CLL

A friend of mine who also has chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is in the middle of another round of chemotherapy. I woke up in the middle of the night last night thinking about her and about the doctors, clinics, and drug companies who are all making so much money from her unfortunate battle with CLL and her suffering. Keep in mind that I am not a Doctor…in fact I have absolutely zero medical training. I am just a CLL patient who is trying to be well informed

Her white blood cell count (WBC) is now up to 55K, which is what mine was the last time I had it checked three years ago. But in CLL the total WBC is not really all that important. Much more critical is how fast the WBC is increasing. Typically they talk about doubling time. Her WBC has doubled in the last month. That is incredibly fast.

Equally disturbing is that her platelets are now down to 55. According to my records the normal range is a high of 400 - 450 and a low of 140 - 150. Blood tests are all inaccurate within some tolerable range, but 55 is indeed very low. She says that she is “all bruised and spotted.” From what I have read, when one’s platelets begin dropping this is a very bad sign.

One of the dilemmas with treatment for CLL is that CLL is incurable. The various therapies are mostly intended to improve the patient’s quality of life. I keep asking the question, and to my knowledge there still have been no valid medical trials which demonstrate that any of the commonly used therapies cure or even significantly increase the lifespan of CLL patients. In fact most of the normal chemotherapy agents used to treat CLL actually make the patient’s immune system function even more poorly that it did before treatment.

I wish my friend all the best. I really do.
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