While most of this blog will be dedicated to my children, I feel it necessary to share my troubles this past week and a half... mostly to get it off my chest.
Last Thursday, my husband noticed little red bumps (later identified as petechiae) all over his body. We were a little concerned, but he chocked it up to an allregic reaction, took some benadryl, and headed to bed. Friday morning at 4:00am, he woke up with a ping pong ball-sized blood pocket in his mouth. We immediately went to the hospital.
Five hours later, we learned that his platelet count -- the blood cells that clot the blood -- was at 3,000. A normal person has over 150,000 platelets in their body at any given time. He could have stubbed his toe and literally bled to death at that point. The doctors diagnosed him with ITP -- Idiopathic thrombocytopenia. Basically the cold he had a couple of weeks ago caused his body to freak out and start attacking his platelets. The process took a little while, probably over a week, and there were no outward symptoms, which is why his count go SO low before we noticed anything.
To top it all off, his blood pressure shot through the roof, so he had to be rushed to the step-down ICU.
He was there for almost a week. It felt like an eternity, though. With all the running back and forth from the hospital to home, I was pretty sure I was going to go crazy. His arms were black and blue from the blood pressure cuffs, and I couldn't do anything to help him with the pain.
It was rough, but he's finally out and looking much better than before. Hopefully this never happens again because I don't think my heart could take it.
