Numbers

Ava has been wearing a mask in public and keeping her distance from people for the last week, since we found out her numbers were lower than usual.  She has been frustrated at the mask - it's hot to breathe in and this summer weather makes it even worse.  Mostly, she prefers not to leave the house- her bald head already attracts a lot of attention and the mask makes it even worse.  We kept telling her that when we go for blood work on Wed. (yesterday), your numbers will be back to normal and we'll resume this version of normal.

However, after her blood draws, we received a call from a nurse letting us know that her platelets dropped from 150 to 60 and her ANC (white blood cells) dropped from 20,000 to 660!  We were in complete shock.  With the exception of not looking quite well around and in her eyes, we were seeing little evidence of the huge drops in these numbers.  We were pretty shocked and super freaked out, especially because of her ANC level.

We ended up calling our amazing Dr. Cruz and she was very reassuring that all of this was normal after a fourth round of chemo!  Neither number is dangerously low, but we are going back for more bloodwork tomorrow morning to make sure they haven't dropped more.  The platelet number will drop below 20 before she needs a blood transfusion and ANC is dangerous below 200.  Dr. Cruz said that one of her other counts (she said the name, but I can't remember) was trending up, which indicates her other numbers will follow.  Basically, she reassured us that this response was normal and that Ava is ok - we just need to continue to be cautious of germs and public spaces.

Ava has some anxiety over all of this, understandably.  Our appointment is first thing tomorrow and I will post an update with her (hopefully much-improved) numbers as soon as I can.