I am the low platelet girl

Friends,

Well, my platelets are still super low. But Monday and Tuesday they stayed the same at 21,000.

My oncologist decided rather than having me come in in a day or so,as we have been doing for the last week, we will wait to have another blood test until Monday. He feels they won't drop much more. My last 6th chemo was Nov 2nd. I'm still on edge because after my 4th chemo it took 5 five weeks for my counts to stop dropping. It has been a rollercoaster ride. At 10,000 you need a platelet transfusion and it is considered critical at that point because you can have spontaneous bleeding or internal bleeding. I was told to watch for any big red bruises, or tiny purple dots on skin.

I had my follow up with radiation oncologist and my oncologist (who is also my surgeon) on Tuesday. They are planning to see me back in 3 months for an exam and CA125 cancer marker test. My cancer marker test now is at number 5. My team says that is a great number. I read anything under 34 is normal. My radiation oncologist said he will recommend to my oncologist that we do a combination CT/pet scan (they have one machine that does both) in a few months as part of follow-up. My oncologist said we may do, but that we will need to wait to further heal, he said after the surgery (Mar 2010) I had, these scans can be misleading (I assume from all of the internal scar tissue).

Then the only other things are for my counts to come back up (all are very low) and then he will lift my restrictions, and he also wants to send me for an ultrasound of my thyroid because when I had an emergency room visit back in June, they did a ct of my throat and neck, and found an "incidental" of thyroid nodules on the ct. My doc says many people have these and can be normal, but he wants to have the scan to be sure. So when my counts come back up I will go and have that ultrasound. I am alittle nervous about that. I did read that thyroid nodules that are found as "incidentals" on ct's are less than 1% of the time cancerous.
So I will hope that is the case.

Right now my counts are:

Platelets 21,000 (at 10,000 they will give a platelet transfusion)
WBC 1.3
Neutrophils 750
Hemoglobin 10.8 (I had a transfusion a week ago)

Hugs to all!

Happy Thanksgiving.

Cindy