Red blood cells

Hello Seventeen42f5de 

A warm welcome to the group from me, although I am so sorry to find you here.

I don't have personal experience of a low red blood cell count but am on my second period of Hormone Therapy and before I started this I had a chat with my CNS (Cancer Nurse specialist). The advice is to keep a watch on the red blood cells as:

* Hormone Therapy it's self can supress the production of red blood cells.

* If the prostate Cancer is in the bones this can affect the bone marrow production which is also required for healthy red blood cells.

I will "tag" community member Mr U  to this post as he has had a blood transfusion in the last couple of months and he will be able to answer your question.

I hope the above helps.

Best wishes - Brian.

Hi Brian, 

thank you so much for your reply. Sorry to see you here too. My dad is also due his second dose of hormone therapy injections soon. I do wonder what the plan of action will be moving forward. 

Hello Seventeen42f5de 

I wish I could answer that question for you - however not being medically trained I can't.

I am aware there is medication available to treat "anemia" and I am aware "lifestyle changes", changing your diet and exercise can help.

My honest answer is to go back to his team and ask what they can do for dad.

Best wishes - Brian.

My experience is only one full day of two units of blood, for the low red blood count.

Although this is the only infusion it gave me a good enough count to not need another.

The infusion came at the last chemo session so I hope things are stable. But they are still lowish - Haemoglobin 95 coming up from 79 a month ago at the time of the infusion.

Your worries are above my pay grade but only you can see the numbers your dad has so I’d ask a clinician if you can, what is going on.

I have to say that my experience of that two units was not any help to my tiredness of brain fog or anything really. I didn’t feel that it did anything at all.

The symptoms I had and have seem not to be related to my red bloods.

Could his symptoms be something else?

I was diagnosed with metastasis in my bones three years ago and have been on HT all that time. The metastasises are not the big problem for me it’s the progression to organs that I worry about in the future.

Has your Dad had any radiotherapy or chemo yet?

Obviously you’re worried, you need answers. I hope something I’ve written helps you calm a bit. But in any case I wish you all the luck. Perhaps there’s someone else who can allay your fears.