Health Updates

Some REALLY fun news and some not so fun news.

First for the FUN news- Colin can now have egg, as long as it is in baked goods! I know, not completely life-changing. But, for the first time in his entire life, the kid has been able to have delivery pizza! Woohoo! Donatos, thankfully, has started to offer a gluten-free product, which, of course, is awesome. However, it has 'egg' listed in the ingredients. So, until Colin was recently tested, he couldn't enjoy this treat but now he can! And it is YUM. We are excited to try new foods with him now. 

Now for the not-so-fun-news. In April of this year, Salem was diagnosed with ITP - idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura. He had been sick for a while and then started developing what we thought was a rash but we later found out it were small, broken blood vessels. His pediatrician immediately sent us to Children's Hospital Outpatient to have some blood drawn. We found out that Salem had an unusually low platelet count (28,000, at the time, normal range is 120,000 -150,000) and this is what had led to the broken blood vessels and bruising covering his body. A visit to a hematologist at Cincinnati Children's Hospital confirmed that he did in fact have ITP.\

 

 

Now, what is ITP? It is a blood disorder that can cause unusually low platelet counts. Basically, Salem's immune system confuses his healthy cells for bad cells so when he gets sick, his system works in overdrive and depletes his platelet count.

 

How do you treat ITP? There isn't really a treatment. Crazy, huh? Try telling that to two pharmaceutical reps! Chris and I are so used to having a drug to treat or prevent almost every disease or condition out there. This one had us stumped. Other than wrapping our boy in bubble wrap, there is literally nothing we can do to prevent it. However, if his platelet counts do drop too low, there is a treatment available called IVIG that helps to pump up his system. This is an infusion of platelets that is given intravenously over a couple of hours. Not so fun. Salem has had two of these treatments since his diagnosis and although it can be a struggle with a toddler, they have worked well for him so we cannot complain!

 

 

Currently, we are keeping our fingers crossed that this will all go away within the next few weeks. If not, we are looking at possibly having to face this long-term (it goes from acute to chronic after 6 months). In the meantime, we are in good hands at Children's Hospital!

Allergy Recheck 2012

We found out about Colin's allergies in June 2009 after his first allergy panel testing. He gets rechecked every year to see if there are any changes - better or worse. This will be his fourth round of panel testing and I realized that I have never taken my camera to document the process! Here's a little sneak peak:

The picture on the left is right after the initial pricks. They tested for Egg Yolks,  Egg Whites, Wheat, Soy and Control (and I'm not sure what the last one was for because we avoided Peanut altogether the year). The picture on the right shows the flare ups after a few minutes of waiting. All but the control site showed a reaction. No changes to his allergies this year so we will keep avoiding those foods as usual!

To keep him busy during the waiting time, we brought along Legos (his new fav) and BOB books- these things are awesome, by the way! Colin can already read books 1 & 2 on his own. 

And we had this little pumpkin to entertain us!