I just want to say a special thanks to all the doctors and staff that helped me with treatment and surgery. I don’t know what we would do without y’all!

I have gone to Joe Arrington Cancer Research and Treatment Center for all of my treatments since I became a patient a little over a year ago. Dr. Yalamanchili has been my oncologist and Dr. Rostas is my surgeon.

I was with my primary care doctor, Dr. Evans, and each time I would go see him my platelet count would be lower. So, he sent me to see Dr. Yalamanchili. We soon discovered that I had immune thrombocytopenia (ITP). I was greeted and treated with the best possible care I could have received by the nurses and doctors.

For a while I was going to JACC a lot, many times a week. The plan in the beginning was steroids and different medications. I got lots of platelets as well but those didn’t work. Soon after we did IGIV treatment, and it would work for a little bit but wouldn’t last long. Rituxan was my next best option and the results weren’t as good as the treatment before. I soon was placed on a medication that would hold steady but wasn’t a permanent fix. I decided on choosing removal of my spleen as it was the only thing left besides chemotherapy. After a year of ups and downs and trips to Lubbock and treatments for hours, I can successfully say so far that with the help of Dr. Rostas, my surgery went great and I’m feeling better than I ever did!

One experience that has stayed with me in in the beginning of ITP is when I got a bag of platelets because mine were so low it was risky for bleeding. So I got my first platelets. I went home thinking this was going to fix everything and I was going to be back to normal. The next day I found out that my spleen had destroyed all the platelets I received the day before. I was just crushed and thought to myself that this was not going to be as easy as I had hoped. At this point I was back in the treatment room and I just broke down and cried. The nurse that was treating me that day stopped everything and got down to eye level with me. She told me that she may not know what all this feels like, but she was there to not only give me the treatment but to be there with me and to let me know that I was not alone in this situation. I just want to say a special thanks to all the doctors and staff that helped me with treatment and surgery. I don’t know what we would do without y’all!