Well, still no laptop, which means no pictures, but in case anyone is reading and hasn't been updated on what's going on, I thought I'd share!
My hematologist has had an insanely difficult time controlling my I.T.P. this pregnancy. We were using the steroid "prednisone" to get my platelets to jump up then they plummet rapidly when I start to taper off the medicine. After a while the treatment was not working as effectively and my platelet count hovered in the 25,000 area for three weeks. I had IVIG done three weeks ago as an alternative to the prednisone which caused my platelets to respond beautifully (They jumped to 477,000) but had massive side-effects. The treatment took 14 hours for two days (total of 28 hours) rather than 3 hours for two days because they had to run it so slowly to control migraine headaches. I ended up spending one night in the hospital and leaving the next night at 2am. Three weeks later, however, my count was down to 5,000 which is basically low enough that I could spontaneously start bleeding for no reason and poses a huge risk to myself and the baby.
I am back on Prednisone and in 12 hours I jumped from 5K to 12K so we're rechecking the count on Monday. If I can stay in the 30-40K range until closer to delivery, we'll all be happy campers. EXCEPT - Prednisone completely messes with your blood sugars. I go in on Wednesday for my glucose screen which will likely come back positive for gestational diabetes. I will probably have to be on a diabetic diet and quite possibly insulin for the remainder of my pregnancy or as long as I'm on prednisone. As of right now, the course of treatment will be to adjust prednisone to keep my count up and closer to my due date, do one more round of IVIG and schedule an induction within the following week so that my count and the baby's count are high for delivery and to ensure I can have an epidural if I want one! (Platelets have to be over 100K for an epidural)
I will keep you all posted!
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2 comments:
Oh my goodness, Betsy, you are a trooper! Kind of puts the typical pregnancy complaints into perspective... I can't remember when you're due but you are going to LOVE the girl thing. I always said I just wanted boys but now that I have the Pea, I can't imagine life without her and all of her emotions/personality/drama!
Hi Betsy! Thank you for the comment on our blog. Congrats on your little girl too! Girls are wonderful and we are excited that God is blessing us with another one 5 years later (Abbie's almost 5). We had 3 boys after her and are really looking forward to having a baby girl again.
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