Nine years later.
When I was 15, I got sick. Really sick. The kind of sick that involves hospital visits, a series of tests, prayers, holy oil, and endless vials of blood being drawn from my body.
It was Easter weekend 2008. I was a junior in high school and I was supposed to go on a trip to visit the UC Berkeley campus with my best friend, Debs. We had to cancel the trip.
I felt fatigued all the time. I had bruises all over my body and I never knew where they came from. I would get bloody noses that lasted for hours. So I went to the doctor who started a series of blood tests. The first results were troubling. So were the second. So she advised that we go to the ER. It would be easier to see a hematologist if we went to the ER, otherwise I could wait weeks for referrals and appointments. That would be the first time I was admitted to the hospital.
I was sitting in an ER hospital bed, dressed in a hospital gown, as a doctor told me that he knew for sure it wasn’t cancer. It wasn’t until that moment that anyone had said that word. Cancer. I mean, it had to be the biggest worry. I’m sure it was on everyone’s mind. My platelets were dangerously low. It would have made the most sense. But I don’t even think that I really knew that it was a possibility until I was told it wasn’t.
So that was the first thing they crossed off the list. But there was still a long list.
Normal platelet counts should be above 150,000. My first blood test was at 80,000. The second was somewhere between 30,000 and 50,000. That’s what got me into the hospital that night.
For the record, the lowest I remember by platelet count ever being was 3,000. Yes, It was as bad as it sounds. That time in the hospital, they busted a vein in my hand trying to start in IV. My hand swelled as they kept trying to find any vein to do the job.
But that story wouldn’t happen for another couple of months.
This was still the first night of a long road ahead. They had to stabilize my condition and I got two blood transfusions over the next couple of days. I was released the day before Easter, after a 3 day stint in the hospital. I had bruises all over my arms from the IV and blood draws. Easter Sunday, someone put oil on my forehead in my aunt’s backyard as I was prayed over.
Several months later they diagnosed me with ITP which is honestly just a fancy way of saying they had no idea what was wrong. They had crossed all the possibilities off the list, Von Willebrand, Lupus, etc. That’s how I spent my last year of high school, getting weekly blood tests that would leave bruises so deep in my arms, even my driver’s license examiner asked if I did drugs. One morning, I went to school to discuss Aquinas and Shakespeare and left early to get a giant needle drilled into my hip bone. That’s how a bone marrow biopsy works. I can still feel an ache in the exact spot when it’s cold out.
I did end up getting to visit the Berkeley campus after all. It was a year later. I had just gotten my acceptance letter. I would start that fall, still battling the same disorder. Only this time, I needed monthly blood work instead of weekly. Trust me, at that point, only needing monthly blood tests felt like I had been miraculously healed. I was, of course, still on a regimen of iron pills with every meal and some giant chalky pills that I would take during my period.
It is now Easter weekend, 9 years later. This is the third or so year in a row where my platelet count is normal. It’s been a very long time since I’ve shown any symptoms. But still once a year, I wake up, get a coffee, get some blood drawn, sit in the waiting room, get my blood pressure taken (it is always low), a doctor listens to my heart, and sends me on my way, not yet ready to give me the full clean bill of health. And I will wait a full year and do it all over again.
I hate doctor’s offices, for obvious reasons. I hate hospitals even more. To me, it’s just the beginning of everything about to go wrong. I remember being released that first time, the day before Easter.
I felt just like Isaac, not knowing I was supposed to be the sacrifice until I wasn’t.
