We had an appointment with the doc today & Bailey's ANC (Absolute Neutrophil Count) is REALLY low, it's 340! Normal is 3,000 - 5,000 but with her meds/chemo she's usually around 1,300 - 1,800...her lowest was around 670 last December, but she's never been under 500. Anything under 1,000 isn't good, but under 500 is really not good. A neutrophil is a type of white blood cell that fights infection. The lower her ANC, the greater the chance of infection, meaning that even the "good" bacteria normally found in her own body could start making her sick. So obviously we need her counts to rebound quickly. The 340 count was from last Friday & they took new labs today so we'll get the results first thing in the morning - praying for high numbers because if they're still low I can't give her her chemo tomorrow & I really don't want to skip a week.
To complicate things, I got an email from her specialist in IL today that gave us the go ahead to get back on the "normal" ACTH taper chart, so we're supposed to drop her ACTH from .40 to .34 tomorrow. I don't want to drop her ACTH that much if she's also going to have to skip a week on chemo...we've just now finally gotten to what seems to be a stable point & I'm so scared that the combo of the "off" week & the decrease won't have good results. I didn't get the email until the office was closed, so I didn't mention my concerns to any of the docs yet because I'm just waiting to hear about her labs before I freak out (HA...at least I'm TRYING to wait)!
sheesh, they're looking more alike everyday...you'd hardly know there's 22 months between them
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