Thread: My journey!
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Old Tue May 23, 2017, 10:30 PM
kirag1964 kirag1964 is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2017
Location: Philadelphia
Posts: 20
Hello & welcome!

Your story is similar to mine as well - I'm an active and healthy 52 year old mother to 4 kids who was diagnosed after a routine physical in February. In hindsight I had been having symptoms for a while (bruising, tiredness, blood "whooshing" in my ears), but they weren't serious enough that I thought I needed to get them checked out. In a way I'm lucky because my annual physical caught the low blood counts before they dipped into critical numbers.

I don't fit the criteria for SAA - my doctor calls me "borderline" (my platelets are hanging out in the 20s and my ANC is slowly dropping but still around 1.2) - but I am needing monthly RBC transfusions. So I was allowed to wait for treatment until my daughter's HS graduation on June 9th, and I'll be checking into the UPenn hospital for hATG + CSA + Promacta on June 12th. So depending on what your doctor recommends, we may be on parallel journeys!

Mostly I don't look or feel sick (although right now as I approach 4 weeks out from my last RBC transfusion I do start to flag a bit!), so this whole thing is still pretty surreal to me. One of my kids (the daughter graduating from HS actually ) has a pretty serious health condition (intractable focal epilepsy), and I just keep feeling like I'm not the one who's supposed to be sick! But I am very hopeful that I can beat this thing and be back to my usual energetic self by next year!

Best of luck to you and let's stay connected as we walk this path!
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Kira - 52 y.o. mother of 4, diagnosed with MAA April 2017; ATG/CsA treatment scheduled for June 2017
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