white blood cells

as you might recall from your high school biology class, from your work as a medical doctor, or from a recent perusal of the relevant page on wikipedia, white blood cells (or leukocytes) are cells that are produced in the bone marrow and help to defend the body against infections and foreign materials as part of the immune system. when a person is undergoing chemotherapy, that person typically has lower than normal levels of white blood cells. one's blood has to be sampled prior to every chemo treatment in order to determine whether white blood cells are present in high enough numbers to ensure some modicum of disease-fighting ability in the patient.

when matt went in for his chemo on december 18, his white blood cell count was in the 700's. it needs to be over 1000 in order for them to go forward with treatment. so chemo was delayed until december 26. however, on december 26, matt's white blood cell count had dropped to 420. they actually took his blood twice because they couldn't believe the number was so low. it meant they had to put off chemo for another week, and it also meant that matt had to go into the hospital every day last week for a shot of some magical medicine that was supposed to stimulate his bone marrow to produce more white blood cells. i didn't believe that such a thing would work, but it turns out my medical knowledge was proven wrong once again. normal white blood cell counts range from 4,500 to 10,000 cells per microliter. matt's white blood cell count was more than 14,000. apparently he now has super-immune strength (which is supposed to be read like "super-human" to make it sound funnier. try it. "super-human." "super-immune." ok, you're right, it's pretty lame). so matt will have chemo on tuesday for the first time in almost a month. the medical staff will determine what schedule he'll be following for future treatments.