ONE YEAR LATER...

How time fly's. One year ago Eliza came home from gymnastics with a sore foot. She wouldn't jump on the trampoline or walk on the balance beam. I told her to go jump in the bath and that I would be in to help get her clean and look at her foot in a moment. I went into the bathroom and sat down on the edge of the bathtub to help her get cleaned. She stood up and that's when I noticed she was covered in bruises. My first thought was "who abused my baby girl?" Trying to keep my emotions intact, I asked Eliza if someone had hurt her. I got up to go call Matthew and noticed that not only did she have bruises everywhere (legs, hips, arms, stomach) she also had these little red dots all over the place (chest, neck, arms, legs) I knew exactly what they were petechiae.

I stood there frozen. All I could think of was Mason. Beautiful Mason was diagnosed a few years ago with Aplastic Anemia a blood disorder that affects the white and red blood cells and the platelets. Could this disease really be happening to us too?

Over the next two weeks we met with our pediatrician who then sent us to the hematologist/oncologist for tests. Eliza was a trooper. She endured MANY blood tests. Finally, we were told that she had Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura (ITP). This blood disorder is where the white blood cells in the persons body believe the platelets are a virus and fight them off. So although the individual is producing normal platelets they are being killed off by the white blood cells. When we took Eliza in to the hematologist he said that he had never seen a platelet count as low as Eliza's. She only had 950 platelets left in her body. A normal body has between 200,000 and 4oo,ooo platelets.

Usually no treatment is necessary unless an individual starts bleeding and cant stop it. This disease usually resolves itself within 6 months. We were hopeful that we could avoid treatment. Eliza was given lots of rules. She was told that she couldn't ride her bike, jump on the trampoline, do gymnastics, even jump on the couch (which is already a no no!) But any fall or bump would cause her to bleed and she didn't have enough platelets to stop bleeding on her own. a bump on the head could be fatal. A injury to her spleen or internal organs could too also be fatal.

For the next week we treated her as though there was bubble wrap around her. But even through all of our careful measures, her own body could not fight off this disease itself. During the middle of the night in early December she woke up with a bloody nose. Kept pressure on it, we kept ice on it. She bleed from 4 a.m. until we got her admitted to the hospital around 1 p.m. that day. Eliza was amazing. She was such a trooper. She had received a blessing from our home teacher and her dad and it gave her the strength to endure this difficult experience.

A now........................................a whole year later my baby girl is in remission (7 months now). And enjoying everything a little girl loves to do. My house was blissfully peaceful for those few months Eliza was sick, because there was no fighting for risk of injury...but I'll gladly take a few fights here and there to have my baby girl be able to ride a bike, toss a ball and maybe even a little naughty jump on the couch.