Platelets

What are they?  Why are they so important?  What is normal?  This blog will be for education as I am trying to understand why this is happening and why is everyone concerned when I feel fine (for the most part).

Platelets- are small fragments of cellular material in the blood. They originate by splitting off from large cells in the bone marrow.
Why are they so important? - They are necessary for the process of clotting when blood vessels are damaged, both by providing crucial chemical substances and by physically plugging the hole.

What is normal?  A normal platelet count in a healthy individual is between 150,000 and 450,000.

Alrighty then, mine were 19,000 yesterday when they sent me to the hospital for a transfusion so now I know.  My nose was bleeding nonstop for over a day when I called the nurse to make sure that it was okay and she calmly and told me to get there right away.  Once the blood test was done and she was sending me to the hospital she very sternly said, do not get in an accident, do not fall, do not cut yourself… hmm, it means that if I had an accident I would have bled to death as I had no platelets to coagulate my blood and close the hole… also, I might be bleeding internally and not really know. 

Why is this happening? Interesting, they are giving me 3 different types of drugs for my chemo, two of which are real trouble, carboplatin and avastin.

The most troubling effect of carboplatin tends to be damage to the bone marrow, in a process called myelosuppression. This leads to anemia. Blood cells produced by the marrow can drop to 10% of normal levels. This level bottoms out a few weeks after carboplatin administration.

Avastin or Bevacizumab inhibits the growth of blood vessels…the FDA warned of the risk of developing perforations in the body, including in the nose, stomach, and intestines.

So as we all know, in the process of trying to cure my cancer other problems are starting to surface therefore proving that the treatment is not working.

Okay, so now I know…  More reason to ask you to pray that MD Anderson or someone calls me back soon with other offers or clinical trial or solutions as I will NOT continue with chemo.

And one more thing that I learned, there are some angels out there that donate blood and other even more important angels who donate platelets.  To donate platelets the person must be connected to a machine similar to dialysis for 3 hours…  To any and all donors, my hat is off to you and may God bless you as you have blessed me.

Enough of that now to the fun part, back in April, before we knew that my cancer was going to metastasize Pat and I made plans to once again go to Key West for Fantasy Fest, and although we do not have costumes yet, we are going ‘platelets or not’ next week for a week of fun, fun and more fun…

So long for now as I will not be writing until I get back… unless some good news comes along.

Love y’all

ME

 BTW, did you schedule your mammogram?  October is almost over!!!

Another BTW, my sweet husband took charge and made me breakfast and dinner and my sweet daughter and Maggie sat with me at the hospital today…  Love you all