False Positive

You know, I have really only heard the term “false positive” in regards to pregnancy tests. Well yesterday I had a false positive on my blood test. When I got my machine read blood counts the basic counts were as expected: White Blood Cells at 1.3, neutrophils at 600, hemoglobin at 12 and platelets at 140,000. At the bottom of the of the read out are descriptions or warnings if any of the counts are out of an expected range. An example is the normal range for a male’s hemoglobin is 14 – 18 anything below that is considered anemic. I have been at 12 or 13 all through chemotherapy. So my count sheet usually reports anemic. Yesterday’s showed anemic and neutropenic and a new one for me, “blast”. If you have acute leukemia, blast is not a good word. It is not taken as “having a blast”, it means blast cells were detected. What are blast cells? They are immature (malformed) white blood cells. Basically, they are leukemia. So, I panic. First thoughts are “I went through four miserable rounds of chemotherapy for what???” Then I talk to my nurse in the infusion room. She tells me things happen with the machine, they will do a manual check in the lab. My oncologist/hematologist’s nurse tells me the same thing and that she will call me with the results.

Two hours passed between leaving the oncology office and getting her call. I will be honest with you. I was scared. I cried. I panicked. I have a pretty good sense of how much I want 100% remission now.

In the manual test, under the microscope, no blast cells were found. Whew.