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Anyone have chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)?
Blood Cancers & Disorders | Last Active: Oct 5 6:48pm | Replies (142)Comment receiving replies
I was diagnosed about a month ago. I was reviewing the blood tests from a hospitalization for pancreatitis and the smear test caught my eye in all the daily numerous blood tests done when I was in the hospital. Nobody mentioned it! So I had a follow up Dr appointment and asked (I looked it up beforehand so I knew what it was) but I was told that it was possible for that to be an issue because of the recent pancreatitis so we waited a month did the test again and sure enough it’s CLL. My doctor said to me, you will die with this not because of this. I’ve had two appointments with a hematologist oncologist, not on any treatment yet my next appointment is in August. My white blood cell counts elevated between the two weeks the last time I had blood tests. I’m a little lost in all of this still processing and trying to understand what are the next steps.
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Welcome to Connect, @thacket3. If you’ve read through the posts in this discussion, you’ll see that you’re not alone with a CLL diagnosis out of the blue. Many blood cancers or conditions tend to develop slowly over time. So unless someone is experiencing symptoms the disease isn’t discovered until a routine blood test shows there’s a change.
As for next steps, your hematologist oncologist will monitor you closely for a while to look for trends in blood work. If things are stable then there’s not much that will change for you. CLL is one of the more treatable forms of leukemia and quite often requires just active surveillance. Over time, if there are indications that the disease may be progressing then your doctor will discuss treatment options. But for some people that can take years or maybe they never need treatment.
Besides this conversation where you joined the group, there are other discussions with CLL members. You might want to read through the comments in this discussion:
Anyone have chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL)?
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/anyone-have-cll/
You also mentioned having pancreatitis. If you’re interested in talking with others with that shared experience, here is a list of search results of pancreatitis discussions: https://connect.mayoclinic.org/search/?search=Pancreatitis+
Has your pancreatitis been resolved?