Last Thursday (8/6) I started noticing bruising on my legs and arms. I pointed them out to Jason and we both figured that I had bumped into something or when I was wrestling with the dogs I had just gotten a few scraps, no big deal. That evening after my New Student Orientation sessions I just felt really tired, which also was nothing unusual. On Friday I noticed more bruises and was dragging through my work day. I had plans to go out with friends that evening and had to go home and take a nap before meeting friends for dinner. At dinner I was exhausted and couldn't finish my dinner. Instead of going out for another friends birthday I went home and climbed into bed.
Saturday morning I tried to go biking, but popped a tire, so ended up going home picking up the dogs and taking them to the farmers market. After one loop around the market I had to take the dogs home and blamed it on the heat. I spent the rest of the day in bed and really didn't have any energy to get up and do anything.
On Sunday morning I felt bad that I had been so lazy the day before and decided that my laziness was contributing to my headache and overall fatigue. So I got up and met a friend and we biked about 4 miles before I said I had to turn around and head back, so an 8 mile ride overall. I was a bit tired, but felt okay, so I cleaned the house and did laundry, then collapsed for the rest of the day. At this point I had posted something on facebook about feeling tired and more bruises were still showing up so my mother sent me a text saying to call her and let her know how I was feeling. After telling her about the bruising and the exhaustion and the headache she told me to make an appointment with my doctor first thing Monday morning.
I called my doctors office as instructed first thing monday. My doctor did not have an open appointment until Wednesday so I took the first available physician. I showed up early at 8:30am and after talking to a fourth year resident and then the doctor they decided that if i hadn't been in any cat fights or fallen down a flight of stairs in a drunken stupor that I needed to have blood work done and sent me across the hall. An hour later they came back in and said I needed to head down the hill to the UAB ER.
At this point I was told I had a platelet count of 11,000 which was extremely low and was highly unusual when compared with my previous years annual blood work that had me at a platelet count of 280,000. I was able to drive myself to the ER and called my mother, Jason and work in the process.
Once arriving at the ER they knew I was coming, which was nice, and had me back in a room answering questions and explaining my symptoms within ten minutes. A very nice no-nonsense doctor came in and explained what they thought was going on, what the possible causes and treatments were and then whisked me off for a cat scan to make sure the chronic headache I was having was not due to blood on the brain which apparently is possible at a platelet count that low. Thankfully the scan was clean. At this point they had drawn blood at the ER and done their own test and had reported a platelet level of 6,000.
My mom cancelled her patients for the week and flew down on Southwest and Jason took the day off work to hang out with me in the ER. Around 3pm they moved me into a hospital bed in the Spain side of the Spain Wallace Tower. I had a resident and two interns talk to me about what they thought was going on and then inform me that they needed to insert a "Central Line" into one of my larger veins, their vein of choice that evening was the femoral vein in my groin. While this was terrifying to me the two doe-eyed interns assured me that their resident had done this plenty of times before and there was nothing to worry about. They were wrong. An hour and a half later and three missed attempts they brought Jason back in to comfort me and left to go find someone a little more experienced.
Two hours later the A-team from hematology arrived with an ultra sound machine and morphine and were able to get the line in without any pain in the first try. They are officially my heros of this entire endeavor thus far.
After the central line was in I started a treatment called Plasma Phoresis, which basically hooks me up to a machine and sucks out my blood, filters out the anti-bodies and plasma then mixes it with new donated plasma and recirculates it into my body. It takes about three hours and the first night did not go so well. But the attending for pathology, the administering tech and the resident all stayed with me until almost 11pm.
Day two was much better, and I was moved to the Wallace side of the Spain Wallace Tower and am still residing in room W942. The nurses have been fantastic and have been taking my blood pressure, vitals and blood samples religiously. There was an attending doctor on the floor who we were not fond of, and for fun we will call him Dr. Gloom and Doom. He rotated off the floor yesterday and we like the new doctor a lot better. Dr. G&D needs to work on his bedside manner and learn how to talk with people instead of at people.
Yesterday they decided that I needed the central line in my neck instead of my groin. Once again not a very pleasant experience, but it's much more comfortable then having this three pronged IV hanging between my legs. So now I'm in the middle of my fifth treatment and things are going smoothly.
The doctor came in the morning and told me that I was responding extremely well, but not to get my hopes up on leaving the hospital until next weekend. They have had several TTP patients that respond well, leave too soon and then relapse. So they don't want that to happen to me. They want me to stay here probably through next weekend, then house rest through Labor day. No exercise or anything too high activity through October, which really stinks, but whatever I need to do to get better.
So in the hospital I remain. I'll try to keep everything updated on here. But I'm in room W942 at UAB hospital and I'm allowed to have visitors, so if your in the vicinity please feel free to come visit me. Friends are the best therapy... :)
Thanks for all the emails and phone calls. I'll be back to normal in no time. See you all on the outside soon!
-LC
No comments:
Post a Comment