[Kim2007]

Hi all I was really glad to find this site it helped me a lot,
I am a 29 year old female and was diagnosed in mid November with AA after two bone marrow biopsies. They do not know the cause but my Dr. thinks it was brought on by some sort of auto immune problem. I was seeing another Dr. nearby who had diagnosed me for about six months with itp since at first it only seemed to affect my platelets really badly. I recieved horse atg on November 16th about a week after my second bone marrow biopsy (the first was actually just an aspiration and they didn't see anything abnormal till they took a piece of the bone at the second dr's office), I did not handle the horse atg very well and ended up being in the hospital about ten days. The first six weeks out of the hospital were probably the hardest. I was on Cyclosporine and Prednisone and ended up kinda bouncing in and out of the hospital and had quite a few transfusions to sustain myself. They were talking about doing a second atg this time with the rabbit, but over the past two weeks I actually went up 30k platelets to about 90k and my wbc went up substantially too. My rbc is close to normal but I am still exhausted most the time for some reason. My family is very pleased about the increase and I am still on the Cyclosporine which is at 450mg a day at this point. I do have a brother who is a match for bone marrow transplant if needed but they wanted to try this first and it does seem to be working so far but they have not started taking me off the cyclo yet. Thank you for letting me tell my story and it has been great to read everyones stories on here. It is so nice not to feel alone in this. When I was first out of the hospital it was amazing to me that just a year earlier I felt normal and how fast my life had changed completely. I am thankful every day for the support I recieved from family and friends.