I had a chance to see the results of the blood test which kept me from chemo last Wednesday. Whereas a normal person has a white blood cell count (WBC) in the 4.0 – 10.7 K/ul (I think that’s thousands per unit maybe?) range, mine came back at an underwhelming 1.5.

I can see all of my blood test results online so I went back and looked at the results from previous CBC/PLT/DIFF’s that I’ve had just to give since I was curious to see how those numbers have changed. My first doctor’s appointment back on September 13 had my WBC count at 13.7 which is actually high. I don’t know if it’s related, but this would be back when my symptoms were pretty acute and I was consistently running a temperature in low 100’s most of the time. Two weeks later, in anticipation of my first chemo treatment and chest port installation (which still hasn’t happened), I had another blood draw and my WBC count was back down to 10.7, just on the high end of the normal range. But then my first chemotherapy treatment came along and wiped them out… all of them.

This is one of the reasons why people going through chemotherapy are so prone to infection. Christine is much better at freaking out and worrying about this much more than I am. She’s admitted to pretty much becoming a germ-a-phobe lately, as she convinced that she’s going bring something home that I’m going to catch and that will kill me. She’s taken to leaving the house armed with disinfectant hand sanitizers and wipes, and has become an obsessive hand washer. It’s like the Swine-Flu scare all over again. Admittedly, I haven’t been so great about changing my habits in that respect, and I’m pretty sure that it’s slowly driving her insane. But I don’t really leave the house as much as I used to so as far as I’m concerned, I’m more likely to catch something from the dog (fleas, rabies, a tapeworm) than I am from the outside world. Still, 1.5… if that’s what it was two weeks after my first dose of chemo, I shutter to think about how low it actually got. What’s worse is that Christine might be right to be so concerned.

I go in again this morning for another pre-chemo blood draw before tomorrow’s re-scheduled treatment. Here’s hoping that my WBC count has come back up enough so that I can have chemotherapy tomorrow and we can send those numbers crashing back down. What an odd thing to wish for.