Jeremy Mason

BETRAYAL OF BLOOD


      Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura.

      Sounds ugly, doesn't it? Sort of like a mangled corpse, with half of its skin removed. It evokes memories of that towheaded bastard who used to trap you in the bathroom and demand your lunch money to save yourself from a swirly. It reminds me of vomit the morning after a night of drinking and eating God-knows-what.

      Hell, to me, those three words DO embody a corpse. They ARE the bullies that I used to deal with when I was the smallest kid in class. And even the thought of those three words makes me want to vomit, as though I am suffering from a three-month-long hangover.

      It is the enemy that tried to claim my life. The ruthless hit man that tried beat the shit out of me, break my legs, and then gun me down in a public place. Notice I use hit man, rather than assassin. Assassin, to me, embodies elegance and cold efficiency. A hit man is a brute, who, for money, will smash whatever his employer tells him to smash, often in an attempt to teach a lesson or make a loud statement.

      There was absolutely nothing elegant about what this hit man tried to do to me.

      My second semester in Midlands Technical College faced me, and I was preparing to square off with it like an MMA fighter in a cage match. My first semester had gone well, leaving me with 4 A's. But those were all classes I wanted to take. Two Psychology classes and Intro to Religion were classes that I considered fun. The only class I had that I was not thrilled about had been math, but Mr. Salais had made even math interesting for me. Now, I looked at the summer, and found myself dreading the semester. Computer Sciences (I mean, REALLY!?!? I had been using computers since they were programmed in BASIC), Public Speaking, Anatomy and Physiology, and Personal and Professional Development in Health and Human Services. So, I faced two classes I had already taken a decade and a half before, a computer class that was a waste of my time, and a class about getting in touch with my inner self. But you see, these classes were all required to get to the classes I really wanted, so rather than take Mary Rawls' advice and break them up, I chose to eliminate them all at one time. I was finished half-assing… That may have been okay when I was a kid, but I was a family man who was sliding into middle age. There was no more time for screwing around in school.

      With a lot of dread, and a little bit of a chip on my shoulder, I plowed into the summer, ready to get it over with. The first week went well enough, but then again, the first week is always getting acquainted with the process. And three of my classes were after 6 every night except Friday, so I quickly found myself not enjoying the process. Add to this the bruises my stuffed book bag strap was leaving on my shoulders, and the exhaustion of working in the mornings and going to school after dark, and I found myself in generally foul spirits. As I rode with my wife to class the second week, I looked at her and asked her what the hell I was doing. She just smiled at me and pointed at her pregnant stomach, and that pretty much killed the discussion.

      The next morning, as I prepared to give a demonstration speech about combat in Shadowmoor (my live-action game), I looked down at my hands and took a deep breath. While looking at my hands was a normal thing for me when preparing to speak to a crowd, what I saw was certainly not normal. There were small reddish-purplish spots on my arms. They were not raised from the skin, and they looked much like a heat rash or some other reaction. When I got up to give my speech, it occurred to me that my arms and legs hurt, which led to me dancing around a bit as I tried to get circulation back in my limbs. Class ended, I met my wife, and the two of us went home.

      Over the course of the day, more and more of the spots appeared. Thinking I was having an allergic reaction, I popped some Benadryl, then changed my clothes. While the spots didn't itch, they certainly seemed to be an allergy, and we were using a different laundry detergent than normal. I went to bed early that night, mainly due to a Benadryl coma, and at least partially from the state of mind I was in.

      The next morning, at 4 AM, I woke up tasting blood. I went to the bathroom, and realized that I was bleeding from my mouth. The spots were covering each and every part of my body, and every blemish on my body was bleeding in some way, shape or form. I looked much like a hemorrhagic fever patient in a horror movie. Waking my poor wife, I showed her my progressively worsening outward appearance. There was no hesitation anymore, as the two of us decided it would be beneficial for me to go to the emergency room. We woke my father to let him know where we were going, and headed to Lexington Medical Center.

      After getting me checked in, the nurses in the reception area of the hospital took my vitals. My blood pressure read 223/119. The automatic blood pressure machine blew itself up twice to get that reading, cutting off the circulation to my hands. Startled, the nurses checked it again. The same results. After I told them my chest and head were not hurting, they sent me back to wait. But not for long. Within 10 minutes of the vitals check, my arm, where the cuff had squeezed it like a hungry python, was turning black. Now, I truly DID look like an Ebola patient. Within 15 minutes, I was shuffling exhaustedly toward an examining room, finally aware of how little energy I had. I slumped onto the bed in the examining room, and just nodded in acquiescence at whatever I was asked.

      After difficulties finding a vein to take blood, the nurses finally got a couple of vials. It was perhaps half an hour, and the doctor walked back into the room.

