The stem cell transplant substitute healthy stem cells for the weakened bone marrow itself. You may think of stem cell transplantation instead of a surgical procedure as a transfusion of blood and immune cells.

You will not recover the blood counts at least for a number of months – or not, if your bone marrow wasn’t refilled after very high drug doses. Your blood count should be back to safety in two to six weeks after improving a stem cell transplant.

What is chemotherapy?

Chemotherapy is an anti cancer treatment that disrupts the capacity of cancer cells to expand and increase in your body. The goal of treatment is to remove the greatest possible number of cancer cells.

According to a surgery Journal, chemotherapy may also affect cancer-free cells, however. Normal chemotherapy cells typically involve gastrointestinal and reproductive system bone marrow, hair follicles and cells.

What is radiation treatment?

Radiation therapy is used to destroy or prevent growth and division of cancer cells by energy-efficient rays or beams. In tandem with chemotherapy, radiation is often given.

What is total body irradiation?

Most patients receive full body radiation treatment in stem cell transplants. In comparison with radiation targeted at a certain area of the body, the whole body is radiated to kill cancer cells and to reduce immunity.

How do my blood cells suffer from chemotherapy and radiation?

Because cancer cells tend to increase faster than other cells, chemotherapy has an effect on fast-growing cells than slowly-growing cells.

Nevertheless, other normal cells, including blood cells, are also rapidly growing. Chemotherapy has a side effect that as it progresses it can destroy young blood cells. It can take 3 to 10 days for your blood cells to drop to their lowest level.

When you are primed for stem Cell Journal transplantation by chemotherapy, it kills cancer cells and also suppresses the immune system.

You will check your blood to see how many blood cells you have of any kind. It is called that you have checked your accounts. Your counts are checked regularly while you are in the hospital.

If your blood counts are going to be small, the nurse or doctor will tell you. You are called the nadir if the bladder and platelet counts are lowest.

You need to know that the statistics can impact the diagnosis, level of activity and susceptibility to infections.

White blood cells

Infection is tackled by white blood cells. The average number of white blood cells is from four to ten thousand.

White blood cells have three primary types: neutrophils, lymphocytes and monocytes. The maximum number of poles and stripes is the absolute count of neutrophils (ANC).

If my blood counts are weak, what happens?

You are more at risk of infection if your CNA drops under 500 a condition called neutropenia. The G-CSF or GM-CSF colony-stimulating factor may be administered by your doctor to help the bone marrow cell development and a quicker recovery of white blood cells.

Once your ANC recuperates you may be less at risk of viruses and fungi. Your risk of infection may decrease. It can take one to two years to fully rebuild the immune system.