Wow - blood results, only took two years... and, umm... Neutrophils? (huh?)

Holy Smokes, at last, my blood work! 

I just got my reminder from OH that I just hit my two year surgiversary - wow, where does the time go?
And as if it were a anniversary gift, I got back my first set of lab work since I left the hospital. I am ashamed, but it's true. I just never had both the time and the health insurance at once before now.

Amazingly, considering how flakey I am overall with my vitamins, everything came back in the nnormal range. I attribute this to my preemptive B12 injections and to my life-long love of fruits, veggies, fish and tofu. I always ate very healthy foods, I just ate them witha  shovel pre-WLS.

The only thing that came back low in my results, like abnormal low, was my white blood cell count and something called neutrophils.  And my lymphs were high.
Which tells me exactly nothing. 

Sound similar to anything you guys have come across in post-WLS life?
Any ideas or info about what this might be trying to tell me is much appreciated as always!

I just looked on the web and came across this, the rest of the reasons were very serious.  I hope this is all that's causing yours.  
Another cause of a low neutrophil count is too little vitamin B12 or folic acid (a type of vitamin) in the body. A vitamin is one of a group of substances made up partly of carbon (an element) that are essential in small amounts for normal bodily functioning and chemical processes in the body to take place.

Um ... eeep?



My B12 and folic were both high end of normal...

Well, crap. I'll try to book with my PCP, see if she thinks we should do more tests. She didn't say anything about it when she called to let me know my tests were back. Just said everything looked fine, and that she was sending me the print-out.

"normal range" may not always be the wisest for post ops.  B12 should be at least 1000 up to 2000. D shoud be around 80-90 for everyone for optimum health and maximum absorption of your calcium citrate. Even with healthy foods,  you STILL NEED daily supplments.  DAVE

IT's flu season, your neutrophils go low if you're fighting off a flu.

(that's how I understand it)

I was once hospitalized with neutropenia which was a fancy way of saying that my neutrophils were low (almost zero) and my white blood cell count was also almost zero. They thought I was fixing to die (with my blood pressure at 75/50 when I got there and after 2 liters of liquid it was 65/30 (they had three people take it after the machine gave the same reading twice)... they thought I was going to keel over.

ultimately they said that your white blood cells and neutrophils go low if you have a virus (cold, flu) or go high if you have an infection.

Ok.
That's good to hear.
I mean, I didn't feel like I was dying, but then again I've never died before, so what would I know?

I'm having a hard time reconciling the numbers in the results to the ranges given on different posts here. For example, my serum calcium results say 9.2. How in the world that would relate to Dave's number I have no idea. But a lot of them are like that. The lab slip gives a range of "normal", and my results number sits somewhere in that range, but what it is supposed to be measuring exactly I really can't say.  
B12 says 716 in a range of 211 - 946.

716 ... what? mgs? mcgs? IUs?

(Tsps?)

Thanks for the feedback, it helps.

Just saw this post.  My white count and absolute neutrophils dropped steadily after surgery.  My surgeon has seen this in other WLS patients, but not with counts as low as mine.  I had had chemotherapy twice, and my surgeon wondered if that did it, but my oncologist noted that my WBC was in the normal range a few months after my last chemo.

So...no one knows why my counts are low.  All my other lab numbers are good.  I saw a hematologist, and he couldn't figure anything out either.  He said I must be one of those people who live with low counts and do just fine.  My counts went up when I ended up in the hospital for bowel obstructions and then headed down again.  My immune system seems to be working.

If you find anything out about your counts, I would love to know.

... really interesting...

I will certainly post with anything I find out.