From Mike:

These are charts that show Dawn's progress since coming to the hospital and after receiving chemo. All of the numbers are in thousands, so the normal white blood cell range in the chart below is 4,800-10,800. The bottom of each chart shows when chemo started and stopped. You'll notice the chemo works pretty quickly to bring the counts down to zero.



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Remember the neutrophils? These are the crime fighters of the bloodstream. Once these start going back up, she'll feel much better.



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I think platelets were of highest concern when she was admitted. Remember the numbers are in thousands, so her platelets at one point were 3,182,000! The doctors weren't sure how many, if any, of the platelets were actually functional. You'll notice a slight rise on August 14th. They gave her platelets that day so she could do her endoscopy.


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You'll notice the hemoglobins aren't affected by the chemo. That's a good thing, as hemoglobins carry oxygen around. She also gets transfusions if they drop too low. The check her blood oxygen levels several times a day. Now that the fluid is gone from the lungs she's been showing 100% SpO2 levels.

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So the complete blood counts (CBC) give us a picture of what's happening in her blood, but it doesn't tell us why. For that we have to go to the bone marrow. The bone marrow makes the stem cells which form the various blood cells. By examining the cells in the bone marrow they can determine how many cells are abnormal and what type of abnormality. Yesterday they did a bone marrow biopsy to see just how well the chemo worked. This was her third bone marrow biopsy since being diagnosed in March and her least painful. They gave her some good pain drugs before the procedure. In the past, they just used the lidocaine, but that doesn't numb the bone.


Bone Marrow Biopsy Video - they pull a chunk of bone marrow
WARNING - mildly graphic


Sample of spongy bone marrow pulled from biopsy

Bone Marrow Aspirate Video - they pull semi-fluid from bone marrow
WARNING - mildly graphic