Skip to main content

She's a Little Pale

Yesterday I was watching Ashley in her dance class and noticed she was looking at little pale. She also had these dark circles under her eyes. I asked if she felt okay and she of course said yes but was a little tired. I asked if she wanted to go home and of course she didn't; nothing keeps my girl away from dance.

My guess is that Ashley's platelet count is really low. There are two things I notice with Ashley when her platelet count is low 1)she starts looking pale and 2)she gets sleepy. Ashley has an olive complexion so recognizing lighter skin on her is easy. This past Sunday Ashley slept until 11:30 am and she went to bed at 10 pm Saturday night. This week Ashley has been going to bed at her regular time and sleeping in well past 10 am.

Platelet Equation:
pale skin + sleepiness = low platelet count

Ashley goes to Shands on June 26 for an MRI. I think we will get labs drawn next week to see how Ashley's liver is doing and to see how her spleen in handling all of the extra work since her liver isn't working right. I would not be surprised if Ashley's platelet count is in the 80 thousands; normal is 140 thousand.
Stay tuned...

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Living through Dance

In just about six weeks Ashley will dance, not just any dance; she will be competing in a big regional dance competition by dancing her very first solo.  It's completely amazing, seeing Ashley dance, watching her live through dance.  When Ashley was born almost 11 1/2 years ago, I never ever thought, we never thought Ashley would live to dance much else do her first solo.  I can't believe I am crying as I type this.  I didn't think I would get emotional.  It's just amazing!  When I put her in dance at age 3, I did it because I knew I needed to stop sheltering her.  She needed to be around other children.  She needed to feel normal despite what is trying to zap the life out of her; despite her disease.  Honestly I never thought Ashley would be a good dancer or even a great dancer, I just knew dancing was safe; it was the one activity the doctors felt didn't put Ashley's life at risk.  Little did I know how much dancing did and still d...
1 comment
Read more

ALF vs COTA - Loosing Sleep

What would keep a person up past 3:30 am? Decisions... As most of you know we have been using ALF (American Liver Foundation) for Ashley's Liver Transplant Fund. However, in the past year, we have found that ALF is not offering us what we need among a few other reasons which I will not blog about. When we opened Ashley's account with ALF we did so quickly after the death of my dad during Christmas 2006 and New Year 2007, we did not have time to research the best fundraising organizations. There are so many organizations out there from ALF , COTA , NTAF . But because of my dad's untimely death and because his dying wish was that friends, family, etc. donate to Ashley to help defray our medical costs, the first organization that came to mind was the American Liver Foundation. After all, Ashley does have a liver disease. Now, both my husband and I are wondering if we should have used COTA. We have also thought and inquired about opening up a local trust fund for Ashley. Howeve...
1 comment
Read more

Ashley's Sick

One thing about having a child with a chronic illness is that normal illnesses just love to hang around longer. Ashley came home from school on Wednesday complaining of a headache, I took her temp and it was 101. She had no other symptoms just a fever, so of course we knew she needed to go to the doctor. However, I tried not to panic and decided to just watch her for 24 hours. On Thursday, her temperature just hovered around 99.5; Ashley's normal is around 97. She did fine most of Thursday but started complaining of a sore throat by late that evening. We woke up Friday with her planning to go back to school and me back to work but not before we went to the doctors just to make sure she didn't have strep throat. Dr. Lacy, Ashley's pediatrician, examined Ashley and didn't see anything in her throat but they did a strep test anyway; it was negative. Yesterday, Ashley's temp was normal all day, it ranged from 97.3 to 98.6. We thought maybe she was over her cold....
1 comment
Read more