Neutrophils 101

This educational message is brought to you to prevent summer brain drain...

Neutrophils are a type of white blood cell that fights infection. When Hayden’s ANC (absolute neutrophil count) is low, we have to limit his exposure to…well almost everything except school…because he has a weakened immune system. As you can imagine, this is much more tolerable in the summer. His ANC is low because he is receiving aggressive chemotherapy treatments, which attacks both the healthy blood cells and the lymphoblasts (AKA blasts – these are the immature cells that went haywire and, if left untreated, would rapidly reproduce and crowd out the good guys). So we expect all of his blood counts (including red blood cells and platelets) to drop during or after treatments, then regenerate. At first, Hayden’s counts rebounded pretty quickly but they seem to be taking their sweet time lately…which delays treatments. The protocol requires that his ANC is at least .75 to continue chemo (normal is 1.5+).