Tag Archives: variation

Your Results May Vary

One thing I think it’s real important to keep in mind is that there’s a whole lot of random in daily test results sometimes. Today, I feel like a hematological rock star, because one of the nurses told me yesterday, “You’re a rock star for getting a high enough white count to be given tomorrow off of coming in” to the outpatient unit. But that’s definitely not the whole story of the past couple weeks.

your results may varyAlthough my counts have been going up like crazy for the past three or four days, before that there were three or four days when my main clinician (whom I’ll call Nurse Practitioner Brusque Yet Friendly) seemed clearly disappointed that my white counts were stuck in the 700s.

And before that, there was the exciting first day when the nurse told me there were signs of marrow activity (a white count of .25), and my assignment was to be .40 the next day, but instead I dropped to .19.

Jesus helped me keep these reversals mostly in perspective (at least, to the extent of not brooding on them when I was supposed to be falling asleep), but it’s always a temptation to dwell on things.

Anyway, for today, yay! My white counts and ‘phils are technically in the normal range. But they’ll probably fluctuate some more (starting now that they’ve discontinued the ‘phil-boosting shots and put me on a routine antibiotic that will suppress my counts a little). And that’s ok.

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