White Blood Counts Low

I just got home from my chemo appointment and am -- again -- already starting to feel the symptoms. Ugh!! I don't feel too nauseous yet, but just feel kind of icky (headache, hot flashes, etc).

Anyway, the big "excitement" for the morning was the fact that my chemo session was almost canceled! I had to have a blood test done so that my doctor could assess my white and red blood counts and apparently my white blood cells (WBC) took a bit of a beating in this last go-around. The low end of the "normal" range for WBC is 4.5 (whatever that means!) and mine registered in at 2.7. The nurse said that the more important factor is actually something in the white blood cells called neutrophils and the normal range for these is 1.5 - 8.0 (again, I have no idea what those numbers mean) and anything below 1.5 is problematic and the chemo session gets postponed. Well, mine squeeked in at 1.51 -- yikes! That was a really close call!

We asked the nurse whether the effects of chemo is cumulative (e.g., should we expect my neutrophil counts to inch down every week?) but she said no. She explained that I basically have two "camps" of white blood cells: the ones that are already mature and floating around my body ready to attack and those that are still in the bone marrow currently "incubating." She said that it takes the body about 7-10 days to produce white blood cells and that the chemo only affects the ones in the bone marrow that are not yet mature. And so, we'll know in 7-10 days how this round of chemo impacts my next batch of white blood cells. I am hoping, though, that by being on different anti-nausea drugs I'll be able to eat more (and healthier!) foods than I was able to last time, and hopefully this will help my little white blood cells to kick some serious booty!