Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Nadir ?

The doctor had wanted to give me platelets yesterday, I thought it best we hold off another 24 hours and see if today saw any change. The logic being that if we transfused, the blood counts would be meaningless until we had at least another two more samples taken over as many days.

So with that in mind I arranged to come in today and get another test. Yesterdays counts were all lower than Saturday's sample. The platelet count being just 11.
The counts came back in a record time today, just fifteen minutes! There's now a system installed in the new hospital whereby the samples are placed in a vacuum tube and whizzed through 400metres of piping to the blood lab in the blink of an eye.

Lisa, the nurse who see's me each visit came back to me with a piece of paper in her hand. "Guess what today's count is?" she asked. I said that I was so stressed over the whole count situation I dared to guess. She insisted. I said "anything over 11 would be great, even 12 would be fantastic" She passed the paper to me... Platelets 12.
All other counts were also slightly improved over yesterday.

I don't want to get my hopes up too soon, but it does look like I've finally reached the Nadir (The lowest or turning point) in my blood counts. The doctor asked me what I wanted to do. (It's fantastic that my opinion is respected in these matters). I suggested that we don't give GCSF today or transfuse and that I return on Thursday for another full blood count. At that point all will be apparent. She agreed.

Roll on Thursday and another increase in my blood counts!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey mate!

So when you get through this, are you going to take a position in the medical profession somewhere?

Seems you know a lot more than they do at times...

Also, what happened to Murray O'neils 3 seater? Looks nasty!

Ron Scanlan said...

Once this is over I don't want to ever again contemplate the origins of Thrombocytopenia, The side effects of Melphalen or listen to the constant whirr of an IV machine!!

Murray's car was a victim of Shelly Bay.