Dezirya Merritt was born in Sept 2000 on her expected due date, and I was all so happy I had finally gotten a girl. I had three boys prior. Well, the doctor noticed she was jaundiced and ordered the special lamp for her, and like normal, we were discharged and on our way home. We were home for a good two months, and everything was going as normal until she had to get immunizations for the first time. Well, we got those about 2:30 PM, and at 10, she was still bleeding from the site. The next morning I called the doctor, and they said she might have been too active. Well, it’s winter in Georgia, and every other day she is sneezing blood clots I’m at the emergency room where we were told she had bad allergies, small sinus cavities, swollen adenoids, and any other nose problem they could think of.
Well, the month after she turned one was the most frightening time of my life. I was at work, and she was at the sitter’s when I got a call to meet them at the hospital, and the ambulance was on the way with Dezirya. When I got there, they informed me she sneezed and could not stop, and they tried everything to stop it before they decided to get her airlifted to Macon Children’s hospital. Once we were there, she was chemically put into a coma for a week and given platelets, plasma, vitamin k, and red blood cells. No one knew what was wrong with my baby girl. We were finally discharged because, after a week, she stopped bleeding, and her vitals were good, but she was sent to Atlanta to do a blood test with Emory. We then were notified that she had Platelet Disorder but did not know which one. We were tested for them all, and not only until she was maybe 8 or 9, did they tell us she had Glanzmann. We finally had a name, but boom, We find out it’s very rare and it would cause many hospitals stay but we are 20 years in now and striving for the best all along, meeting the best people, especially Helen and Karen!!!
