18th March - 24th March

On the 18th, after having such low white blood counts we decided that I should take the following week off work and use up my remaining 2 annual leave days and take 3 days as sick leave. Having decided this, I felt a lot more reassured and went about booking appointments at the doctors to have my bloods re-taken.  We also emailed Dr T's assistant to ask for more information  regarding the results that I was given as the phrase 'there has been some response to treatment' didn't mean a huge amount to either of us and we both wanted to hear it from her that there had been some positive results. We had hoped that she would send us a quick email with an update on but received a response saying she was on holiday until the following week when they would get back to us.

The 19th of March, being dad's birthday I had hoped to meet them for lunch however was still feeling rather rough so after speaking with him, made the decision to not go and us do lunch on another occasion. He was concerned that I may end up ill with my bloods still being so low and being around people.

I managed to get in with the nurse on the 20th of March at 8am so walked down there with Lel as she went to work. I was quickly in and out, I am getting so used to having my bloods taken now and fortunately my veins are quite happy for this still! They told me the results would be in the following day.

On the 21st we received and email from Dr T's secretary offering us an appointment to see her to discuss the results on the 12th of April which felt to be an absolute age away but still would be a chance to talk it through. Having given blood on the Monday and been told they would be in on the Tuesday I decided to wait until Wednesday the 22nd to go and get them and decided to walk down to collect them mid afternoon. Its only 15 minutes walk and it was quite nice to get out of the house for a bit, even though I still felt rather weak and waffy from the previous week.

On getting to the doctors I was told that they had lost my results at the lab however they would take another blood sample whilst I was there and send that one off too to make sure that we had at least one up to date test. Mid afternoon I headed over to see Sue D. for my appointment, I felt fine and we talked through how I and getting on both physically and emotionally. She told me how well I am doing which is always nice to hear and makes me feel like I am dealing with the current situation well.

In the evening we had booked to go and see Sophie Sabbage at Maggie's which I was really excited about however I was very nervous also about how I may be around people. However, having spoken with Iona as well as Lel, I came to the decision that I would enjoy going out as I had been looking forwards to it, as Iona said, I could sit at the back and leave if I started to feel ill at all.

I phoned the doctors the following day and was told that my results were back in so headed down there again. At my request they had printed them off and were behind the counter for me. Strangely, the print off had both the results from the 20th and the 22nd on there!! So, on the 17th when I went to Salford Royal for the quick blood check my WBC had been 1.8 - should be between 4.0 & 11.0, my neutrophils had been 1.0 - should be between 1.8 & 7.5. On the 20th my WBC was 1.2 so it had dropped, and my neutrophils were down to 0.7! On the 22nd my WBC was up to 2.3 and my neutrophils were up to 1.1 so still both low but improving. I'm so glad that we had made the decision for me to take the rest of the week off work as clearly my immune system was very low and being around people at this time would not have been a good idea. We continued to take it steady, and had a quiet weekend.