The bone marrow test I've been avoiding writing about

One of the things that put a damper on my blogging was not wanting to write about Nora's bone marrow test, even though everything turned out fine. So, let me write about it so that I can move on to more fun things.

A problem with Nora's condition is that it's not easy to positively diagnose; it's more of a process of elimination that has led the doctors to assume she had ITP. But her hematologist had mentioned that if the condition lasted for over a year, we should consider doing a bone marrow test as a more definitive diagnosis; they could check to make sure her platelets were being produced normally, and make sure there wasn't something more insidious going on.

I had resisted the idea of a bone marrow test because it requires general anaesthesia, and because I guess I didn't even want to consider the possibility that it could reveal something really bad. But the hematologist made a deal with me: If Nora was still dealing with low platelet levels by the end of April, we would do the bone marrow test.

April came to a close without her body cooperating, so we took her to the hospital very early one morning-- we had to be there at 6:30 am because that's when they do this particular procedure, for whatever reason. As it turned out, getting Nora out the door by 6 am was the most traumatic part of the process.

We got there and Prince William was getting married to Kate Middleton, so we watched that over the shoulders of some nurses, and then the anaesthesiologist came in to talk to us. "I'll keep her safe," she said, and that was the first time I cried that morning. We signed lots of papers, and then it was time to go across the hall and get it over with. Nora already had her IV in (no problem; IVs are old hat), so they administered the anaesthesia while I held her and Rich and I sang "Blackbird." (The nurses thought we were cool for not singing some Barney song, apparently.) She suddenly became very heavy in my arms, and she was out. I laid her gently down on the white sheet, and as we left the room I began to cry in earnest.

The procedure seemed to take forever, but in fact it only took about ten minutes. They finally called us back into the room after Nora had been wheeled over to the recovery area. The bone marrow test went fine, and after about 15 more minutes she woke up. After about two minutes of grogginess, she was back to maximum Nora and scarfed down a bagel, yogurt and a banana. And that was it.

The hematologist called me later that afternoon to say that preliminary results looked consistent with ITP. A few days and phone calls from me later, we heard that the tests did indeed confirm ITP. So, that's that. As scary as the ITP was originally, and as much of an inconvenience as it can be at times, we feel very, very lucky that it wasn't something much worse. So. It's late August as I write this, and my brave girl still has a little pinprick pink spot on her lower back, reminding us how lucky we are.