Topping Her Off

This is the start of the third week Payton has gone in for twice weekly blood draws. She wants to know "do I have to get a poke today?" She mostly does ok, but if they draw from her arm instead of just a finger poke it gets a little rough.

So, basically at this point, her numbers have stayed the same type of bad since we started this. Her red and white blood cells are in too low. Her platelets, neutrophils and hematocrit are so low they put her into critical results. Her bone marrow is still working at just 10% of what it should.

The doctor has told us that at this point, this is all happening as a type of autoimmune process. With all the testing they did, they can't find any virus source that is causing this to happen in her. We are continuing with some genetic testing at this point but that won't provide any more insights for a while.

Because of her low results, she's officially acting different. It is catching up with her. The doctor gave her some time to see what her body was going to do but it just isn't keeping up. She will have her first transfusion Thursday morning. They will continue to monitor her counts after that and see what happens. Once she is at a point this is happening more rapidly, we will begin to  prepare for immune suppression therapy.

Updates more later this week after we see how she does. Thank you for the continued prayers, checking on us and thinking of us. It's appreciated more than you know.

Lots of people have asked what can they do. Right now there's not much here. If you want to help, please donate blood. Or consider getting screened to be a bone marrow donor.