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Marianne,
Your white blood cell count goes up when you have an infection. That's the white cell army amassing to battle the infection. Neutrophils are a percentage of white cells so they go up too.
When you are taking an antibiotic and the infection lessens, the elevated white count drops. The bottom line is that you can't use the WBC and neutrophil counts from CBCs (or from a white cell differential test) to judge the ongoing condition of a bone marrow failure disease.
Once the infection and your husband's antibiotics have cleared his system, the CBC lab results will be more useful and can be compared against other CBCs.
It can be a little confusing for us patients to keep in mind everything that affects blood counts, but the doctors understand how to interpret them and they also rely on other tests for more precise information.
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