A Blah Blah Bloody Update

It's amazing how much can happen in a year.

Last year at this time my chronic ITP was at its worst. I was a bruised lady (without platelets blood can't stick together and people get lots of bruises) heading to the clinic for blood tests 3 mornings a week at 5:30am and a 6-hour infusion once a week. I hadn't told anyone (except my coworkers) at church about what was going on at that point...trying to hold it together, continuing to work at least 60 hours a week. My family and friends were such a gigantic support. I'm so truly thankful.

Here's a link to a post from last year at this time; reading those old posts always makes me teary-eyed. Such a scary time in my life: ITP Update.

I've gotten a few emails and text messages lately wondering how the ol' platelets are doing these days. I don't blog about my bloody updates anymore...primarily because I'm a healthy girl and also because I never know how much sharing is over-sharing. In general, I imagine platelet updates are not particularly fun or interesting for most readers. Nevertheless, here's the happy update.

The answer: My platelets are doing great (5-10% of folks have a spontaneous remission and I did). I haven't had an IVIG infusion for 5 months (since May). I'm in remission and hopefully it will last for the rest of my life. Last week I had 99,000 platelets (I still go once per month for a blood test). Normal is 150,000 to 450,000 but as I have always said, "Who needs to be normal?" 99,000 sounds like the jackpot to me! I feel healthy (even at my lowest counts I felt fine). No weird bruises and some very joyful blood.

In summary: I'm happy and healthy and immeasurably thankful.

In non-blood news, I got a birdie at our church golf tournament last summer, and one of my teammates caught it on his camera and just emailed it to me. Fun! :)