Since I last wrote I am now in week three with two further Full Blood Count results. The first put the neutrophil count at 1.1, last week's at 1.4, this week's is back down to 1.2. I do have a cough this week - I understand that viruses can have an effect. My last dose of Humira was on 2nd September and I've skipped this week's dose.
I'm rather concerned that the advice of the consultant here is merely to wait another week and take a further FBC then and maybe to speak to haematology if it remains low. The route of my concern is rather conflicting impressions: on the one hand I'm told that a streptococcal infection could be fatal with a count at 1.1 or so and to be very careful and not to go anywhere with groups of large people; on the other hand I'm being told simply to sit and wait, with no investigations being undertaken. I don't know if I'm being overly simplistic but given I'm repeatedly having to cancel trips to London and the like for fear of infection I'd have thought that either these results are a cause for genuine concern and therefore require follow up or they're merely a cause for some concern but not enough to prevent me from getting on with everything I would otherwise be doing. I'd also assume, as a non-scientist, that nearly three weeks on from my last Humira injection if it were solely the drug then the results should have steadily climbed since the low of 1.1, rather than climbed and then gone down again. All of this is after that first test in August where the result was 1.7, so has dropped and stayed below that level for nearly a month now with no obvious explanation and this being after 8months or more of being on the Humira with FBC that have shown normal at every stage.
Even if I do have a virus now I'd have thought that if the Humira were the underlying problem then my FBC would have climbed each week since stopping it and that any virus might simply have caused the neutrophil count to flatline - cancelling out any further rise from stopping the Humira. However, such a theory assumes the Humria is the cause, even though I took it with no adverse effect on my neutrophil count for months. I am also most concerned that the first test that showed a low neutrophil count was at the start of August - it has dropped back since then to 1.1, 1.4 and now 1.2. In the entire time we've stopped the Humira it has still not recovered to the August level of 1.7 when I was ON the Humria.
Any thoughts?