Doctor visit yesterday

Well the results from yesterday's test reminded us that this disease is like a roller coaster. There are going to be some serious ups and downs. After last week's relatively good results, yesterday's number were not very encouraging. 

The Red Blood Cells and Hemoglobin were about the same from week to week. This is good because with the Hemoglobin above 10, the fatigue is greatly diminished as there is more oxygen in the blood.

The disturbing numbers were the White Blood Cells and Absolute Neutrophils.  The WBCs were down to 1.3 and the Abs Neutrophils went down to .7.  These are considerably below normal and increase the risk of infections, etc.... So we're basically back to the same numbers as early July.

It also means that I'm back under house arrest and not allowed to interact face to face with other people. The warden (aka Carol) will make sure that I don't stray from these instructions. 

The game plan for right now is to continue with the weekly Procrit and Neupogen injections and the weekly blood count tests. We'll do this for another 8 weeks and if the WBCs do not show improvement we'll start looking at other treatment options.

So to try to sum up all of this, while I'm feeling better the numbers are not indicating improvement. Like I said it's a roller coaster and we just have to take the bad with the good.

Thanks for your prayers and support.
 
Fred

August 21, 2013

Good news this week. All of the Blood Counts moved in the right direction.
Here are the results:

White Blood Cells  2.2  Still below normal, but improving.
Abs Neutrophils      1.5   At the low end of normal.
Red Blood Cells      3.1   Still below normal, but improving
Hemoglobin            10.5  Still below normal, but improving
Platelets                   72     Still below normal, but improving

So it looks like the weekly Procrit & Neupogen injections are beginning to kick in.

Next Tuesday will be a day at Mayo Clinic for more extensive testing and consultation with the Dr.

Thank you for your well wishes and prayers.

Fred   

update

The Blood counts this week are kind of a mixed bag.

The White Blood Cells improved to 1.2 and the Abs Neutrophils improved to .8

The Red Blood Cells dropped to 2.8 and the Hemoglobin dropped to 9.6

The Platelets improved to 60. 

In talking with Mayo, I expressed my concerns with the RBCs and questioned if the Procrit was working. The response was that it takes multiple injections to see improvement. They cannot give me an exact number on how many injections it will take to see improvement, but I would have thought 4 injections over the last month would have been enough to start kicking in.  They did say that without the injections in all probability the numbers would even be lower and that's how it should be looked at.  On a positive note, at least the counts are not near the danger zone of requiring another hospital stay & transfusion.

I guess I'm just looking for the quick fix and a return to some sort of normalcy. I did ask if I started
drinking Red Wine on a regular basis if that would help. They just laughed and never did answer the question. I'll be reviewing the Red Wine subject in 2 weeks when I'm up there for my day of testing.

That's the update for this week. The injections of Procrit and Neupogen will take place on Thursday.

Thank you for your prayers and well wishes.

Fred  

Recent update

The weekly Blood Tests showed a slight improvement over the previous week. 

The White Blood Cells came in at 1.1    Normal is 4-10          
The Absolute Neutrophils were .6          Normal is 1.5 - 6.5
The Red Blood Cells were 2.9                Normal is 4- 6
The Hemoglobin was  9.7                       Normal 12-18         
Platelets were 56                                     Normal 150 - 450    


The WBCs and Abs Neutrophils will never make it back into the normal range, but if the numbers could be doubled, it would provide a little bit of an Immune System.  

So here's hoping and praying that the Procrit (Boosts RBCs & Hemoglobin) and the Neupogen (Boosts WBCs and Abs Neutrophils) weekly injections will really start kicking in and help the Bone Marrow generate new Blood Cells.