Friday, November 18, 2005

Medical History and New Pictures

I can't seem to post these pictures like I want, so this will have to do. Sorry that it doesn't look very pretty.
This first picture is the lunch they served me in the hospital. It looks uneaten because that is usually how I left it. I brought my own lunch with me since there is no way I would eat their sandwiches. I did eat the soup once and I always drank the juice, but that's about it. By the third day they didn't even bring me a lunch but just asked if I wanted juice.
This is the needle I had in my arm for the 3 days I went to the hospital. They just kept it in my the whole time so they wouldn't have to put it in every day. It worked for me. I asked if I could just hook it up to a Coca Cola IV but they assured me that wouldn't be a good idea. Oh well, doesn't hurt to ask.
And this is me in my hospital bed. I look really sick all bundled up like that but I really felt pretty good. I would just spend the time reading books or playing crib with Shiela.


I decided to look back and take a look at just how my platelet count has been doing. Every Tuesday I go and get my blood tested and then sometimes I'll phone to find out what my count was at. Often I don't phone because I figure if it was bad they would phone me, but every once in a while I get curious (and so does Shiela!) (this chart didn't post real well, but hopefully you can see the trends)

So I've posted a chart that shows my platelet count from the day I found out about this until this last Tuesday. I'm missing a couple near the end of October, but the chart shows almost all of my results. You can clearly see the time where I went in for IV gamma globulin because my platelet count went very high. After that I was reducing my prednisone amount by 5mg every 5 days. Well, you can see what happened with that. The specialist finally stopped me at 15mg around the middle of October and now since my last meeting with him I'm down to 10mg a day. If it gets below 30,000 I'm back in the hospital for some more IV gamma globulin.

This last Monday night in soccer the other team kicked the ball hard right at my face and it nailed me right in the eye. I couldn't see for a few seconds but it started to clear up. Luckily it didn't bruise because that is exactly the type of thing that will send me back to emergency (for some reason bleeding in the head is a bad thing)....but we've watched it closely and nothing has happened with it. I feel God protected me in that encounter.

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