Hey gang, I’m back. Well, I’ve been back for awhile, but I’ve been a bit too tired to get my thoughts together and post anything of note. The hospital stay’s still kind of a jumble in my brain and the time since then has mostly been spent sleeping. I do have a bit of recent news though, so I’ll let you guys in on it.
Since getting out of the hospital, I’ve been having two Neupogen shots a day. These are the shots that boost your white blood cells, like Neulasta but a smaller, more controlled dose. Over the weekend I got the shots down at Yale and on Sunday they drew bloodwork on me. Typical white blood count should be between 4,000 and 10,000. My white blood count was 900. Platelets? They were bad too. They were at 39 and the normal is from 100 to 150.
Anyway, this is bad news. I stand a big chance of getting infected by stuff and/or bleeding all over the place. Good thing my hair’s gone so I don’t need to shave. On Monday, we did more bloodwork (can’t clot well? Let’s stick a needle in you!) and things were better. My WBC doubled up to 1,800, but my platelets dropped to 21. Apparently 20 is the magical barrier where they do a blood transfusion on you, so I got out of having that done yesterday.
The good news? Even though my WBC is still in the basement, its doubling and the fact that my back has been killing me since Monday morning means that I’m currently a churnin’ burnin’ stem cell factory. In a mere couple of hours I’ll be down at Yale where they’ll be drawing some more blood to see if the situation is ripe to start harvesting stem cells. Hot diggity doodley!
So now that I see the time, I guess I’d better wrap this up and start getting ready to leave.