neutropenic

Hi Annjee and a warm welcome to this corner of the Community although I am always sorry to see folks joining us. I am Mike and I help out around our various Blood Cancer groups.

I don’t have AML but I was diagnosed way back in 1999 at 43 with a rare, incurable but treatable type of Low Grade NHL eventually reaching Stage 4a in late 2013 so although my Blood Cancer ‘type’ is different I do appreciate the challenges of this journey rather well.

The normal range for our Neutrophils is between 2.0 to 7.5 with a level below 1 being classed as being the n the Neutropenic range.

There is not much you can do to improve this apart from following health balanced diet as consultants want to see these counts improve by themselves.

If you clinical team are very concerned they may put you on a set of daily G-CSF Injections. These injections are designed to ‘wake up’ your bone marrow but unfortunately there are side effects like bad bone pain (my nurse called it bone marrow birthing pains).

I had G-CSF Injections for 4-5 days after my 6 cycles of R-EPOCH and daily for 4 months following my second Stem Cell Transplant.……as my Neutrophils were below 1……. but I had no infections but there is the chance of developing infections including Neutropenic Sepsis……. I had this a few times a good 10 months after my treatments had finished.

Do get back to me if you need further help.

Thank you so much Mike - Thehighlander for taking the time to explain this to me and sharin your personal experience, you are so young. 

Im sorry you had to go through this I hope you had a support network around you. 

I now understand why I need to be at home and work indoors - any kind of infections is not safe with a low range neutrophils, this has only happened recently.

Now I find my self extremely cold, I have always got be kept warm get the blood circulating. No one can ever describe the effects on the body unless they live in it. 

If you can recommend a reasonable costing private health care that accommodates preexsiting health conditions that would be great, my GP nor my local hsopital do these specialist blood tests that I require it cost £1250 (£250 each) I ask them. 

Thank you in advance

I have a had great support from both my family and my clinical teams at every stage.

Being cold goes hand in hand with the journey as when you have low blood counts you are going to be cold.

I have no idea about these specialist blood tests…… over my 23 years I have found the NHS has done all the tests necessary to look after my well doing.

You could try our Ask an Expert section but do allow a few working days for a reply.

Thank you so much and take care of yourself