[dfantle]

Hi Scott, first of all im so sorry you got sick. You are young and this is not something you likely ever thought you'd have to deal with, which is likely the same for anyone who has been diagnosed wih a serious illness. As Nicole said, you may be scared, or maybe even angry. Anything you are feeling is totally normal.

From looking at your counts and the lab dates, it looks to me like you are having labs every 1-2 weeks which is definitely often enough. With your stability, even some prominent clinics may not be checking your blood counts this frequently.

As another others on the site have said, your blood counts will vary every day, but with the varying counts you show it appears you are completely stable. And, as others have said, if you get sick, even with a simple cold virus, your counts will vary a bit more and even drop some, which is 100% normal even for healthy people. They should then rebound after the illness or virus has passed, however.

However, if you're concerned your current team is not taking this seriously enough, you may want to contact those at the University of Washington who treated you last year. If you do not have their email addresses or a phone number, I am a patient at the Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, which is part of the UW and may be able to help you find an email address/phone # if you have a name of who treated you.

Your platelet counts look high enough that any bruising should be no more than normal, for the most part. However after what you've been thru you may now be more sensitive to this than you were in the past.

The reason you're still not back to 100% is because it will take your body a good amount of time to completely heal from what you've been through and you are likely still ramping up with the heavy fitness regime you are likely in. It's truly not for us to say if you remaining in the Army is the right thing. I would rely on the team who treated you at the UW to share their thoughts on this. It does appear that you've remained stable since you've been back in the Army.

I would encourage you to be as healthy as you can with anything you put in your body, food, alcohol... and I would also ask the team who treated you about this.

Best of luck,