
Our life has been pretty chaotic as of late. In the past 3 weeks Bodie had an emergent unplanned hospital admission, got out in time to take his finals, fought with me for 3 days straight about taking said finals, Sierra graduated, we had a family graduation lunch, we hosted a graduation party at our house for 50 people, Sierra got in a bad accident on the way to graduation and totaled Dusk’s car (no one was seriously hurt, thank God, but we’ve been dealing with insurance and the rental car company), Bodie was readmitted to the hospital and I threw my back out…needless to say, it’s been a lot.
I have lots to update on (including Sierra’s graduation!), but that will need to be a post for another day. So many of you have been asking me how Bodie is, so I wanted to update. It’s been a lot to process, which is why I haven’t been updating on the blog. (Also, due to the recent events, my life has been too crazy to find time to sit down and blog. Ha). But here goes…
As I mentioned previously, Bodie has been diagnosed with ITP (Immune Thrombocytopenic Purpura) a rare autoimmune disorder where the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys platelets, the blood cells that help with clotting. As a result, he could start internally bleeding at any time, and doesn’t clot well when he injures himself.
ITP is an extremely frustrating condition to treat, because every patient’s cause is different and treatment plan is different. The treatment for ITP essentially involves going through the protocol of possible treatments from least invasive to most invasive, until you land on the one that works for your child.
It is, unfortunately, not a condition that is diagnosed and resolved within a week or two.
So we have to be patient while they work through the possible treatment plans, to find the one that works for Bodie.
Treatment 1. Platelet Transfusion. When a patient presents with ITP, the least invasive line of treatment is a platelet transfusion. It’s exactly what is sounds like: it’s just like a blood transfusion, except it’s platelets instead. In Bodie’s case, his platelet antibodies are so high that this treatment was wildly unsuccessful. His antibodies attack the platelets as soon as they’re in his system. In fact, his platelets actually decreased after his first platelet transfusion. They increased slightly when they used a platelet batch actually matched to his antibodies. Both of those transfusions were done during his first hospital admission in late May/early June. They didn’t even attempt a platelet transfusion during his admission last week.
Treatment 2. Steroids. Steroids tend to be a first line treatment when the body has an overactive immune response. Bodie has had luck with Decadron (a corticosteroid medication with the active ingredient dexamethasone), as it both treats ITP and helps modulate side effects of IVIG. So he’s done 4 day courses both times he’s been inpatient recently. But to do it at full treatment dosing would be a higher dose for a longer period. Dusk is extremely steroid sensitive – 1 week on Prednisone caused Avascular Bilateral Hip Necrosis, and he had to have both of his hips replaced at 37 years old. Bodie does not appear to have a steroid sensitivity, but we didn’t discover Dusk’s until he was in his 30s. So we’re always very conservative with steroid use with Bodie.
Treatment 3. Intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIG). is a treatment where a concentrated dose of antibodies (immunoglobulins) from donated blood is administered intravenously (through a vein). IVIG helps to boost or modulate the immune system, providing antibodies to fight infections or regulate overactive immune responses (the latter is essentially what is happening with Bodie). IVIG is also used to treat Donor Specific Antibody rejection, which Bodie had pop up on a blood test a few weeks after his transplant. So he had several rounds of successful IVIG treatments last summer at Stanford. During his first admission in late May/early June, he seemed to be the most responsive to IVIG. They did 2 back to back IVIG treatments during that admission, and another 2 back to back treatments during last week’s admission. It does seem to give him a temporary boost, but definitely does not give him enough to last. (When we left the hospital after his first admission, his platelets had jumped up to 43,000; 3 days later, they were back down to 7,000).
Treatment 4. Nplate Injections. Nplate (romiplostim) is a prescription medication administered via subcutaneous injection into the body to stimulate platelet production. The goal is to stimulate the body to produce enough platelets that they overwhelm the overactive antibodies. Bodie had his first injection last week. The injections are done on a weekly basis in the Hematology clinic in the hospital. Full dosage is 10 units. They can start patients anywhere between 1 and 3 units. They started Bodie at 3 units, and will go up 1 unit a week until he is at full dosing. Unfortunately, they cannot be administered at home or at a satellite facility, because each week his platelets will need to be checked first, and then the injection will be titrated specifically to his platelet level. So we’ll be driving an hour to the hospital for these injections for the foreseeable future. The tough part about this one is that we won’t know for awhile whether or not it is working. Some kids show a response in as little as 3 or 4 treatments, but most have to get to full dosing to really see an effect. (Side note – there is an oral medication that does the same thing, but it interferes with his Statin medication (transplant patients are on statins as they seem to be the best way to prevent Coronary Artery Disease, which is the biggest reason for re-transplant), so the oral medication is off the table for Bodie, unfortunately.)
