Hi, I'm Kris and my husband is Steve, we have 5 children. 4 beautiful girls and 1 very special little boy. My daughter Lani started this annual 5k 4yrs years ago as a senior project at her high school. She had such a great successful turnout, we are now turning this into a annual event to help raise community awareness about ITP. This is my son Cayden's journey with ITP.

We wanted to do something special in honor of our little superhero Cayden and his fight with a disease called ITP. Luckily with the help of the PDSA and our wonderful community I am able to find an opportunity to do so.

It was in March 2015 when we finally received the diagnosis that my then 4 year old has ITP. ITP, immune thrombocytopenia (also known as immune or idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura) is an autoimmune disease. In autoimmune diseases, the body mounts an immune attack toward one or more seemingly normal organ systems. In ITP, platelets are the target.

It began a couple months earlier, he was sick for week after week and no one could come to any one conclusion as to why, other than he was unfortunately going from one virus to another with very little relief in between. As the weeks of one viral infection after another and endless fevers and colds and earaches and sore throats continued to drag on, my son's skin started to be covered in little purple spots that looked like tiny bruises all over his body, we would learn later these spots are known as petechiae. Right away I knew something was not right and took him straight to the Dr. to be examined. That Dr. visit was the first of many very scary things to follow. He was immediately rushed from office visit to get blood testing, it was obvious from the urgency that something was wrong but all we could do was wait for test results. We went about our day, expecting a call that everything was ok and nothing to be concerned about, yes the doctors prepped us for horrible possibilities but no one is ever really prepared. Finally, few hours later I received the phone call from the Dr. advising us to pack up and head immediately to Children's Emergency room. We heard that Cayden's platelet count was below 9000 that night in the E.R. My husband and I were hearing about a disease we had absolutely no knowledge of before this day and being told both sides of worst case versus best case, the testing necessary to ensure ITP and risk that may be leukemia. That night began a new chapter of Cayden's life, from that point on we had to experiment and find a place to get Cayden poked and prodded to test his blood and test his platelet count. After weeks of trying various offices we found the great staff at Children's to be best able perform this testing with the least trauma for a squirming 4 year old that does not like blood or needles. Every week for many months Cayden was at children's hospital having blood testing done and deciding the best treatment plan to try to recover his platelets.

Cayden's went through multiple months of various treatments and was on meds constantly for hopes of raising his platelets to a safe level. Every time we would see a rise while on meds, we would get our hopes up that it was over only to see an immediate drop when off the meds. For weeks at a time Cayden was on limited bouts of activity out of fear because his platelet levels were so low even a bump to his head could cause a brain bleed we could not stop. Cayden was sick and tired of being sick and the constant visits to the hospital and in his good days he seemed like just any 4 year old boy and didn't really understand why he couldn't run and play. Going to the Dr. has now become a huge fear of his as he only really associates a doctor visit with being poked for blood testing.

Cayden's ITP is well controlled right now and most days he is just a normal little boy, we can all recognize when his numbers are low just by his actions and to look at him. Cayden also can tell when he is low now and has told us he wishes he could have the energy of other kids playing soccer when he's not feeling his best.

This is a disease no one in our family had even heard about before Cayden's diagnoses. ITP has now become a daily word for my family and even Cayden uses the word petechiae like it's a common word. My little superhero has a disease that has no cure. My family had such a hard time through 2015 worrying about Cayden and all the things that could go wrong. Cayden had no clue just how sick he was at times and for most days he always had a smile on his face. We were all very nervous at every doctor visit he had to go to, at one point his platelets were so low doctors scheduled him to have IVIG done but the day of treatment his numbers showed signs of improvement again. This disease is such a scary thing for us. It's such a scary position to be in with him being so little. But we all believe in him, he is a strong little boy who has a heart bigger than this world.....he is our little super hero