POZ Community Forums
Main Forums => Living With HIV => Topic started by: wolfthorn on December 18, 2013, 12:05:57 pm
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I was going to go to my ID doc next week but I came down with a nasty cold this week. Should I delay my blood work? If my counts look worse I will freak out.
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if your going to freak out any time your counts are lower than your previous test your going to eventually be disappointed. counts don't always get better, if they did we all would have cd4 counts in the tens of thousands. Naturally, they go up and down.
I don't think your should put off blood work because of a cold that's part of life. If you only ever got blood work done when you were feeling your best how is that representative of the natural course of things.
If you feel you can't handle it then wait.
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I was going to go to my ID doc next week but I came down with a nasty cold this week. Should I delay my blood work? If my counts look worse I will freak out.
Hey Wolf,
I encourage you to consider that your counts, are but one indicator of your health. What I know will work, is for you to understand your body, so you will know when something is wrong. If your counts are lower, but you feel fine, why worry about something you cannot change. I worked for 12 years with CD4s between 200 - 300, had the usual colds, flu, etc., during those times. What I had to learn is how to "read" my body and even though I looked bad on paper, I was physically fit, active and in a very demanding job.
I've been poz for three decades and it took almost 24 years for my counts to rise above 500. I know that had I concentrated on how I looked on paper, I would probably have not make it this long. Your counts are just one more indicator of your health and since we are each unique, what others experience does not apply to you, simply because they are not you.
Just be good to yourself, in mind, body and spirit and begin seeing your health as being comprised of many facets and not just a few numbers.
Joe
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Look at it this way, if your counts are lower than normal this time, next time you may get a huge increase. Won't that feel good? Ha.
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I have had 30 years of labs / cd4 counts and I have had good ones when I was sick as a dog and bad ones when I was feeling great . The cd4 fairy works in mysterious ways .
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I would wait...I made the mistake of doing mine when I had a cold and my VL went up and CD4 went down to 250. the next blood draw was back to normal numbers and UD.
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My doctor told me that's why my numbers looked so bad, my body was trying to fight off the cold.
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A couple years ago I had a blood draw while I was brewing a heavy-duty kidney infection - and my CD4s came back higher than they'd been in the previous few years. (I'd felt a bit "off" for a few days and the day after my appointment I had a high fever etc, so it was obviously already in my system when my blood was drawn.)
Sometimes infections will raise your WBC counts, including the subset of CD4s. I was surprised at my CD4 results but my doctor and a nurse-practioner/hiv-specialist nurse both said they'd seen it before, particularly with bacterial infections. I wasn't on meds at the time and I was also told that I probably had a VL spike within a few days of the CD4 rise - due to more cells being available for the virus to play with.
So anyway, being sick with some bug can raise, as well as lower, your CD4 count.
We would all do well to remember that any single blood draw is only a snap-shot of what is going on at that particular minute of that particular day. If we all had a means to monitor our CD4 counts in-home whenever we liked, I bet we'd be amazed by the constant fluctuations.
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I have had 30 years of labs / cd4 counts and I have had good ones when I was sick as a dog and bad ones when I was feeling great . The cd4 fairy works in mysterious ways .
I always see spikes in CD4 count after I've been sick as well.
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I think I am going to wait until it's my three month mark in the middle of January. I made an earlier appointment because i was getting impatient, but I shouldn't be obsessed with numbers. My doctor also has Saturday appointments then so it makes more sense. Last visit my cd4 was up and so was my percentage. I was almost undetectable as well. Who I might be lucky and have a decent immune recovery and be able to stop Bactrim. I will go out for a nice French dinner when that happens. i was worried i would linger forever in double digits, but I didn't. My anemia resolved. There are no longer billions of molluscum covering my face. I am getting better, but it's taking time. I have gained 20 pounds!
I am so happy to have all your sage advice! It gives me such hope to see you all living a long time with HIV.
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Exactly. Remembering that numbers are just numbers is a GOOD idea.