Day Before Second Round of Chemo


Day before second round.

So, I now have some numbers from my blood test. If anyone is interested, I have a color coded spreadsheet that I can share. The reasons why these numbers are low is that they are cells that quickly reproduce and get killed along with cancer due to my chemo. two high level facts are below:
  1. My red blood cell count is decreasing, it is a 4.07 where anything under a 4.2 is considered low. This explains shortness of breath walking up the stairs. If my next reading is low, I will get a blood transfusion with my next chemo session. For more details on the sub values of the red blood cell look here:  https://stevecare.blogspot.com/2018/11/decisions-on-cancer-110618.html
  2. The major concern is a low white blood cell count. It dropped from a 10 to a 2.54. Anything under 4.1 is considered low. This makes it tougher to fight infection. So keep everything very clean. 

Details on the white blood cells, White blood cells can be of three types:
    • Neutrophils: First detector and alert-er cells to invaders.
    • Eosinophils : Killers of bacteria
    • Basophils :  Histamine and inflammation to fight off infection
    • Lymphocytes:  Remembering bad things and  killer cells of all kind that don't match.
    • Monocytes: Garbage trucks of system, takes away dead cells
If you want more detail, I would go here

So for me, Neutrophil score (Neu # (ANC)) is 1.35. This seems to be the major impact from my white blood cells. Anything under 2 is low and some doctors don't give chemo if the number is under 1.5. We decided to move forward. This means that my body will have a hard time identifying infections early making them worse. So, really keeping away from food poising, and colds and flu is really important. I will get a shot to improve this score on Thursday. We just started to get the insurance claim before as the shot costs $12,000!

 If you really want to see my spreadsheet, just ask an I can send a link for your viewing.





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