Medical Update

I went in again to see the Specialist today. Shiela and I had phoned him on Friday to see if it was ok if I played in a soccer tournament on the weekend since my platelet count was in the normal range (160,000 or so) as of last Tuesday. He would not give us his consent to let me play since he said that although the count is high, it is unstable.

Well, not being the doctor type, I figured that as long as my platelet count was in the normal range I'm sure I could play. However, Shiela instructed me that I needed to play the role of a substitute, not a starter, and that I had certain conditions in which I had to follow:

1) No heading the ball
2) No slide tackling
3) I had to wear ankle braces so I wouldn't roll my ankles
4) I could only play 5 minutes at a time before I had to sub off.

I of course agreed to these conditions. And I subsequently broke all of these conditions almost right away. Sort of. I only played in 2 of the 5 games. I headed the ball twice, but not from a really high kick or anything so I figured I was safe. I attempted to slide a tackle a guy (since he was about to score) but I ended up missing and just got a little road rash on my leg from the field. I wore ankle braces for one game, but I then played more than a 5 minute shift in our last game when one of our players got hurt. Needless to say I had no bruising at all from the weekend and my body seemed to handle the soccer pretty well. However, WOW was I ever terrible! After not playing for a month and doing no exercise at all I had almost no energy, no power in my legs, no soccer skill at all, and I was ready to call the fire department because my lungs were burning after my 5 minute shift. I realize I need to get back into shape for indoor soccer.

But back to the appointment. The Specialist explained again why I probably shouldn't be playing soccer yet as the platelet count is unstable (he didn't seem that surprised that I had played some soccer). He said that he has seen it in other people where the count is high and then suddenly it just plummets really low over night, which is why he is being cautious. I can understand that since if he says "Yeah, go play soccer" and then I get really hurt, he could be in a lot of trouble. So safe is good. Since my count is high right now he is going to wean me off of the steroids I'm taking by reducing the amount by 5mg every 5 days. So tomorrow I'll start taking only 25mg of Prednisone, then in 5 days I'll just take 20mg, and so on until I am off of them. Every week I will still go and get my blood tested to ensure the platelet count stays normal and if something changes for some reason he'll probably crank me back up to 50-60 mg again. I hope not because the chest pains they cause are really annoying, but the increased appetite is fun!

So that's the update. It's basically in "wait and see" mode now as we just continue to monitor it for the next couple months. But that's good as it allows me to focus on finding a job now!