The last two days I started to get sick.  I was having a hard time breathing and in general I just felt lousy!!  Well it turned out that was because I had the flu!!  My platelets had dropped to its all time lowest which was 6,000.  Dr. Harting sent me to the ER where they did the flu test and confirmed that I did have the influenza virus.  Also while there I had a chest xray and an EKG.  I asked if I was going to be admitted and they were not sure yet.  I told them I will rest a lot better at home then I will in the hospital so after talking it over with the Hematologist they sent me home.  However I am instructed to go back to the full dose of the 140mg of Prednisone!!! 

So now I have been taking Prednisone for about two and a half weeks and the side effects have begun, I gained 15 pounds at this point since 12-16-10 and boy did my moods swing!!!  The moon face didn't show up too bad YET!!!  But it was coming!!  After this episode with the flu Dr.Harting told me that I would have to have my spleen removed.  She said that it was the next thing that they did to treat the ITP and since my count was way down this is something we need to decide to do soon.  Once again I do not have insurance and have no clue how we are going to pay for this.  Not only that but surgery wait a minute I'm not sure I'm liking this!!  So I decided that we should get a second opinion or try to find a place where we can get on a sliding fee scale or something.  We were even thinking of going downtown and spending the day at Stroger Hospital to see if we could get in there.  I called around and had an appointment at Rush with a Hematologist there and was connected with the person who can help me get on the sliding scale!! Great!!  Just couldn't get in for about three weeks, not a real big deal at least I thought!!  In the meantime I was trying to figure out where to go to the doctor at you know for like a general praticioner.  So we got an appointment at this place called Access they are also a sliding scale.