“You require more neutrophils”

According to two blood tests in August & September of this year, I have persistent asymptomatic neutropenia. I have an appointment with a hematologist in January of next year.

I picked up my referral packet today at NEMS. NEMS got me a referral to SF General Hospital (which is where the hematologist is). NEMS is my primary care clinic thingy.

my 1st blood test (in August) says…
number white blood cells: 2.7 x 10^3/uL == 2700
percentage of wbc that are neutrophil: 8%

my 2nd blood test (in September) says…
white blood cells: 2.3 x 10^3 per uL of blood == 2300
percentage of white blood cells that are neutrophils: 12%

So, IF I’m calculating correctly, (yay http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_blood_count )
1. 2700 * 0.08 = 216 neutrophils per microliter of blood
2. 2300 * 0.12 = 276 neutrophils per microliter of blood

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absolute_neutrophil_count and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutropenia say that a count of lower than 500 neutrophils per microliter of blood is, like, rly rly bad. haha. So I guess I will take more tests in January. I hope. I guess I’m kind of scared? I’m reading a lot about white blood cells. The referral letter from NEMS to SF General sounds scary. “28 y/o Chinese female with persistent asymptomatic neutropenia” lol. And the letter that SF General sent in reply to NEMS is even scarier. It asks for a bunch of other tests if they had them (they didn’t cuz I only started going to them this year).

2 comments

    1. Yes, just in the past week! It is back to normal now (wbc at 6k, don’t have any more details yet, I will ask for a copy next week). Phew. We don’t really know why it was low in Aug and Sept since I wasn’t “sick” — I didn’t have any symptoms of being sick, at least; the doctor said last week that I probably had some kind of infection and your wbc count can go as low as 1k when you have an infection. Thanks for checking in on me =)

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