Day 14 - About WBC

Later... I suppose we need to preempt some technobable with some good news. However, the technobable may help in understanding the good news, probably, but you never know. Anyway, I was told my WBC doubled from .8 x 10^9/ml to 1.5 x 10^9/ml. That is one billion five hundred million wbc per millileater of blood. That is a real good thing. And since 48% of that number is neutrophils, I have about 760 million. All of these are being made by me with a little nudging from 560 micrograms of growth factor every day. They are supposed to discontinue the growth factor after tomorrow. Another important number they want to see come up and stay there is the platelet count. Mine for today was 26. They were real impressed with that and rightfully so because they are being made by me. The normal range is 150 - 450. I don't know how high my platelets have to get before they call what they have done a success. Apparently it is "successful" now as far as the new stem cells wandering back to where they came from and going to work. We will probably keep splitting hares for a week or so until they decide I can fly the coop.


Earlier... No, it isn't about Weather Blizzard Conditions (WBC). Although, we are getting a dusting of snow as I speak. The 10 PM weather showed 6 - 8 inches in and around The cities but only around 2 inches south in Rochester. Maybe we won't have as much to sweep off our cars today.

About White Blood Cells (WBC). That is the major subject of interest these days. I was told by a doc on Wednesday, my total WBC was 0.6 x 10^9 / ml. I'm not exactly sure as to whether it is ml or dl or l but I will get that cleared up later. At any rate, to make this a bit more understandable, you move the decimal place 9 places to the right to get a number. We will take it in steps of three to make it easier to understand. .6 x 10^3=600 (move decimal place three places to the right). 600 x 10^3=600,000 (see how easy this is). 600,000 x 10^3=600,000,000/ml. Now, if we wanted to, we could have started .6 x 10^9/ml = 600,000,000 white blood cells per millileter of blood.

Anyway, my WBC was about 600 million last Tuesday. Now, that was a major improvement over previous counts where WBC was virtually not detectable - scary thought. Yesterday, I was told the count was up to 800 million. Of that, one third were nutrophils which means I had roughly 280 million nutrophils. Remember, the magic number is 500 or better three days in a row for me to be considered to be making my own white blood cells again.

In case you think I might be making some of the following up and/or just want to dig a little deeper, here is one of many possible sources for you:
http://www.realnurseed.com/t1000.htm

In case you might be wondering, WBC is a total count of all white blood cells which are numerous and various as we shall see. Most numerous among the white blood cells there are neutrophils (also called granulocytes, most important infection fighters and usually most numerous 50 to 65 percent or so of the total and to complicate matters more are sometimes also referred to as segs or polys), next most numerous are lymphocytes.

Lymphocytes are B-cells and T-cells, "baby" cells that differentiate into other blood cells. They take up about 30 to 45 percent of the total. Keep in mind these numbers are only theoretical ranges to give you an idea of the relatively quantities. Theoretically, Neutrophils would outnumber Lymphocytes quite a bit for a healthy balalnce. Obviously you need to have more "grown" cells out there than "baby" cells. When the Absolute Neutrophil Count (ANC) drops below 2000 (and 1500 in some labs), you would have a disorder called Neutropenia. As the ANC drops lower and lower, you become more and more immune suppressed and thus susceptible to disease or infection.

As pointed out by the character Ulysses Everett McGill on O' Brother Where Art Thou... "there are other lesser imps and demons out there." In addition to Neutrophils and Lymphocytes, there are Monos, Basos, Esinophils, Bands, and Segs, and no telling what all else. And as we have seen, some of these are subsets of Neutrophils.

I suppose the most important point of all this technobable is that Neutrophenia can be brought on by non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, chronic Lymphocytic Lukemia (CCL), or chemotherapy. It gives us one more thing to occupy our already overburdened minds as to personal health issues. My point is that if you have something that has been seen by a doctor or doctors several times but still has same or similar symptoms that just won't seem to go away, maybe it isn't old age or just normal aches and pains. Maybe you need to tell your doctor you think you might have a disease. I did, and I did.

'Nuf said. I'll be back here later with more information about my WBC numbers and hopefully much less technobable. Stay tuned...