Hi Everyone. It has been a while since I posted. It's nice to see some of the folks still posting from back when my husband was diagnosed and "hello" to those I haven't met yet!
To quickly recap my situation, my husband was diagnosed with HCL in Jan. 2006 at 38 years old. He received the 7 day infusion of 2CDA shortly thereafter and his counts have been hovering at just below normal range pretty much since then. He has been relatively healthy, even though I think we may be getting closer to treatment again soon. A positive sign, I suppose, is that our three daughters ages 4, 7 and 9 all just had the swine flu and my husband didn't get it. (phew!)
I have been charting his counts since diagnosis and am wondering if the common understanding is still that once the ANC goes below 1000 it is time to treat again? His latest counts are WBC 3.3 RBC 4.15 PLT 142. ANC 1700 (down from a high of 2900 in 2007)I can see that his percentage of Lympocytes to Neutrophils is on the rise lately (42% to 52%), which makes me think the hairies are coming back.
Also, if anyone would like a copy of the Excel spreadsheet template I created, please contact me. I included a brief synopsis of what each count means, relative to HCL, which we have found to be helpful.