The ruh-roh flagged line items were the following:
Low Neutrophil *
Low white blood cell count
Low iodine (a marker for hypothyroid)
High carbon dioxide **
Recent reactivated EBV x 2
Low Vit D (big surprise) - @ 20ng/ml
* Actually a lot of my 'cytes' were on the lower end. I found a paper that suggested it might be Lyrica-induced. (
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1002/ccr3.122) Imagine that! You take a pain medication and it drastically reduces your ability to fight any sort of infection... which then likely reactivated my EBV. At least I'm not crazy. Something took a major dive a couple of months ago and I can't seem to get out of this fatigue/ickies bubble. I'm curious about
the bone marrow boosting medication it discusses and I'll bring it up at my next Rheumy appt. I also found a couple of reputable article that stated sustained neutr
openia (low neutrophils) are the cause of a number of cancers. Awesome. And I am also almost totally off Lyrica and will be done this week. Hallelujah.
** Hmm, I'm not sure why Rheumy ticked this box, but I sure am grateful. I did some sleuthing and it could be 1) sleep apnea (undiagnosed but sleep study is coming up next month) or 2) drastically marked fatigue which naturally slows down breathing (so I'm breathing like I'm sleeping even when I'm active and not expelling the bad stuff in the process).
No wonder I feel like doodoo! Looking forward to chatting with my doc about
this. After more than a year of treatment, I shouldn't be getting worse. \-: