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).
So, I am curious. It is the middle of January. Have you had any recent blood tests to check your neutrophil count?
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 =)