Yesterday 11-5-14 we had an eventful day.
Cole dropped his bat down the stairs so we went to go get it. I figured I would go ahead and get some laundry done while I was down there so I let Cole play in the family room while I went into the laundry room. As soon as I went in the laundry room he started crying. I went over to him and picked him up and noticed that his mouth was bleeding. What's new, right? I took him into the bathroom and noticed that it was a lot of blood... I mean a TON of blood! He started coughing and blood went all over both of us. I tried to get it cleaned up but there isn't really great light in the basement and he was crying too hard that we weren't getting anything accomplished. I took him over to the couch and let him nurse which is when I saw the blood start to come out of his nose. After he nursed he was much, much calmer so we went upstairs and I got a better look in his mouth. He apparently fell with something in his hand or had his hand in his mouth but there was a massively bloody spot on the roof of his mouth pretty far back. At this point I called his doctor at Children's Mercy and she asked how long he had been bleeding. I told her about 5 minutes and she told me that if I couldn't get pressure on it and get it to stop in the next 5 minutes that I needed to take him to the ER.
{*Why is it such a big deal for his mouth to be bleeding? With ITP it's common to develop blood blister type sores on the roof of the mouth. My first thought when I saw his mouth was that he had one that I didn't know about and that it ruptured. *Why only 10 minutes to get the blood to stop? His last platelet count was 35,000 which in the grand scheme of things, is still pretty darn low. When you have severe bleeding and not a lot of platelets to stop the bleeding, you can get into a dangerous zone pretty quickly.}
So I hung up with the doctor and tried to get something in his mouth that he would bite down on and apply pressure. Everything that I tried just made him scream. I don't think there would have been anything that would have worked because it was so far back on his pallet.
5 minutes later the doctor called back and said that since I didn't have the bleeding under control, I needed to take him to the ER and that she would call ahead and let them know I was coming.
I called and called Josh and he wouldn't answer his phone. Finally I got someone to answer his work phone and get ahold of him on their work radios. He was in the north west part of the county on a service call. He called me back and I quickly filled him in on what was going on. I got Cole and I both ready and we were getting ready to leave when Josh's mom pulled up. She grabbed up Cole and I grabbed my shoes and we went to the ER. When we got there they looked in his mouth and could see that it was still bleeding. They drew blood to get his platelet level which came back at 72,000!!! 72,000!!! SEVENTY-TWO THOUSAND!!! I almost started crying! He has doubled since his appointment 2.5 weeks ago and that is BY FAR the highest number that he has had (without any medical intervention) since this whole thing started.
What does this mean?? It means that his bone marrow is making platelets and his antibodies aren't killing them!! WHOOP WHOOP!
The Emporia hospital told us that there wasn't anything they could do for us and sent us home.... Children's Mercy called us back to check on how we were doing and they were so frustrated that Newman's didn't even call them before they discharged us. They were going to prescribe us a medication that would stop the bleeding but decided we would just watch him since his platelets are high enough now that he should be able to clot it on his own. The Dr at CM asked me for the rest of his blood work numbers and his neutrophils are in a good range to fight infection and he has enough platelets to get it to clot. Yay!
This is the best picture I could get of it and he obviously isn't thrilled to show it to me.
This is what he enjoys doing with his time... sitting on my lap watching Monsters, Inc.
Here is a picture from a couple nights ago with a serious mashed potato mess!
