Blood count 101 and an Official Diagnosis

I have became an honoree medical professional and would like to enlighten you with my smartness so you know what the hell I am talking about since most of my posts talk about my blood counts.

WBC- White blood cell. Your blood is made up from both red and white cells. White Blood Cells are cells of the immune system and protect you from infection. Mine have consistently been low which causes my ANC count to be low.

ANC- Absolute Neutrophil Count measures the neutrophils in a white blood cell. A Neutrophil is a subset of your white blood cell and is the most important part. It's the main part of the white blood cell that fight infection. When I get put into my bubble, its specifically because my ANC count is low.  When your ANC count is below 1500, it's called neutropenia.

Neutropenic Fever-  The cause of my last four hospital stays. When I have little or no nuetrophils in my body and I get a fever they freak out since the risk of an infection killing me is high. IV antibiotics are needed and I am on infection control lock down.

Neupogen- medicine I inject into my stomach to help my bone marrow produce white blood cells. The more white blood cells, the more neutrophil cells are present. 

In other news.....

I had my follow up last week with my Hematologist and after running $8,000 worth of tests I have an official diagnosis of what is causing my ANC to be so low.....are you ready..... Drug induced chronic neutropenia! It is what we thought the entire time, I really wish my insurance company would have paid me thousands of dollars for that official title. Basically, the anti-rejection drugs are killing my white blood cells- specifically my ANC cells. Yup, the drugs keeping my liver functioning at perfect levels are screwing my bone marrow up and there is not much they can do about that. They can't take me off of the anti-rejection drugs so the plan is to continue with the neupogen injections and pray that my body will eventually get used to the anti-rejection medicine. It's about a 50% chance of that happening and if it doesn't, I will live the rest of my life shooting myself up with $800 injections of E-Coli bacteria. We also hope that after one year, they can lower my anti-rejection drugs and that may help increase my WBC. Based on my track record, I am not holding out hope that my body will figure it out and have accepted living with track marks on my stomach and being in bubble life when needed.

Based on continued unstable white blood counts and my most recent hospital stay, my return to work date of September 1st has been postponed. This time, I didn't throw a fit and act like a 3 year old, I am accepting that I need to allow my body more time to heal. (I think I should buy myself a present for that accomplishment!) I have an appointment with Dr. Bzowej on Sept. 27th and we will re-evaluate a possible date then. She is confident I will return to work eventually but just not yet. 

So that is my update. Overall, I am feeling good and I was able to celebrate my new life with a FUN party... pictures coming soon! Thanks for reading and as always, love to my donor and donor family.