At my last blood test, back in August, I got worried. My blood counts all dropped at once. Still in the normal range, but everything was down. I thought oh no, here it comes. Dr. B gave me a sickly smile. Those counts bounce around all the time, he said. Oh yeah — and I didn't see anything that even looked like a hairy cell on the slide.
Yeah sure. Nice try, I thought. Let's pretend. A lot of HCL patients end up back in chemo right around the 2-year mark. I figured on getting ready to be one of them. Beginning of the end, blah blah.
But no. Not this time. My last test, in October: white counts, red counts, platelets, neutrophils — everything except lymphocytes smack in the middle of the normal range. And lymphocytes at 0.8! That's normal too, for the first time in 2 years.
So I'm doing fine. And I'm happy. Working too hard. Finally finished my endless book (coming out in March 2010); just sent the page proofs back last Monday. Sweating under the overload of coursework, committees, childcare, travel, new research, meetings, everything else. But doing just fine.
