[Chirley]

Hello,

I haven't been here for quite a while because nothing much had changed. I'm still having 5 unit blood transfusions every 5 weeks etc.

One odd thing has happened. My neutrophil count has returned to the normal range without any treatment. This is after years of being consistently (sometimes critically, low). But, at the same time my lymphocyte count (which has always been a little low) has taken a nose dive and is now consistently below 0.5 . This has been the same for the last 3 months now. I don't understand what's happening.

I asked my doctor why this would be happening and did it indicate any change in my bone marrow failure (better or worse) but he skirted the question and just mumbled something about "wait and see".

I just had a blood test yesterday and my total WCC is 2.5, neuts 1.6 (great), and lymphs 0.37. Hb is 78. (Hb falls about 10 a week so will be about 68 by transfusion time.)

Has any one on this forum had this happen to them ? I would appreciate some ideas.


I'm going for my routine transfusion at the end of next week and was hoping to be able to ask my doctor some more specific questions so he isn't as tempted to fob me off.

When I first got sick I had severe atypical pneumonia and it just got worse and worse despite treatment. Back then the doctors told me that they thought I was HIV positive because of my lack of immune response but the test came back negative. I have had another test since then and it is still negative. It was discovered after this that I had bone marrow failure. I was wondering if something similar to HIV can cause these problems. Has any one heard of anything like this ? I work in the health care industry and have had a lot of contact with HIV clients including working with their blood samples etc. I'm suspicious that there are a lot of unknown viruses out there causing all sorts of things.

Best of luck to all of you,


Chirley