Treatment 5. Bone Marrow Biopsy. This is really more of a diagnosis tool than a treatment, but I put it on the list as it’s the order of the protocol. If the Nplate injections do not prove successful, they’ll likely want to look at his bone barrow to get a better look at what exactly is going on to ascertain which treatment might make the most sense.
Treatment 6. Change immunosuppressant medications. If the bone marrow biopsy comes back normal, we would move on to looking at which if his medications could potentially be causing Bodie’s ITP. The challenge with Bodie is that any of the medications he is on – Tacrolimus, Everolimus and Valganciclovir – all could potentially cause ITP. Tacro is the most likely, but either of the other two could cause it as well. Because the Valganciclovir is actually an antiviral, used to treat/prevent CMV and he’s had several negative CMV tests at this point, we are going to trial off of that one this week. But the Tacro and Evero are here to stay unless or until we hit this treatment step. Changing up immunosuppresants is not for the faint of heart, and requires a lot of very careful slow titration up and down of medications, so would likely need to be done inpatient at Stanford.
So where does that leave us?
In a lovely holding pattern.
We’re currently on Treatment 4, the Nplate injections. And we might not know for a couple of months whether or not it’s working.
So for now, we see the Hematologist weekly where they check his platelets and give him the injection.
And we make sure he doesn’t engage in dangerous (you know, normal 15 year old boy stuff) behavior. No biking, skateboarding, contact sports, etc. For once, I’m glad he’s a gamer and not an athlete!
And we watch and wait for him to bleed.
Because he will.
When he was discharged from the hospital last Friday, his platelets were at 10,000. Again, nowhere near the normal range of 140,000 – 440,000. But as long as he’s not “actively bleeding,” we can stay home.
When (and I say if, not when, because we know he will) he starts to bleed, it’s likely be in the form of a nosebleed, or mouth bleeds, or blood in his stool or urine. And when that happens, we call his Hematology team. And they decide whether we’re close enough to his next clinic appointment to stay home. Or whether we need to come into clinic for a 6 hour IVIG treatment. Or whether we need to be admitted for treatment.
Meanwhile, with platelets hovering in the single digits, he’s not safe to make long road trips (if we were in a car accident, the consequences could be devastating) or to fly (if he were to bleed in the air we would have limited options to treat it).
So his annual biopsy and cath at Stanford (previously scheduled for tomorrow) have been postponed, along with his follow up appointment with his ENT and his viewing of his old heart with the pathology team. And our planned visit to Alcatraz. He’s not safe to do the procedure right now, let alone to travel there. We don’t know yet when they’ll be rescheduled.
And our trip to Tahoe in two weeks will likely also be postponed. We do pretty low key stuff while we’re there, but it’s the getting him there that wouldn’t be safe.
Needless to say, we have a pretty sad boy.
He says he’s “going to Tahoe anyway. The doctors can suck it up.”
While I appreciate his tenacity, unfortunately, it doesn’t quite work that way.
So we covet your prayers.

- It is not out of the question that the ITP could spontaneously resolve – completely unlikely, but God has done the ridiculously unlikely with Bodie before and he can do it again. So please pray for that miracle!
- Please pray that Bodie’s body responds far better than expected to the Nplate injections, and he’s in a safe space to travel soon!
- We have been abundantly blessed that we have found an incredible Hematologist at Rady’s who works really well with our Stanford transplant team! She is so smart and works so collaboratively. Praise God for that! Please pray they continue to work well together to figure the cause of Bodie’s ITP out more quickly than anticipated!
- Please pray that we can switch our Tahoe week for a week later in the summer. When we go, we’re in a timeshare, so can only go if we can swap it for a week later in the summer. It’s hard to plan since we don’t yet when he’ll be safe enough to go. Right now it’s not looking too promising. Please pray something magically opens up when we need it.
- Please pray for my spirit. I’m feeling pretty burnt out and rundown right now. I’m a planner and we had a heavily planned summer that has now all gone up in smoke. I’m trying desperately to keep up with my client workload amidst all of this, but it’s hard working in the hospital, for a variety of reasons. So I feel like I’m just constantly running behind and not able to do anything very well right now. I just need some peace, honestly.
- Please pray especially for Bodie’s spirits. He missed last summer because of transplant recovery and he’s had a rough year academically. All year, we’ve been talking about how we were going to make up for all of it at Tahoe this summer. We so want him to have a FUN summer where he can get some of that time back!