Why We Knew Something Was Wrong

I get asked all the time...

 "How did you know something was wrong?" 

"Why did you take her to the Dr. in the first place?"

About a week and a half before we took her to the doctor, she was bruising easily, and had a lot of bruises.

I asked Matt about it, and he said not to worry, and that she is a crazy, active toddler.

She def is both of those things, so I didn't worry.

Well, the Friday before came and I went to change her diaper and she had a
huge purple/blackish bruise on her hip-like she had hit her hip bone on something.

The bruise was not normal though for just hitting your hip.

We both started researching online, obviously seeing the worst case scenario-which was scary (Leukemia).

I came across a blog where the scenario was similar to Bella, but the little girl had petechia all over her body.
Petechia are tiny red dots, which are tiny blood vessels that have burst.
This little girl had a disease called ATP where the body isn't making any platelets-
causing it to bruise and have the broken blood vessels.

At this point though Bella did not have any petechia, only bruises.  

The next day (Saturday) I went to lay her down for her afternoon nap, and I noticed tiny little red dots underneath her eyes.

Having read that just the night before, I knew that it was petechia.  

It was only on her face at this point, and her energy was the same, and she hadn't been sick at all.  

I had even thought to myself right before all of this "Wow, we haven't been sick in a long time".

We both KNEW that we needed to take her in on Monday to see her pediatrician.  

I absolutely love Bella's pediatrician,  He has been both Ty & Bella's pediatricican, and as long as I live in Utah I will go to him.  

His name is Dr. Bradley Anderson, and when you think of a perfect Dr. (caring, thoughtful, dedicated, and particular), he is that Dr..

We took her in and started telling him what was going on, and I'll never forget when he said,
"Well, you definitely have my attention". 

After looking at her, and knowing she hadn't had any fevers or fatigue-he told us it was probably ITP.  

He wanted to get a CBC (complete blood count) though just to rule out anything more serious (like Leukemia).

He said he would let us know between 5:30-7 that night when he got the results back.  

If it was something more serious, we would probably hear from him sooner.

As you can imagine, my phone didn't leave my side.

At 4pm I got a call from Dr. Anderson...my heart dropped and tears filled my eyes.

Dr. Anderson immediately said,"We got the results back and her levels don't look good, all three levels are extremely low and I am admitting her to Primary Childrens, you need to take her right away."

I literally felt like someone had punched me in the stomach, I couldn't breath and I feared the worst.

We got off the phone and just held each other, trying to feel something other than terror and fear.
Tyler knew something was wrong, and started crying as well.  He said,
"I don't want Bella to be sick, this doesn't sound good."
He could feel it all too well, but we told him how Bella's blood wasn't working right,
and she just needed to get some new blood.  His little tender heart was broken, and he loves his sister so much.

We woke up Bella from her nap, packed our bags, and headed to the hospital.

I remember feeling like I was in a dream, like it wasn't real, and that our baby girl was completely fine.

The whole way up to the hospital Bella kept asking us where we were going.

She never asked me that, and I realized because I would always tell her
beforehand where we were going as we were getting ready.

Not knowing what to say, and wanting to just burst out crying, Matt calmly answered and said,

"we are going to a big building Bella, does that sound fun?"

"Sure Daddy" she said.  It was THE longest drive of my life.