I. T. P. & Me

 I. T. P.

    Instead of one word, this post is really about three letters. Three letters and the hold they’ve had on my life. Idiopathic Thrombocytopenia; two extremely long words with the scientific meaning of “I don’t know”. To be told at sixteen, “I don’t know” why this disease came into my life. Just like I don’t know who I would be exactly without it. 

    Yet I.T.P did try to take control of my life but it was control that I didn’t wish to give up. It was control that I had to make decisions as a young growing women. The Do’s and Don’ts of living with not only a rare illness but one where rules weren’t easy to make for it. I could avoid rollercoasters and contact sports in school growing up easily. However, I could never avoid the stares or comments that others would make towards me when they saw a semi-healthy looking girl use a handicap parking space. They couldn’t see that her legs hurt while walking twenty feet, or the blue almost black bruises that covered my body under my clothes. They did not care. 

    All this control I had turned into giving up what I wanted or was doing. In school, that was marching band and the fencing team. As an adult, it was tattoos and sick days. Hospitals and specialist visits became rituals done from weekly to monthly at a time. Multiple blood tests every month made me get over my fear of needles pretty quickly. But everything came with the same result. My platelets were low and no one could tell me why.

    Over the past 8 almost 9 years, life continued despite my condition at times worsening. I did things that I was told I would never do like graduate college. Living with an incurable disease might hinder some but it’s those who push past it all that see life can still be beautiful. That this is who I am.

I am bruises.

I am petechia. 

I am strong.

I am a warrior. 

    I.T.P is only a small fraction of the women I am today. Each day I wake up, take my medication, go to work, and the cycle repeats. I still write, go for walks, and I still live. I live each day so they aren’t wasted by not living. So that my life can be full and have purpose. Maybe one day there will be a cure for low platelets and maybe I’ll see remission. But for now, I live as one of rare individuals to have this condition. And that’s me.