In the hospital

It's 6am and I'm watching my husband hold my son. In the hospital. It's all happened so quickly. We went to Florida the day after Christmas, to spend some time with my inlaws. The visit was going great, (aside from Chris having to have emergency surgery for appendicitis). But I kept noticing that Blake had small bruises on his body. In unusual places. On his ribcage, his belly, his upper arm, his upper thigh. I mentioned them to Chris, because I couldn't explain them away. Blake is sturdy, Beckett still falls. Yet it was Blake with all the bruises. We decided that as soon as we got back to Kentucky we would do a CBC on Blake. We got home Saturday night. I had an appointment Monday. But then last night after giving the boys a bath I noticed a rash on Blake's elbows. I called Chris over. He completely flipped out. And in that single moment I felt as if somebody punched me in the gut. Chris called his friends over, also pediatricians, to look at Blake. They confirmed our concern. We drove to Chris' office to get a blood count. The results come back in about 30 seconds. I watched Chris' face. He buried his face into the door. I started yelling. Tell me! What is it?! What is happening?! His white count was normal, but his platelets were low. Very low. Chris called down to Kosair Children's and spoke to a hematologist. The doctor said tha based on his lab work, Blake probably has something called ITP, idiopathic thrombocytopenia. Im not sure what else I heard, other than it probably was not leukemia. The doctor told Chris that we needed to come to the hospital though. Blake was still sick. He needed a powerful drug to help his blood clot. So here we are. His platelets are continuing to drop and I am more scared, more tired than I have ever been. I feel as if I have lived two lifetimes since Chris looked at the rash. I feel hopeless. Yet I look at my brave boy, who just finished puking, with an IV in his arm and hooked up to monitors, the same monitors that he was hooked up to when he was born, and I feel grateful. For the fact that we were smart enough to notice, for the fact that my husband is a pediatrician, for the fact that we have family here to watch Beckett...for the simple fact that I can hold my baby for another day.