Giving my girl a kiss goodnight, I frowned at her bruised arms.
Penny, then two, had suffered from several bouts of tonsillitis and hadn’t seemed to ever fully recover – some of her symptoms just didn’t add up.
She seemed more tired than usual and along with frequent nosebleeds, I’d noticed she was bruising easily.
‘She’s not right,’ I said to my partner Jack, now 27.
So the next day, I took Penny to the GP, with Jack at work and my eldest Phoebe, then four, at school.
‘I’m going to refer you to Sheffield Children’s Hospital,’ the GP said. ‘I think Penny could have a low platelet count but she’ll need a blood test to confirm.’
Telling Jack what the GP had said, I drove up to the hospital with Penny, where blood tests confirmed the GP’s suspicions.
‘Penny has low platelets in her blood,’ the consultant told
