Low Platelets

These aren't the greatest pictures (her leg bruises are much darker than they appear) but they kind of give you an idea of the bruising she experiences when she's thromocytopenic (has low platelets). 

After spending Thursday afternoon at a friends house jumping on a trampoline, and playing on a big old play ground we went shopping for an hour or so. When we got home there was a message on our voicemail telling us Gracie's platelets were 14 and she needed a transfusion. The cancer clinics were both closed as it was about 5:30 pm so we called the oncologist on call. The Houston oncologist told us to get in touch with the oncologists here. So when I called the oncologist here he said we could do a transfusion at the hospital or wait until the next day and do it in the clinic. Originally I said we'd do it in the hospital but then when I did a price comparison and considered how late we'd be up as it can take several hours to finally get the platelets from the blood bank I called the doctor back and said we'd go to the clinic Friday morning. When I asked if it was putting her at risk to wait until the morning he said she should be okay but to be very diligent in making sure that she didn't hit her head or fall or do anything like that as her clotting ability was severely limited. The funny thing was that as I was dressing her earlier in the day I noticed she had lots of bruises on her legs and even wondered what her platelets were, but I didn't think they would be as low as they were. In hind sight I guess she shouldn't have been jumping around on the tramp, but really she's 3 and we still need to let her act like it.

 Friday morning she had petechia all over her back and on her eye lids. When we took her bandage off from her blood draw it was apparent that it wasn't healing properly. We gave her a bath and dropped our kids off with a friend and then took Grace to the cancer clinic for an infusion. On exam they saw lots of petechia in her mouth as well. They accessed her port and did a CBC. Her platelets were down to 3. Her ANC is 560 so her immune system is quite compromised right now too. Strangely enough she still has good hemoglobin though. We waited  3 hours before the platelets finally arrived. The infusion only took 30-40 minutes.  All total we were at the clinic for about 5 hours. It makes for a long day. Gracie was just wild too. She played ball with everyone she could and continued to laugh and run and jump every where she went. It was obvious to everyone that her low blood counts were really holding her up. She got to meet some members of the women's basketball team and she absolutely loved that. I think  I've decided that for every time Grace gets blood products I'll donate blood. I just need to figure out where to do that. Actually I'd like to figure out how to become a direct donor so that if she needs blood it's mine she's getting, given that we're the same blood type. And I'm pretty sure my blood is clean. I haven't exactly lived a high risk lifestyle, although I was a health care worker so perhaps that's exposed me to more nasty things than I'd like. None the less, I'm a pretty safe bet. 

Tonight as we were getting Grace dressed in her jammies we noticed that she has a large black bruise on her belly. It wasn't there this morning. They said it would take a couple of hours for her platelets to go up. I hope she's had all that she needs. We'll just watch her really closely and hope she starts to heal up. The miracle of this all is that the labs FINALLY got the CBC results in to Houston on the same day that they were drawn. That's only the 2nd time that they've done that since she started treatments. I think they were put on the earth to be a scourge and pestilence to cancer families. As if cancer isn't enough.