Intermittent high white blood count

Good morning, @petunia65 Your name made me smile on this cold spring morning, as some of my favorite flowers are petunias. I sure hope I can plant some soon.

When you have these episodes of chills, aches, cough, shaking, etc, is it usually after a period of over exertion or stress the previous weeks before? The fact that you don’t have this all the time and that blood tests don’t show anything abnormal except a sporadic spike in WBC, it sounds more like it could be a reactivation of a latent virus-type thing. If it were a blood cancer, generally that’s progressive and your blood tests would have alerted your doctors to an issue.
When the body is tired or stressed, our immune systems get stressed out too, trying to keep up with the demands of its job to defend and protect. We sometimes have viruses such as Epstein-Barr or CMV which can lie dormant in the body forever and never reappear after our first exposure. (80% of the worlds population has EBV). However, in a period of low immunity, it can resurface causing those familiar flu-like symptoms. I’m not a medical professional but have experience with what you’re describing. My daughter goes through this from time to time. She has latent EBV after having mono when she was 18. When she’s tired or stressed out, it can resurface with a sore throat, aches, fever, etc.

When you’ve had your blood checked, has your doctor requested a test for EBV or CMV?

Thank you for your response! I will see if I’ve been tested for EBV.

Crazy! I went on my patient portal, and I tested positive in 2018 for EBV. They never mentioned it to me! Even did nuclear scan and heart tests after to try to find cause. Thank you so much. I will pursue further, but it seems to fit.

Is there anything your daughter does to mitigate the symptoms?

You’re welcome. I’m not saying a that’s what it is, but the symptoms are familiar.
There are a number of other conversations in our forum talking about a reactivation of EBV that you might want to take a peek at. https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/is-chronic-reactivated-epstein-barr-virus-different-from-chronicle-ac/

I hope you get some answers soon. Will you let me know what you find out?

From my understanding there isn’t much to be done. In very rare cases there is what’s called Chronic EBV which can require infusions of immunosuppressants, that type of thing. But that’s rare and extreme. Not sure if taking an antiviral will help. This is a question for your doctor.

My daughter (38) is just mindful of not over stressing or over working. HAH 😅 In the real world that’s impossible of course so it’s basically a matter of keeping on a healthy diet, exercising, getting a good night’s sleep, etc.. But she’s very active in roller derby, exercises and works full time so it may slow her down some days but doesn’t stop her. If she’s really feeling under the weather she’ll pop and advise. In that case it’s a matter of masking symptoms but it helps.

It’s good your doctor was so thorough but it’s sad they didn’t discuss the possibility of the EBV as your symptoms. Curious, are you going to ask him/her about this?

I sure an gonna ask him about this. Would have been nice to have answers four years ago!