T + 323 I Forgot to Remember Not To Take my Tablet

This morning I went to the transplant clinic for the first time in six months and it was, just marginally, a bit more unusual than a regular visit.

I had my bloods taken and then realised this morning I had already taken my ciclosporin which I am not supposed to do when I have bloods done as one is to measure the "ambient" level in my blood and this would be distorted by the morning dose. I was obviously out of practice going to the clinic.

Then through a convoluted sequence of thought processes which I won't go into here, I convinced myself I hadn't actually taken my ciclosporin and took my second dose that I would normally take at tea time. Oops.

I then went in to see the doc. She checked the skin on my chest and neck and said there was little or no evidence of Graft Versus Host Disease so we are going to reduce my steroids from 5mg per day to 5mg one day and none the next. Getting ever closer to coming off them.

My other blood results were the second unusual thing. My haemoglobin was back up to 11.2 from 10.6 last time which is very encouraging, looks like the folic acid is helping and I really might finally be making my own red blood cells. My platelets were also fine ( as they always have been throughout all my treatment, which is just as well for someone as clumsy as me ).

My white cells however, and in particular my neutrophils that fight bacteria were a lot lower than they had been. This can be a sign that my body is, or has been, fighting an infection and the doc asked me if I'd had a cold or been otherwise unwell. However I've been fine as far as I know. As the doc said "we treat the patient not the blood test" so she didn't plan to do anything about the low counts at the moment but did ask to see me in two weeks to keep an eye on it.

Since I need to have a proper ciclosporin blood test I'm going in to the clinic on Friday to have that done and a repeat of the blood count sent to the lab to see what my neutrophils are then. Sometimes the analysis machine they use in the clinic gives the occasional anomalous result.

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