White Blood Count / Absolulte Neutrophil Count
Since it involves diagnosis/prognosis, there's a case that I should wait to hear from a Practitioner (there's always a Nurse Practitioner or Physician's Assistant on duty), but this is very good news copied from my lab results where the numbers that we've been waiting for are at last here.
As far as "did the transplant work" the answer appears to be "yes" (I will let the doctor officially declare that these numbers mean "engraftment" (that the transplant has "taken"))
1) Yesterday, my Absolute Neutrophil Count (ANC) was Zero (0), today it is 726.
To be released for care at home, I have to sustain ANC at 1000 or more for 2 days
2) That ANC went all the way up to 726 can only be explained by me making them. That means my stem cells have grafted themselves back into my marrow, which is another way of saying engraftment has occurred, or the transplant worked.
3) It is important that I make my own neutrophils, because, as Wikipedia says, Neutrophils are
...the most abundant white blood cell, constituting 60-70% of the circulating leukocytes. They defend against bacterial or fungal infection. They are usually first responders to microbial infection; their activity and death in large numbers form pus4) White Blood Count, which we've been watching bounce around at 0.1 and less than 0.1, is now 1.1 (recall that normal is 4.5 to 11). I'm not sure on the math, but it seems like given an overall White Blood Count of 1.1, we'd say that .726 are Neutrophils and the other .374 are the other white blood cells, all made by me. Something like that (I'm not entirely sure the units work that way).
5) We're past the nadir on all blood components, with Platelets at 11 (vs transfuse at 10 or below), and HGB is 8.3 (vs transfuse at 7 or below)
Active Follicle Count
Ok, compared to the news above, which says I will soon return to a normal life, the hair thing (at right) is pretty trivial news, except that it always appears in headlines. (pun intended)
Recall that the average full head of hair comprises 100,000 follicles. I bet I'm down to 50,000 active. I think I'm going to ask for the clippers back again today to buzz it all to a uniform 1".
Right now my head looks like the surface of the sun, bristling with plasma streaming out into space, and roiling with great, looping flares, some that shoot out, and some forming ringlets that crash back into the surface.
4 comments:
That's fantastic! It's like a judge signed your release papers and it's just a matter of processing before you are freed. I visualized your stem cells as tribles (hey, whatever works...)
very very good news!!
Audible relief to read this.
Great news!
Post a Comment