How I increased my platelets when I was diagnosed with ITP

***Disclaimer*** I am not a medical doctor and this advice is not intended to be taken as professional medical advice. I'm sharing some things that I tried which worked for me. I am not telling anyone to do what I did.

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I wasn't really scared when I first found out that my platelet count was too low because I felt fine. I didn't feel sick and I was still going about my life and my business as usual. I was clued into a possible problem in late October 2011. My platelets had dropped to 90,000  so my nurse practitioner sent me to a hematologist and he had me do a spleen scan, which came back fine and a bone marrow biopsy which came back normal, as well. When I went back to see him for the results of the bone marrow biopsy my platelets had fallen all the way down to 25,000. This was the Tuesday before Christmas and the time when I really got scared. The doctor told me that my blood wasn't clotting at all. He put me on 40 mg of prednisone to be taken each morning with 10mg Nexium. Prednisone can cause ulcers and I couldn't take a chance on having any internal bleeding. He showed me spots on my hands and legs which I thought was a rash, but it was actually petechiae and a result of blood vessels leaking under the skin because my platelets were so low.

So, I started the prednisone and nexium. By the time I went back to the doctor my platelets had increased to around 50,000. He was excited about that, but the prednisone made me feel horrible. I was training for a stressful position as a customer service rep with an insurance company. Every day, like clockwork, my head would start to pound about 10 a.m. It lasted until I got off at 4:30 p.m. and would usually be gone by the time I got home. The doctor said that it was the prednisone coupled with the stress of the job. I would go to the bathroom and look at myself in the mirror. My face and chest would be so flushed I didn't hardly recognize myself and my blood pressure was staying high all of the time. Sometimes I couldn't get to sleep until 2 or 3 in the morning.

 His initial excitement with the prednisone died down when I went back to him a couple of times over the next week or so and he saw that the most the steroids brought my platelets up to was 50,000. A few days after New Years my platelets fell back down to 33,000 and he advised me that the steroids were not working and he wanted to try immune globulin treatments (ivig). I had a treatment that same day and one a week later. I came back each week and my platelets were slowly climbing. The highest they got after the ivig treatments was in the 90s. Then they started to fall back down again. Towards the end of January or beginning of February he decided that the ivig didn't work as well as he had hoped it would and he wanted to try yet another treatment. I don't even remember what it was called but you have to be on an iv for 7 hours and you have to do it four weeks in a row.

I had researched for countless hours on the internet and at the library since I was first diagnosed so I asked him to please allow me to try one of the herbal remedies that I heard about before doing any more expensive iv therapy. The herbal remedy is papaya leaf and I had read many success stories about cancer patients and dengue fever patients taking it and it increased their platelets by a good amount. He agreed to let me try it and advised me what signs to look for in case my platelets dropped really low again. I knew to look for the petechiae developing on my body, too. I ordered the papaya leaf that same day and started it a week later. When I saw him one week after being on the papaya leaf my platelets had jumped to 94,000 from 50,000 two weeks prior. He was still a little skeptical that it was the papaya leaf because he had never heard of it but told me to keep doing what I was doing an come back in two weeks. When I came back in two weeks my platelets had falled down to 78,000. I was advised to not quit taking the papaya leaf if my platelets decreased so I kept taking it and began researching some other things that I thought might be causing it.

I found several sites on the internet that had lists of things that people were claiming had caused them to develop low platelets. Almost every one of those lists had aspartame on them. This was something that I consumed a major amount of and thought that it would definitely be worth a try to cut it out of my diet. It was difficult at first because I was consuming 3 to 4 cans of diet soda each day, plus eating treats and gum that contained aspartame. I cut aspartame completely out of my diet. I also found out that gluten sensitivity can cause autoimmune. I knew that something was confusing my immune system and causing it to eat up my own platelets so I cut out all wheat products, as well. When I went back to the doctor two weeks later my platelets had increased from 78,000 to 173,000. I was so happy and excited. It was a major breakthrough for me. Two weeks later they were 183,000 and two weeks later they were 170,000.

Now I can go back for labs once a month and on the third month I will see the doctor. I pray that this continues to work for me and that he will send me on my way when I see him in July. It just goes to show you that you really do have to take charge of your own health. If I wouldn't have researched and found out what I did he would have had me taking more expensive iv treatments that we don't even know whether they would have worked or not. If you want to try the papaya leaf extract it can be purchased from Amazon. I have included the link below. I take one of the capsules each day and the bottle lasts me two months. I also purchased the tea bags, but I've only drank the tea a few times.