[Marlene]

Hi Maggie,

Looks like your are on John's recovery schedule! I think you're correct about this. Unless you are having ongoing, active bleeding and he's trying to get your platelet above 50K then I'm not sure why he's giving you two units. Does he have a post platelet transfusion goal that he's trying to get you to? When John was in the hospital at Hopkins, he had a 50K platelet goal because is bladder was bleeding alot. To achieve this, they transfused him matched platelets almost daily.

I would ask him what he is trying to accomplish with giving you two units and if it's not working, tell him you want to try going back down to one unit. Because I think you are correct in that the platelets are short lived no matter how many you get....one bag lasts as long two over that 10 period.

Something else to considered.....John was on the every 7-10 day schedule when his platelet goal was 10k. We finally decided that we needed to see how low he could drop without bleeding and found he bottomed out at 8K without problems and so he stopped all platelet transfuions. Generally, they have found that AA patients can go as low 5K without bleeding issues. So as long as he didn't go below 6K and did not have nose bleeds, etc, he did not transfuse platelets. A bit risky but it was nice to stop the platelet transfusions.


Marlene