HSP

Friday night Macy started complaining about her legs hurting. We thought it was growing pains and gave her some calcium and milk and sent her to bed. Throughout the day Saturday it became harder and harder for her to walk, and she was complaining more about the pain. In the afternoon I had her lay down and pull her pant-legs up so I could look at her legs. I noticed a weird looking bruise on the back of one of her knees. I decided I should probably take her to the InstaCare down the street.


The diagnosis is Henoch-Schonlein Purpura. The small red dots and the bruise-like marks are a sure sign. This condition causes the blood vessels in your skin to become inflamed, which then causes them to bleed, which results in the rash called purpura. It can also affect the blood vessels in the bowel and the kidneys, which can also make them bleed.

So far she doesn't have any blood in her urine and the blood sample they took looks good. But we are postponing her trip to Minnesota until it goes away. We don't know if it will get worse before it gets better. I have a friend whose son had this illness last winter, and she says it was very rough. She sent me some pictures of his legs that were astonishing.

This morning Macy had bruises on the backs of both of her knees.

So, it looks worse today than it did yesterday, but Macy was definitely walking better today and she said it felt better. The information we have says that usually HSP gets better on its own and doesn't cause any lasting problems. However, a few people will have kidney damage because of it, so we definitely hope that won't happen. There is no specific treatment for HSP and they're not really sure what causes it. There are a lot of things that may cause it, but the doctor we saw thinks that Macy's is because of her immune system not doing a good job of fighting off the virus that we've all had this week.

We hope that Macy gets better soon, but this is such an ambiguous thing that there's really no way to know. We'll keep you posted. Any information that anyone has about HSP would be welcome.