Friday, January 22, 2010

Weird blood cells...

So in preparation for what's gonna be a really cool series (I hope) of graphs and charts on this blog I've been entering all my bloodwork data from Dr. GD's office. I went through PinnacleCare, my invaluable medical advocacy ally, to get these records since as I've noted before, GD's office isn't that good about getting them to me.

I saw a bunch of odd things that are probably nothing...but they do give me pause.

* A small number of atypical lymphocytes (i.e. abnormal white blood cells) in three blood draws over the last five weeks. There were none in the nine weeks before this.

* Odd red cell "morphology" over the past few weeks, including Anisocytosis (this is the technical term for the RDW figure -- meaning the variability in size is larger than one would expect) as well as Polychromsia, Pokilocytosis, Ovalocytes and Tear Drops -- I looked all these up on Wikipedia yesterday and they're all variations on abnormal red blood cells.

Are these the impact of Velcade and/or Revlimid? Probably. Are they irrelevant? Most likely. Do they make me nervous? Yes.

Anybody else have experience with these things?

All questions for BB since GD hasn't seen fit to draw my attention to them. I'm sure they are nothing but these people need to understand I want to be completely on top of things and know everything about my physiology, whether as a result of the disease or as a result of the treatment.

Meanwhile, the cold continues to make its way through my respiratory system. I'm also planning a short business trip to New York soon, which will put me there rather than in LA for a weekly Velcade administration. This will theoretically be done in the clinic of Dr. HL, who was going to be a consult of mine (dear God I almost typed "consort" my mistake!) about fourteen months ago, before I decided on BB. Yet there are logistical challenges...but I'll save that for a future report.

Have a good weekend, everybody!