Episode 27: Adrenaline or platelets?

It surprises others when you express a softer and quieter side of yourself. You may not do this too often, but now with the Moon in your own sign, you have a chance to open your heart. It's likely, however, that you'll also use this time to kick up your adrenaline levels, for you're still more comfortable with excitement than with vulnerability.

So that's what the ole horoscope says today, huh? Well, alright then. Here we go with The Excitement.

This blog's intro: Number one, the "i" in my case of ITP doesn't stand for "idiopathic" anymore but actually "immune-". So it's immune-thrombocytopenia purpura, to be exact.

Purpura was never my color. I always looked better in green, but there you have it.

This "immune-" thing at least tells me one thing: It means instead of "having no freakin' idea" what has caused my low-to-no platelet production, they at least "kinda sorta maybe" know, narrowing it down to an antibody set to "KILL, STUN, KILL" mode. It must be my daddy's Special Forces blood in me.

By the way, I'm not braggin', but the doctor I have is one of the best in the region. So if he doesn't know wtf this is, and neither does the crack team behind him (I'm sorry I said "crack" and "behind" in the same sentence, but it was thrown together to make you giggle.), then that hunch I had a few years back could be right -- I might've had alien spores deposited in my blood as an experiment, and they've now hatched.

If all goes as planned by the aliens, I should be turning into a mutated monster soon that grows to epic proportion, stomps around downtown and ruins all the buildings, while people point up at me and scream, and only the National Guard can shoot me down after I crash through the powerlines that end up pissing me off more than electrocuting me. I knew it, I knew it. I knew I shouldn't have drank all those vodka drinks in the middle of that cow pasture the night we all went looking for crop circles. But we sure did he a good time, didn't we?

Anyway, since I am now officially saddled with a hellbent-for-leather blood disorder for (at the very least) the next 3 months, I've decided to move the ITP updates from my Scribbleville labmonkie blog to this new blog named, appropriately, "itp wtf".

I thought of other names like "itp fyi", but that sounds Too Light'n'Sassy. Thought of "itp OMG!!!", too. Even though it's exactly how I really feel under the surface, it sounded Way Too Urgent Preteen and borderline sacreligious. Apparently, not that I care, being that I started this post off with a tarot reading. Maybe I should've gone with the "omg" route. But really, in the end, as long as no lab bunnies are hurt in the experiment, who really gives an "effy-bomb". Just let me know if the font is too small or too big, I can't tell. On to our regularly scheduled update.. Now that you are caught up, the following is about how long the updates will be. Painless, really.

Today's bloodwork:

I have found there's a fine line between "having a good outlook" and "being stupid." And crossing that line will make you cry, everytime. So I started to wonder, maybe the problem is, am I stupid? I need to know what this ITP thing is caused by so I can plan the rest of my life out, right? For the past month, I've had to wait 3-4 days between bloodwork and think the worst about it all. I'm done with that.

So today, I asked all the "elephant in the room" questions -- can you tell me what this is not? It is not hepatitis C. It's not HIV. They rolled their eyes at me when I mentioned Ebstein-Barr and lupus. From the two, corkscrewed chunks of bone marrow taken from my (I think the correct term for it is) buttbone, it's not leukemia, not lymphoma.

Answer is, I have an Antibody Gone Wild. When I say that, some of you (ok, probably just me) may visualize a buggy-looking creature running around and pulling up her shirt for the camera. I only wish that was the case because I'd have them all suspended and picking up garbage in the common areas at school until prom.

But in my case, I have an antibody that turned itself on in order to eat up a vague, unidentified common virus I encountered, and now won't shut itself off and thinks my platelets are the enemy.

No big deal, I thought, probably just a virus I picked up off the edge my favorite coffee cup at work that someone ate chili out of and housekeeping swirled the ratty, ecoli-riddled dishbrush on it like a magic-germ spreading wand, so now I'll be dead soon. I'm picking out stylish toe-tags, one that's pink with sparkles. This is what happens, when you don't clean up after yourself, officeworkers. No amount of scolding memos will save you, will it? You really need to do you own dishes and not use the sink as a garbage can. And like Terry Tate says (grabbing you by the tie and lifting you to your tiptoes so he can scream in your face), regarding the shared coffee, "If you kill the joe, you make sum mo'!!" And then he tosses you aside onto the break table, which is filled with half-eaten, picked over cheese danishes.

Boy, can you tell I really don't miss working in an office environment?

Anyway, my platelet count was down from my last transfusion 7 days ago. Normal, healthy platelets only last 7-10 days then your body makes more. Last Monday after the transfusion, my counts bounded up to 69k. Today, I was hoping for anything in the 20s. But they came back at 11k which equals platelet transfusion time. The worst part of it is I missed Sylvia Browne's Predictions for 2007 on the Montel show. Damn.

Oh yeah, and I have to go to the hospital for at least 4 days, probably tomorrow or the next day.

I get my own PICC Line, which I wish that was like a party line where I could sit around with pink foam curlers in my hair, as I twirl bubblegum around my index finger and chew it back into the side of my mouth so it won't get stuck in my retainer, while I let my green facemask dry and gab with about 3 other pals, and we'd talk about how cute Matt Dillon is, about how big Angelina Jolie's lips are, and what is up with Patrick Swayze's brother's forehead...

But that's not what a PICC Line is unfortunately, and now that I made that rude comment about Patrick Swayze's brother's forehead, karma is gonna pinch me hard when that PICC Line goes in.

But I've been called a tough cookie by a Special Forces buddy of my dad's, so I feel pretty good about this whole PICC thing, and the ITP thing. Even though both will make you cry when no one's looking.