Hi,

We got an email from the MiL yesterday saying “my last blood test came back with abnormal white blood cells”. MrsV is now worrying like mad, but we don’t really know what “abnormal white blood cells” means.

Googling it just induces further fear so I was wondering if there’s anyone in the font of STW knowledge that can shed any light on it?

Cheers,

V

They could be an ‘off white’ – i think that a technical term is like a ‘misty buff’ or a ‘shrimp sunrise’ although i admit that i am not an expert.

If it’s anything like our local GP surgery, it flags up anything that’s outside the expected parameters eg my daughter has had abnormally low white blood cell levels in the past. Meant that she’s more likely to get infections etc, but nothing more than that.

If you/she are worried best thing is for her to contact the GP surgery and ask what it means.

MrsT

Cheers MrsT. I believe she’s having a follow up test next week.

From the googling, I’ve been leaning towards the “more likely to get infections” end of the spectrum and MrsVs paranoia has been leaning more towards the Leukaemia/Cancer/anything-scary side of things.

TBH it could mean anyone of a million things so without knowing any more specifics it’s almost impossible to give you a meaningful answer. Follow up tests depending on why they are abnormal (too many, too few, polymorphic) will give you more sensible answers than either me or the rest of the internet….

Good luck.

Thanks, that’s good to know. I’ll attempt (again) to convince MrsV to turn the worrying down until more is known.

Next question should be what are they doing about it? A repeat blood test would be handy!

Why did you have the test done, and was it abnormal white blood cells or an abnormal white blood cell count? Two different things, infections etc will alter white cell levels, other conditions will produce abnormal white cells.

Worrying should be turned down until next step known. If it was a nasty, then I’m fairly confident it would not just have been down to MiL to tell you and leave it at that, rather it would have been “please attend…….”