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| Wormwood Scrubs Common (London) |
Well not quite as bad as the FTSE 100 but that's another story (not helped by lots of people on strike and those that aren't on strike going into meltdown over potential Brexit). Of course I'm talking about my meandering white blood cell count which has been wandering a bit further than it should recently.
As my CLIPPERS medication of choice, Azathioprine, willfully interferes with the immune system (which is presumably why it helps keep CLIPPERS at bay), it is expected for my white blood cells to be more thinly populated compared with the norm. The expected range is somewhere between 4 and 7 (I am not a doctor) and mine tends to hover between 3 and 4. About 7 weeks ago it dipped to a historic low of 2.6 and there was much muttering amongst the medics behind closed doors which resulted in me being allowed to stay on Azathioprine for now, but in exchange for having further tests every 3 weeks or so.
On the next test the count had gone back up to 3.something - hurrah! However, on the one I had last week it had dipped back down to 2.9; this is still better than my previous historic low of 2.8. So the tests will continue and I'll let you know if anything strange happens.
There are no specific symptoms associated with low white blood cells but I was already being as careful as possible to avoid sources of infection - lots of hand-washing and keeping hands away from my mouth, nose, eyes etc. Public transport in the mornings makes me uneasy - too many germs! My doctor emphasised that if I get fevers or unexplained illness I need to see him immediately - presumably under these circumstances I will be able to bypass the 3 week wait for an appointment that is the current situation here.
Read other articles in this series at Living With CLIPPERS.
Living With CLIPPERS by Bill Crum is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
