Thank you so much, hopeful, for your amazing reply.
I worry about platelets refractoriness with my mother. She has had weekly platelets transfusions for 10 months. I think her platelets would hold at 10, but her doctor requires her to get platelets under 20. Interestingly, my mother's platelets have not been in the single digits since July/August of last year. She was only 10 a few times since July. It seems that after 7 days, she holds at around 10, and goes no lower.
My mother also has had rises in blood the past six weeks but then she drops quickly to 7.5, and seems to rise back up from that level. The other week, in fact, her hemoglobin was 10.3 three days after a transfusion. The hematologist said that that was just the transfusion. I said, "It can't be just the transfusion, because you can't go from 7.5 to 10.3 after 1 unit of blood - you only go up 1 point or so." She then admitted, more or less, that she had to have a natural rise in blood up to 9.3 or so to get to 10.3 a few days after a transfusion. Her doctor really gets me upset, even though she isn't rude. Her last blood transfusion was totally unnecessary.
I am a bit concerned about these funny-shaped red blood cells that were in her last bone marrow biopsy. I don't know if they were proper sideroblasts (it doesn't say). It just says that some erthyrocytes had abnormal contours, etc. Her hematologist said that aplastic anemics can have these without concern in their bone marrow. Also, her flow cytometry was normal and no abnormal white blood cells were found outside of normal range (blasts).
I am so scared all the time. My mother's hematologist really admitted she doesn't know what she is doing many months after ATG.
