High white blood cell count

Hi all

After having a call from my GP about a recent blood test, I managed to get hold of my Haemotology nurse today. She said my last two blood tests (over 4 weeks) have shown high white blood cell counts. Around 19. After googling I discovered that WBC's tend to live between a minimum of 4 hours and a maximum of 3 days. So something must be causing them to be high, right?

And now it's Friday night and I can't get hold of a dr until Monday and I'm worrying!

Has anyone else had prolonged high WBC counts following any itp treatment?

I was on mycophenolate (cellcept) until mid oct & stopped them suddenly. I wonder if a high count is possibly linked? Like my immune system has revved up? But my platelet count has been fairly stable at 50ish on a low dose of prednisolone that was reintroduced as the mycophenolate was stopped.

Any thoughts? Help!

Thanks, Katherine

Yes it will probably be the steroid.. the prednisolone. I just wrote another post yesterday about that. It's called demargination when the white cells that usually hide out in the epithelium of the vessels come into play and get counted.

Katherine:

My white cells are all over the place, usually well below normal even though I take Prednisone constantly. I've learned not to worry unless my doctor is concerned. There was a time when my Rheumatologist became worried, and she did order additional blood work to check things out, but all was fine.

Thank you both for your wise, wise words!

Ann - I've looked up demargination and feel HEAPS better!

Sandi - I need to learn to hand over a bit of control to my doctors - I find it hard though. I'm a self-confessed control freak!

Thanks again - I can enjoy the weekend now!!!

Ann actually commented to me about this yesterday, but yeah. When I was on prednisone, my white blood cell count was always above 11 and got to be around 16. I usually had around 88% neutrophils, and my ANC was always 10,000 or higher.

Otherwise, I was kind of concerned about this too when I was going over all of my bloodwork for the past few months.

Kat:

I don't blame you a bit. I'm a little anal myself. I usually question everything.

Katherine,

When I was on prednisone my WBC went high too. Off the pred, right back down. I am a fine one to talk about not worrying, but I can volunteer to help you worry so you don't have to as much!

Jeff

My white count has been really high on prednisone, up to 18,000 and often around 12,000, my hema told me not to worry about that, it was from prednisone.

Had another blood test today & WBC count has dropped to 13.5. Still high but I'm not worrying about it anymore

This forum is fab!! Thanks for all the advice & kind words

Great news!

Katsim!

That is indeed good news! It will be fine! Take care and stay in touch.

Jeffrey