To be frustrated with nurse practitioner?

[SoOriginal]

I’ve not been feeling great at all, kept putting it down to having a newborn but couldn’t ignore symptoms anymore (abdominal pain and other gastrointestinal issues). Sent for a blood test and they’ve found high eosinophil count. NHS website reckons reference levels should be 0.1-0.5 and anything over 1.5 could cause organ damage (potential causes include parasites, leukaemia and autoimmune diseases). I’m a 2.

Called into Drs office and saw the nurse, she thought I was there to discuss VitD until I said I’d seen my results online. Then said ‘oh yes, I see. White blood cells. Let’s do another test to be sure’. No tests in my area for 3 weeks.

AIBU to follow up tomorrow for a referral instead? She didn’t seem to know what she was doing and certainly didn’t seem to (or at least didn’t acknowledge) the potential seriousness of the results.

The results need interpreting in the context of the full differential, any trends and your medical history and medication. There are plenty of not very exciting causes of raised eosinophils. Repeating the test to get an idea of a trend in the absence of any other worrying signs doesn’t seem like a terrible idea.

The Scottish website is pretty good on this - have a look https://rightdecisions.scot.nhs.uk/tam-treatments-and-medicines-nhs-highland/adult-therapeutic-guidelines/haematology/eosinophilia-guidelines.

It's always okay to follow up if you're not comfortable with / don't understand the plan but you may well find that a repeat blood test in a week or two is the next step still. You'll see from these guidelines that there are many causes of raised eosinophils and talks about persistently raised levels (for months) up to 5-10. Hope you got the plan re vit D sorted too

Also, iirc very vaguely there’s some funky physiology between vit d and eosinophils so if you’re deficient in vit d then that may be an easy fix

I cannot tell you how helpful that was or how reassuring it was to read!
I’ve been spiralling a bit today, not helped by been very tired (baby not sleeping!). thank you for sharing.

Sending you some big hugs - having a newborn and feeling rubbish is so much too much to deal with. Do go back to the doctor's and ask more about this but definitely don't panic, I've seen those sort of blood results many times and very often - most often - it ends up being fine. So please don't panic x