Hi @eam32 Hopefully I can help clear that up for you. In my understanding, Leukemia in Latin, means white blood. The hallmark of leukemia is the overproduction of white blood cells/blast cells. But those white blood cells are immature, non-functioning and defective.

So, if someone has leukemia, with that high white blood count, it doesn’t necessarily translate into a higher immune response. You can have a high white count, but have very few functioning cells depending on how many are actually mature and capable of fighting infection.

At some point the doctor will treat this when the WBC continues to increase as the leukemic cells in your bone marrow crowd out your good marrow and spew out non functioning blast cells crowding out the red blood cells in your blood. It will be time to treat your CLL to bring your blood back to a more favorable balance of healthy red/white cell ratio. Right now, even though the white blood count is high, apparently there’s enough healthy white blood cells to delay treatment. Are your Red blood counts good?