Candice has a bleeding disorder

Candice, age 29
I guess looking back I didn’t notice a lot a difference between myself and other kids.
My parents were always careful which activities I got involved in, however being quite an energetic and out-going child I always had my fair share of bruises.

Often I had one or two black eyes.
My mum told me on one occasion I was in the push chair in the local supermarket with two black eyes and a man confronted my mum, upset and angry. He thought perhaps I was the victim of child abuse and raised his hand to hit my mum, but instead left in anger. A horrible day for my mum, I was too young to remember.

I was admitted to hospital on my 13 birthday from a bleeding tooth, it was my last baby tooth and was persistently bleeding through out the day.
I woke up in the night and had bled all over the bed sheets. Sometimes when you’re used to bleeding more it’s hard to know when it’s too much!
I was given platelets at the hospital and recovered quickly in a couple of days.

Other than this incident the only difficult encounter I have faced was when I started my periods which weren’t manageable. I became anaemic and with the periods painful and too heavy to manage I was quickly put on the contraceptive pill and iron tablets which has been a huge support and made day to day life easy to manage.