Conversation: The conversation between human and AI assistant.
[|Human|] My husband is under the care of 3 doctors and is being treated with 15mg of prednisone for over a week for polymyalgia rheumatica. His symptoms have only improved a little and I m very concerned. He has extreme bone pain in his knee area, extreme night sweats, low grade fever always, had a trunkal rash and has had a dry hacking cough. His sed rate is high, neutro s high, lymphos low WBC high Rbc low neut absolute high and will be seeing his rheumatologist again tomorrow. He saw PC today. With the rash and cough sounds more like Giant Cell and if so his dose seems low to me. Also could this be leukemia and what tests should we make sure he gets? Thank you....this has been a very long month and a very slow process for us....Jo
[|AI|]  Hi, Thanks for writing in. It is best to get X-rays of the affected knee to be done and analyzed for any bone changes. Giant cell tumor and cough are unrelated problems. ESR can be high due to polymyalgia rheumatic. ESR rises with inflammation of any type and does not mean cancer or leukemia. However, should you want a complete confirmation about leukemia then he must get a complete blood count with peripheral smear and if strongly suspected then a bone marrow biopsy. Rash and cough might commonly occur in many conditions. His immune status also needs to be evaluated and if he is having any tendency to catch infections and allergy. In conclusion, for the knee he requires an X-ray and for the cough and rash he needs a peripheral blood smear which can be compared with the recently done complete blood count as basic investigations. Other higher investigations depend on the results of basic test. Please do not worry.