I just wanted to give all of you a heads-up on Ana’s platelet counts.   As most of you know, her counts were up to right around 300,000 after getting her spleen removed.  They stayed this way for a couple weeks, but two weeks ago she dropped down to 64,000. Yikes, we were a little freaked out, but a week ago she went up to 224,000 without changing any medicines or getting any other types of treatments.  Very encouraging since in the past her counts never increased without some intervention.

Due to that increase, she has resumed her taper off of the steroid prendison.  This week she dropped down to 15mg/day so we expected her counts to be down as a result.  Nope, this morning she was tested and she’s at 384,000. Woo!

She hasn’t heard from the doctor yet, but we’re expecting to be able to drop to 10mg/day.  Wait..what is that?!  Is that the light at the end of the tunnel?  We’re sure hoping so.  Thanks everyone for your thoughts and prayers.

That’s the number of platelets floating around Ana’s body today.  A marked improvement over her previous dismal countings of 7,000 and 10,000.

So that was the real, first post-spleen-removal test they’ve gotten counts from her on.  Definitely a positive sign.  More tests next week to keep verifying.

Thanks again to everyone for all of your help, prayers, and good wishes!

She’s recovery now, surgery went well.  Can’t wait to get in and see her!

Just got a phone call from surgery, Ana is stable and doing well and the surgeon has started working on her (roughly 25 minutes ago).

On a side note, there’s gotta be a better way to notify me of updates.  The waiting room librarian walking over and saying she’s going to forward a call to me, scared the HELL out of me.  Honestly, it felt like my heart was going to jump staright out of my chest.  Damn, gotta calm down now.

Well she’s in surgery now.  In roughly 2 hours that evil spleen will be no more!

184,000, IV getting started and the surgeon is en-route.

Hi everyone –

Ana is all checked in here at St. John’s Hospital.  The splenectomy is scheduled for 3pm so we’re waiting in a little hallway with curtains called pre-aenestesia. 

Since Ana has surgery tomorrow at 3pm and they told her that she can’t eat anything after midnight, the only logical thing to do is to have a feast around 11pm the night before!

So, Jay and Katherine are here and we’re getting ready to throw some steak and chicken on the grill.

This is our Easter dinner, since our typical plans got interrupted when the doctors told her she had to get another treatment of IVIG today.

Ana has been seeing a new doctor for her ITP these past couple of months.  His recommendation has been to get her spleen removed since it appears to be the source of her platelet issue.  In preparation of the surgery, which was to be in a couple weeks from now, she has been weaning off of the prednisone and getting her immunizations.

Last week, since her platelet counts were low (12,000ish if I recall), the doctor ordered several days worth of IVIG.  At the end of the week she was well over 100,000 and it was expected that that would last for a few weeks until the surgery.

Bzzzzt.  Wrong.  She got tested this morning and was at 8,000.  So she’ll be getting 3 more days of IVIG (this Thursday, Friday, and Saturday) and then go in for surgery on Monday.  Wow, that was fast.

We’re still learning details, so I’ll keep you up to date as we learn more.