|
As always, thanks!
Thanks for weighing in, Laura, Lisa Hopeful and Greg. I accept (and love) your caveats --"I am not a doctor..." -- but boy, do I depend on you guys for info right now. Absorbing your posts from the past few days, I am definitely trending toward not doing anything at the moment drug-wise or transfusion-wise, as long as my counts are just slowly declining. And I DO feel so fortunate to have found this forum while my counts are allowing me to be at the watch-and-wait stage.
I have always loved sports, etc. but I know that I have to quit being spoiled and learn to live within my new aerobic limits, BUT, that said, I have been worried about my ability to do strenuous field work (I do some wildlife biology and botany conservation work, in addition to my work as a designer); in particular I have an upcoming botany field trip to a remote island that will involve lots of hiking (I live on another island off the coast of MA). But I went out yesterday, in very hot weather (the heat really affects my stamina now!), with a colleague to work on a river otter study, and we did a lot of bushwacking and up-and-down hiking. My breathing was pretty ragged, but I survived, so it definitely gave me confidence that I'm not going to keel over out there.
On the more technical side, I will ask my doc about the CD4 and CD8. Could it be that they didn't look at them because they found no cytogenetic abnormalities that would have raised a red flag to look further afield? Also, Greg, I think, had mentioned that I might want to look back a few years, if possible, to see where my counts were then. Three years ago I had a CBC for another reason (although I now think that ailment may have been related). My Hgb at that time was 11.0 (now it's 9.1), so not a tremendous difference there. My Plts, however, were 515 three years ago, now they're 29; that's a bit of a decline. Interesting...
Thanks again for your collected wisdom and intelligent take on all this. It is VERY much appreciated.
marmab
|