Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Neutropenia

Monday we went to the hospitals satellite site to get blood work done.
We go in and meet the nurse she pokes his finger with a small needle and then milks the blood out of his finger she only takes .5ml of blood. Thats it. Then we go home and in a couple hours she calls us with the results. they aer looking for a couple things the test is called CBC (complete blood count) it measures all the different parts of the blood which is important for cancer patients because if certain parts of the blood are too low bad things can happen.

Trombocytopenia is the medical term for low platelet count. Platelets are colourless blood cells that play an important role in blood clotting. Platelets stop blood loss by clumping and forming plugs in blood vessels. So if your platelet counts are low you will see bruising and bleeding that won't stop with normal pressure.

The term neutropenia describes the situation where the number of neutrophils in the blood is too low. Neutrophils are very important in defending the body against bacterial infections and therefore a patient with to few neutrophils is more susceptible to infections.

The last thing the really look for is called hemoglobin basically is your red blood cells. A low hemoglobin level is called Anemia. If his hemoglobin levels fall below 60 he may need a blood transfusion.

Luke Is neutropinic which means he is very susceptible to infections and getting sick. Were not living in a bubble yet. We are monitoring where he goes and who he comes into contact with.

Life so far hasn't been a big change were over the changing of diapers with gloves and Luke seems back to his old cute self. The only real change we've noticed is that he now wakes up in he middle of the night crying really bad were not sure if it's gas or pain or what but it doe take a while to get him settled.

His bum has kinda turned a weird colour. We think it's from the chemo drugs in his diaper but we've put soo much Vaseline a bottle and a half in a week. we'll mention it on Thursday when we go back for the next blood test.

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