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
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4 comments:
Thanks for the updates. You are constantly in our thoughts and prayers!! Tell the Warden "Hi"!!
Love you both!! Hope good news start coming back soon!!
Hi Fred. Glad you're feeling a lil better. Hope and prayers for improvement in the numbers that count.
Hi Fred & Carol,
Just thinking of you guys and praying that things are improving day by day.
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