Transfusion

Tuesday 15 May

Some quick results from the blood sample taken this morning, as per our discussion with the haematologist.

Bad news are the blood platelets. They have come down from end April (19) to 9, then 4 and now 2 platelets per MicroL. They should be at 150! This makes Lara all the more vulnerable to haemorrhages of any part of her body including the brain, down to a simple nose bleed. She received a batch of platelets but they die inside the body within two days, so not much solace they give.

The WBC (remember, white blood cells) stand at 1.15 per MicroL whereas they should be at 4.00. A a sharply upward push (and much less a veritable surge) in the WBC would be a bad sign for leukemia patients, because it indicates an evolution of bad cells (blasts). What I hadn 't realized is that the number given for WBC includes the blasts and does not therefore refer exclusively to healthy cells! The doctor was happy to see that the WBC count had not moved up but remained stable. Blasts remain at 10 percent like where they were on 26 April. So at least they haven't shot up.

There were to pieces of good news, corresponding to two other indicators. The first is the neutrophils which now stand at 0.24/MicroL, shy of the minimum effective level of 0.5, but nevertheless providing a decent protection against infection. The second is hemoglobin which is now at 7.8, two full points up compared to last week. Along with it, the red blood cell count had risen from 2.04 to 2.64.