Our first time at the Cardinal Bernadine Cancer Center was a little intimidating at first.  We had the guy park the car and we went downstairs to Clinic E, thanks to Ellen for the directions we knew exactly where to go!!  I checked in and then the waiting began!!  I think it was probably only a half hour before we were called in, it just seemed like forever!!!  The nurse checks my vitals and asks all the questions and says OK doctor will be here in a bit.  Doctor comes in nice to meet you and all that jazz lets get down to business.  OK you have ITP it means this and this and this she explains away also drawing a diagram on a piece of blank paper.  This was so great I mean I had already done so much of my own research that I knew how ITP works but it was great to see a Dr draw it out for me!!  So then she started writing down how we treat it.  She wrote a few things before she got to spleenectemy.  She said she didn't know why the other Dr was ready for that already.  She said at this point she wanted to try and lower me off the steroids because you could tell how it was effecting me.  I think my weight was about 320 then.  She told me to lower the Prednisone down to 80mg daily and to have blood work done at the Darien office in one week and to see her on Monday the 31st. 

From this point on I don't have exact counts anymore as I will strictly be working from memory, everything prior to this I have the records of!!  So I am not sure what my first official count was at the new Hematologist office.  But we were on our way to try and get off the Prednisone and to prevent from having surgery. So we started the great Prednisone taper she decided that I could go down 20mg every third day.  I have to mention at this point when I saw her on the 31st my arms,legs and back were so achy and I couldn't stand for more then five minutes or walk further then 10 feet.  They decided that I needed a blood test to make sure I didn't have myotitis, not sure on the spelling of that either, but that I most likely have myopathy from the steroid's. Myopathy is a weakness in the muscles, now I'm already a heavy women so I dont have real strong muscles to begin with and at this point I gained 20 more pounds so you can imagine how my muscles must be feeling!!! The test came back OK and they decided that its just myopathy and she hoped that it would clear up after we get off the Prednisone.  So we are on the taper and the platelet numbers begin to decrease.  So the doctor wants to try and give me Rituxin before I get sick again.  OK now for any of you that don't know, Rituxin is a Chemotherapy Drug that is made of mouse particles.  It has been found that most people have respiratory problems when receiving this treatment. There is a small chance that you could have a bad reaction from this medicine and you could die. Wow why would I want to take Chemo drugs? I don't have cancer I'm not going to die and I don't think I really want to try this stuff out!!  Well the doctor says if your count keeps going down we have to do something!  She gave me a referral to a surgeon  and said get a consult appointment with him.  And think about the Rituxin and we will see what your count is today.  This being Monday February 2.  Well the count was not OK I'm not sure what it was but she decided that we needed to go forward with the Rituxin on Friday.