Quote:
Originally Posted by Al's Wife
So today Al has had a platelet count of 8,000 at 11:00 a.m. at VA; 3,000 at 1:00 p.m. at local oncologist; and 13,000 at local hospital at 4:00 p.m.
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Linda,
Sorry to hear about the craziness. To echo what Beth and Chirley have said, though I've never had such widely varying platelet counts in the same day, I have found both that my platelets bounce around like crazy and that they can vary from lab to lab.
Back when I was having weekly blood draws but every-other-week RBC transfusions, my hematologist's office would use one lab on the weeks when a transfusion was expected (the local hospital's lab) and another lab on the "off" weeks (the practice's home lab in a bigger town up the road).
Inevitably, the counts would be higher on the "off" weeks, and the report would always have a notation about giant platelets and a manual recount. I'm not well informed about lab technique, like Beth is, but I've always figured that meant the local hospital lab just ran my blood through the platelet-counting machine, it missed the giant platelets, and so I got a lower count. The other lab, knowing the giant platelets would throw off the machine, actually made a slide and did a count under the microscope.
I'm not sure if that could be what you ran into, but it's certainly possible.
But it's still scary when you are flirting with counts in the sub-10 range.
I hope the Quest numbers look better.
Take care!
Greg