she kind of fell over in the floor, crying due to a severe headache. She was warm to the touch. By the time we made it to the Doctor's office, she was vomiting. We could not get anything down and we were discussing readmitting her to the hospital. A couple of hours later, the vomiting had subsided and we were heading home. She slept the entire two hour drive. When we arrived at the house, she ate a cracker and took a couple sips of juice. She went back to sleep and slept another eleven hours, running a low fever all night.

This morning, when I finally got her to wake up, her temperature was 100.2 degrees and she began vomiting again. She would not eat or drink and was in some pain. She stayed awake for a couple of hours and then fell back asleep. I called her doctor’s office, who told if she was not better in the morning that we may have to come back to Dallas. If I could get Tylenol and fluids in her and she was feeling any better, they would see us the following week. Thankfully, she has been playing for about 3 hours and she just asked for food!  We are praying that her platelet count will continue to climb and we will not have to make any more trips to the hospital before her appointment next week.