The Giant Platelets

When I saw the doctor yesterday at noon, he was concerned about my noticeable emotional state. He listened to my withdrawal symptoms and agreed that the psychiatrist shouldn’t have dropped my dosage so quickly. Having him confirm this made me feel like I wasn’t going crazy or overreacting. He immediately asked how the bloody noses and spontaneous bruises were.  Once I said they had dramatically improved, he exhibited a mix of excitement and disappointment.  Excitement because his theory was right and he finally got my bleeding and bruising to stop, but disappointment because he could see how hard the withdrawal has been on me.  He said if the bleeding and bruising hadn’t vastly improved he would have hiked my Sertraline dose back up, but since they improved I’m going to have to power through the withdrawal.

As for my appointment, my hemoglobin was up to 12.8 and my platelets rose from 80 to 87. I don’t know which I was more excited about!  I was excited about the platelet rise because, though it was small, I drank this past weekend when I was home visiting my parents and my platelets still went up!  Don’t get me wrong, I certainly can’t get wasted or drink excessively, but it’s nice to know I can have a few drinks or go to the bar without feeling guilty. It makes me feel like I’m on the right track finally. Plus, my social life feels much less limited now. It’s definitely a huge improvement over the last time I tried drinking back in June and my platelets dropped to an all-time low of 13.

I’m also really excited about my hemoglobin. It’s been going up consistently for weeks now and 12.8 is an all-time high!  I don’t think the doctors in the hospital thought I would even hit double digits.  The range for normal is 12-16 and I’m at 12.8. 12.8!

When the hematologist told me my platelet count yesterday he mentioned that last week’s differential (a manual platelet count under a microscope) showed my platelets were really at 92, not 80!  How can the numbers be different?  I asked the same thing. Apparently the machine in the hematology office can only read the “normal” platelets. If there are any larger (“giant”) platelets, the machine weeds them out. In this case, there were 12.

Earlier today his reception staff called to tell me the differential from yesterday’s blood draw. The differential still showed that my platelets were at 92.  Basically, this means my platelets didn’t actually go up this week – they stayed the same. Regardless, I’m just thrilled they didn’t go down!

The hematologist was just as excited as I was!  He said since my counts have been consistently going up he doesn’t need to see me again for ten days, instead of seven!  Also, after some mild complaining on my part, he agreed to drop my Prednisone from 50mg a day to 40!  I see him again on Monday, August 22nd to see how the Prednisone drop affected my counts.