I agree about the margin of error. When Ken checked in for his second ATG, his initial CBC showed his Hgb at 7.7. I had been charting his counts all along, and even though his Plts and RBCs were in free-fall at that point, I had a pretty good feeling for how quickly they were falling, and that represented a much faster drop than I'd been seeing. I managed to talk them into retesting just the Hgb, and the second count (an hour later) came back as 8.2. That's quite a difference.
Monitoring the counts over time gives you a good feel for the general direction things are going, but it's important not to get hung up on a single number.
__________________
-Lisa, husband Ken age 60 dx SAA 7/04, dx hypo MDS 1/06 w/finding of trisomy 8; 2 ATGs, partial remission, still using cyclosporine
|