      Normal platelet count for an adult is 150,000 or higher. Your platelet count is 3,000. An oncologist is on the way to see you, and you will be staying in the hospital until we can get your count back up. Otherwise, you could bleed to death.

      With that, he walked out of the room. My mind reeled.

    Oncologist. Oncologists are cancer doctors. Leukemia? Some other form of cancer killing my blood cells? I have a baby on the way! I am going to school to keep my family alive! I have a child who is almost 1, and a teenager to raise. What the fuck am I going to do!?!?

      The tears burned my face, chasing off the cold numbness that had taken over my body. I looked over, finally thinking about someone other than me, and my wife was crying as well.

    No! I have not survived everything I have for the last couple of years: the economic stupidity of the idiots running the country; the health scares of my wife; the baby being born; Gabrielle's juvenile diabetes; having to move back in with my parents after the place we were renting was foreclosed on, nearly ending up homeless. I have not survived all of these things to let my own body betray me now. Fuck that; I refuse.

      We just can't win for losing, can we honey? I cracked at my wife. We will survive this too.

      Two minutes later, the doctor poked his head back into the room.

    Your hemoglobin is normal. Your red blood cell count is normal. It isn't cancer or leukemia.

      Despite not knowing what I was facing, I felt a huge weight lift off of me immediately. Thank you Lord! The hematologist walked in a few minutes later. She was a short Indian woman (Indian, not Native American). She introduced herself as Doctor K. She quickly ran down what we knew, and named what was wrong with me. Idiopathic Thrombocytopenic Purpura, or ITP for short. My platelets were being killed by my own immune system. They were unsure of what had triggered the condition, but it could have been the cold I had in the weeks prior to getting sick. They would try and reboot my immune system, get some platelets into me, and hope that it stopped the attack. The woman was short and diminutive physically, but she had a presence that screamed for her to be attended to. So, I placed my life in the hands of this small doctor with the aura of a warrior, and she whisked me away upstairs.

      For six days I stayed in the hospital. I had twenty-gauge IVs in the backs of both hands, and they pumped me full of fluids and blood pressure medicines. They also gave me gamma globulin, which is essentially another person's immune system, and enough steroids to drive a bull elephant into a screaming rage. For this last reason, they filled me with anti-anxiety medications, Percocet, and sleeping pills. My room was kept dark so as not to agitate me, and the blood pressure machine went off every ten minutes, blacking both of my arms (oh, how Doctor K raged at the nurses and bounced them about for not checking my blood pressure manually and leaving me looking like I had the crap kicked out of me). My time there was filled with endless reruns of NCIS (though I remember little of the specific episodes), phone calls from my concerned players and friends in Shadowmoor, and the time spent with my poor wife, who stayed up there as much as was possible with her being uncomfortably pregnant. And the early morning wakeup calls as needles punctured my fragile veins… even drawing blood from my knuckles. It was a hazy, pain-filled experience, and one for which I don't remember many of the details of even now, months later.

      17.000.

      28,000.

      45,000.

      96,000.

      On my final morning, my platelet count was 125,000. For my count to reverse itself so dramatically was nothing short of amazing. After denying the poor student nurse access to my hands to put in new IVs (Sorry, dear. I am sure you will do amazing, but let's please let Doctor K decide whether I get out of here today before we destroy any more of my veins!), I got the news I had awaited. I finally got to go home! I had only seen Ciara for a brief 15 minutes all week, and Morgan had only come up for 5 minutes. I was ready to see my kids. And ready to get away from the machines and the laying around.

      The next day, I stumbled into lab. Several people who saw my blackened arms applauded my tenacity in going back to school after surviving such a brutal situation. I had no room for error. All of my sick days had been used for the summer, so it was time to get down to business. As the days and weeks went by, my pain and weakness faded, and I found myself filled with a renewed purpose. You do not get to survive something like that, and then piss it away. I took my continued existence as the blessing from God that it was, and I forged ahead with my education and my work.

      I ended the summer without missing another class. Three A's and a B (that B in Anatomy and Physiology was the hardest I had ever worked for a B, and despite it flawing my 4.0, I take pride in that accomplishment). These grades were added to my school records, and the summer semester closed with me on top of most of my classes. I returned to Shadowmoor in August, and brutalized some of them to tears. And I moved on to the fall semester with a renewed energy and vigor.

      Will ITP return? It could very well. Perhaps the next time I catch cold, or the next time I take a medication with blood thinning qualities. But, as Dr. K expressed, you cannot live your life waiting for the hammer to drop. Appreciate each day like it could be your last, but plan for tomorrow as though you are guaranteed to be there.

      And should ITP return, I will, once again, kick its ass.