[DanL]

Meri,

Let me try and help with some of the terminology:

(3) Slightly hypocellular bone marrow - this means that your bone marrow has less cellularity, or density than expected for your age. Generally, doctors use a rule of thumb that takes your age from 100 to estimate what your cellularity should be. So in my case I am 42 years old, expected cellularity would be around 60%, give or take maybe 10% due to sampling error and individual facotrs, etc. When you are hypocellular, your existing marrow would have to work harder to produce blood cells, and typically will not produce enough for you to stay in an overall healthy range. As Hopeful suggested, hypocellular marrow is sometimes associated with an immune attack against your system, so sometimes immune suppression is used to treat the MDS as a first line treatment. That being stated, I have also read data that suggests that hypocellular patients can do better with transplant than the normocellular or hypercellular patients.

(4) Myeloblasts seen as 5.6%, from small to slightly big, by nucleous net (?)contains nucleolus. - Myeloblasts are a particular type of immature white blood cell that is in the marrow and sometimes in the blood stream. In the marrow, you are considered normal if you have less than 4% myeloblasts or blasts in the marrow. With normal marrow and immunity, these cells are destroyed or mature completely prior to going out to the blood stream. White blood cells normally do have a nucleus. When the nucleolus malfunctions, it can lead to disease.


Dysplasia seen in degranulation etc., neutrophil chromatin blocked. - dysplasia simply means abnormal, and degranulation is an abnormality in your granulocytes, which is another name for white blood cell components like neutrophils, eosonophils, and basophils.

(5) Erythroid series
Dysplasia seen in non nuclear shaped, multiple nuclei, karyolysis etc.
Fission image 1.0% and slightly outstanding

The erythroid series refers to your red blood cells. Again, the presence of dysplastic cells means that they are abnormally formed. Having any nuclei in mature red blood cells means that they are malformed as mature red blood cells should not have nuclei. karyolysis is the destruction of the cell from within.


(6) Lymphoid series slightly decreasing - this indicates that your lymphocyte count is dropping to lower than normal levels most likely, but without data I cannot be sure. Your lymphocytes are responsible for identifying disease and creating antibodies to fight the disease they basically train other white blood cells to attack and mount an immune response, so reduced lymphocyte count means that it may take longer than normal for your bodies defenses to be fully mounted.

(7) Megakaryocyte decreasing small shaped megakaryocyte seen - megakaryocytes are the precursors to platelets. 1 megakaryocyte can produce up to 1000 platelets, which are actually fragments of megakaryocytes. I am not sure as to the implication of small megakaryocytes. I believe that they are normally larger in size.

(8) Others macrophage not outstanding but a few hemophagocytes can be seen. - hemophagocytes are cells that attack blood cells - i don't know any more than that, other than it is an unusual finding.

Diagnose: MDS, RAEB1

Translation is my own, so there might be some unintelligible
phrases. Really need help with the meanings.Thank you.

Another point is that I have this list of like:
Myeloid series
promyelocyte 1.6
myelocytes 15.8
metamyelocyte 9.4

the three above items are white blood cell precursors that are normally found in the marrow that hopefully mature prior to entering the blood stream. You do see an increased number of them in the marrow and blood stream when the marrow experiences stress, whether it is related to bone marrow failure, or something as simple as an infection like a severe cold, the flu, or bronchitis for example.
........
basophil 0.2 - off hand, this looks like a normal basophil number, but I did not check.

Then the total M series 62.8

And then the Erythroid series
pro erythroid 0.0
....
Total E series 25.4

Then the lympas....
and finally M/E 2.47

I would not worry a whole lot about the m/e ratio as even if the ratio was good, if you have low blood counts, your ability to function normally might be impacted.

Some of the numbers that a lot of people follow closely - although they all have some value are the following from your peripheral blood counts:

WBC - normal range is around 4k to 10k. within this count, neutrophils, lymphocytes, basophils, eosonophils?, monocytes, and nucleated red blood cells show up here. Doctors get a little concerned when your neutrophils drop below 2k, others at 1500 total count as you become more prone to infection. Normal lymphocytes starts at 1k and I don't know the upper limit. The others aren't usually followed too closely unless they are way high.

RBC - total count of around 4.2 to 5.4 million cells per microliter of blood.
HGB (hemoglobin) - normal range is around 14 to 18. Transfusions usually don't happen until this drops to around 8. If it is really low, you may feel very tired and out of breath.
HCT (hematocrit) normal range is around 40 to 55 or so. It is roughly 3 times the HGB number just for a frame of reference. Transfusions seem to occur around a low of 25.
Platelets - normal range of 140k to 400k approximately. Anything over 100k is pretty good, you can live well above 50k, and transfusions may occur anywhere from 10k to 20k, depending on your other clotting factors, activity level, and risk of bleeding or injury.

All of the other numbers have some value, but may not really impact your quality of life, so it seems that doctors don't pay much attention to them on a week to week or month to month basis unless a trend becomes apparent that is separate from the numbers above.

Again, I apologize for a long response, but hope that it is helpful. Keep asking questions, but try not to drink from the firehose. Take a few minutes a day to learn about a little bit, then ask questions as they come up, and keep that list growing for your doctor.

Dan