Cancer By the Numbers 1 of 4: Those blood counts

I thought it would be interesting to share a picture of those damn blood counts since I talked so much about it to everyone who cared to ask. The really rough stuff wipes out your white blood cells and your immunity along with it. In the picture you can see the almost complete wipe out when I get my chemo, the above normal reading when I got the shots to help increase the WBC and the normal range. The Taxol (not-so-rough-stuff), results in a more gradual decline in WBC.
The AC treatments were every two weeks, so AC1 was the count before the 1st round, AC2 shows the counts (but no chemo was administered that week) and AC3 shows the blood counts before chemo. The Taxol was every week, so the counts reflect the values before chemo that day.

And what about the red blood cells? From the picture, I was already on the low end of normal. I got Aranesp shots to boost the RBC (resulting in the upward trend on graph).

For good measure I've also included the haemoglobin trend which mimics the RBC.

Until next time.

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Cancer Survivor, writing about Health and Fitness as you age

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