Well I went into the BMT clinic on Monday to have a blood test and drop off my 24hr urine for testing and left after about 10 minutes for a 'coffee on the Plaza' as I knew the results would be read and would be revealed at a doctors appt a week later. However...I was just about to sit down with magazines and a coffee when the clinic rang to say I needed to go back asap. My WBC, platelets and hemoglobin counts had dropped dramatically and they didn't know why and it was unusual for everything to drop at this point.
So I went back and had another blood test which confirmed the first test was correct and indeed my platelets had dropped from 119 to 6, WBC from 3.9 to .9 and hemoglobin from 8.0 to 6.3. So the first thing they did was to send me for a bone marrow biopsy (bringing it forward by a week or 2) to see if it was myeloma coming back, they were also able to test my marrow for a particular virus (Parvovirus). Then they gave me platelets because a value as low as 6 (which means I have 6000 platelets in my body...normal is 150000-400000) leaves me open to spontaneous bleeding. When I think about it I don't want to be so spontaneous when it comes to bleeding! As it is my arms look the worst they have because of bruising from needles and wrestling with James!
Today I got back the results of the bone marrow biopsy and another blood test. The good news is that my myeloma is in remission and that isn't the problem. Also the Parvovirus test was negative. The BMT docs have only ever seen this issue once before where at this stage a persons immune system drops and the bone marrow is not producing anything.
They gave me a blood transfusion as my hemoglobin was 6.3 and also a neupogen shot which I haven't had since being in the hospital. At this point it is hoped that the neupogen will boost my WBC count. They're waiting for one more test result which is a genetics test (not sure exactly what that will tell us). Following that I may be getting another stem cell transplant or as they put it a 'stem cell boost' which they hope would kick start my bone marrow - if it hasn't started working on its own.
I won't need chemo to suppress my bone marrow...as I seem to have managed that all on my own.
Another bummer is that I'm back in isolation as I have no immune system, so hopefully I don't catch any viruses in the near future!
That's all I know at the moment, another clinic visit on Friday will shed more light on things hopefully.
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