Kelsey's trip to the hospital

A couple weeks ago I noticed some red spots all over Kelsey's legs. It  didn't look like a rash but looked like broken blood vessels. She also had quite a few bruises on her knees and legs and one that was very large and swollen. I kept an eye on it and by the 2nd day I noticed it was not going away, but was getting worse. She now had broken blood vessels on her face and neck. 

I took her to the doctors and they checked her blood. It turns out that she has ITP.  Her platelet levels in her blood were extremely low. They were at 8,000 and normal is 150,000 - 450,000. Her other cells are normal which means that her blood is otherwise fine. The only danger to her would be if she was to start bleeding, for whatever reason, her blood would not clot like it's supposed to. Otherwise she feels and acts fine. The doctor gave us instructions to take Kelsey to Sacred Heart Children's Hospital for more testing. He said they would most likely want her to stay the night for observation. We went home to pack her a bag when the doctor called and said we didn't need to take her that night, but to come back in 2 days to recheck her blood. 

During the next 2 days you couldn't even look at Kelsey without her getting a bruise. Here's a picture of one of them. You can't even see how swollen and puffy it is. She had about 4 more bruises like this on her legs. 

We went back to check her blood and it had dropped down to 5,000. The doctor said it should go up on it's own and to come back in 10 days to recheck it. The next day Kelsey woke up feeling sick and she had a fever of 101. It was a Saturday so I called the doctor and he said to take her to Sacred Heart to check her out. The fever was not a concern, but she had coughed a lot the night before so they wanted to check her lungs for any internal bleeding that might have occurred since any bleeding is dangerous. I didn't really think she had blood in her lungs but I'm not a doctor and I was really worried about her platelet levels being so low so I took her in. 

Reagan wanted to come to be there for Kelsey in case she got scared or anything. Reagan had been to the hospital about a year ago when she broke her foot so she knew how Kelsey was feeling. How sweet. She made sure that Kelsey had her stuffed animals by her side and when they wheeled the bed out to get the X-ray, Reagan held her hand and walked with her. 

Reagan and Kelsey always grab each other's hands when they are nervous about something. I've caught a few of these moments on camera. This first picture is from a year ago at Silverwood when they were about to go on a ride together, without Mom or Dad. The second picture is when Kelsey just turned 2 and Reagan was 4. They got to sleep on the floor together and Reagan held Kelsey's hand so she wouldn't be scared. They fell asleep like that. 

Anyways, Kelsey turned out to be fine and her platelet levels were up to 12,000. If her platelets had gone down any further they would have given her a platelet transfusion. So, even though 12,000 is still a really low number, it's getting better. Kelsey's bruises are finally starting to heal and she's only gotten one new bruise this week. Kelsey goes back in a couple days to check her blood again so we'll let you know how it is.