Chronic Lymphoid Leukaemia

Hi Georgieali,

Thanks for reaching out to us here at Macmillan, and welcome to our Online Community. We hope you find it a warm and helpful place to seek answers and support. It’s natural to have questions, especially when you are first diagnosed with something and are learning about your condition.

It sounds like this diagnosis of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia (CLL) is very new for you if it has first been mentioned in December just there. It’s early days in terms of you gathering information and I wondered from the wording of your message if you hadn’t yet met your hospital Consultant? The specialist at the hospital will be best placed to formally diagnose your condition and identify the characteristics of your blood results in detail.

You are right that the hallmark of CLL tends to be a higher than normal lymphocytic count. Blood results in general though can fluctuate a little at any given time, and doctors will often repeat these regularly and monitor trends and patterns over time. There can occasionally be single outlying results that don’t fit with the previous pattern that sometimes account for anomalies or deviations from what may be expected.

Although we cannot offer you any diagnostic advice here on this platform, another phenomenon to consider could be a precursor condition that can become CLL called Monoclonal B cell Lymphocytosis (MBL). People who develop CLL have likely had this condition first, and it can manifest with some characteristics of CLL but at times will have normal or low lymphocytes in a Full Blood Count. Your specialist doctor will be really interested in your ongoing blood tests, and in particular the time it takes for your lymphocyte count to double over time as this illustrates how quickly it is or is not progressing, if you need any treatment or can be monitored with regular check-ups.

I hope you get the answers you are seeking this week when you meet with your Consultant. You may find our page Questions to Ask Your Healthcare Team helpful to browse before you go to your appointment as it poses some useful suggestions of things you might want to find out about. We have a great booklet that is free to download or order as a postal copy as well that might be handy to have. And we are always happy to chat here in Online Community, webchat or on the phone.

Wishing you the very best of luck.

Take good care of yourself.

Kirstine – Macmillan

Cancer Information Nurse Specialist

Our ref - KDf/ JL